Project / The Polybody
Tagline/Mantra / Fine-tune your physique
Process / concepts are arranged for efficiency, then constructed on LibreOffice word processor and presented as either a PNG or printed out on 8.5” x 11” papers organized into a physical notebook. Other office supplies and business branding materials are also used to construct props which are used to support the base concepts.
Intention/Concept / The purpose of The Polybody project is to construct a simple yet wholistic, practical philosophy of health. There are three major pillars to the philosophy:
1/ Diet/Nutrition
Addresses the building blocks for energy and regeneration of the physical body, i.e., metabolism. The aim is to strive for maximal nutrient density while minimizing dietary stressors in order to achieve optimal metabolic efficiency.
2/ Movement/Exercise
After metabolism converts food into nutrients the body can process, movement becomes necessary, to deliver these nutritional building blocks to all the cells of the body while simultaneously removing or recycling cellular debris. A person’s movement mechanics, or biomechanics, influence how efficient this process is and also relates to the lifespan of the body’s joints. The objective is to strive for a movement practice that explores the full range of motion for all the joints of the body, and aims to both learn the most efficient movement patterns and train them into one’s habitual activities. The ideal movement patterns ought to be able to withstand repetitive motion, heavy loads, and dynamic, explosive actions.
3/ Stress/Trauma reduction and release
Rest is a necessary oppositional balancing force to movement that allows for healing and regeneration, but when we become overstressed or traumatized, our ability to rest, heal, and sleep becomes ineffective. Various techniques ranging from biofeedback, somatic experiencing, to psychedelics are explored and formulated into protocols in order to reset the body to a state where it can effectively heal itself.
Together, the Polybody Diet, Polybody Movement, and Polybody Recess, comprise the three core pillars of The Polybody project.
Meaning / On a personal level The Polybody project naturally evolved from a background first as a competitive athlete, and second as a career in professional body therapy performing sports massage and nutritional counseling. While many think of athletes as being the healthiest among us, pushing one’s body to its limits often has more deleterious consequences than benefits. I learned this lesson the hard way when sustaining a ruptured disc to my lumbar spine (L4-L5) at age 18. At the time I was attempting to compete in division I football at the University of Colorado, and was a pre-med major studying Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology with hopes of one day being a medical doctor. Those hopes were dashed when the pain from sciatica made it hard to focus on academics and my football career was effectively ended when I finally capitulated and elected to have surgery three years after the initial injury. It would later take another 10 years of post-surgery complications in which various conventional health modalities such as physical therapy, anti-inflammatory drugs, and epidural steroid injections, were utilized without much sustainable relief. Finally, at around age 30 the proliferation of information available on the internet made it possible to take my health into my own hands by researching, trying out, and becoming trained in various alternative health modalities. The Polybody is an aggregation and simplification of the most valued information I obtained on my own personal Asclepius-like, wounded-healer’s journey.
From an artistic perspective, we know that art is about communicating values; alongside certain core values e.g., environmental health, security, education; health is one of our most important primary base values necessary for optimal functioning of any primary or secondary values. That being said, health is all to often overlooked and taken for granted until it’s too late. Once unhealthy habits are myelinated into one’s nervous system as daily habits, many will only change the general inertia of their lifestyle under two conditions: out of inspiration, or out of desperation. As a subset of Polymathic Aestheticism, The Polybody is an attempt to bring beauty and innovation into the banal. Many outsource their health to external specialists whose job is simply to make sure a persons health meets a minimum baseline, i.e. to not be ill, or merely to be alive. The Polybody is designed to assist individuals in taking responsibility for their own health; it provides basic concepts to first become cognizant of what optimal health practices look like, and empower them to not just stay alive, but thrive. As an artistic project, it’s presentation follows along the lines of the Minimalist and Conceptual Art movements; it is a back-to-basics re-evaluation of basic values, nurturing, walking, sleeping, etc. It asks the questions, am I getting optimal performance on the most basic level? How can one innovate to make their health practices more efficient?
Favorite Aspects / Outside of The Polybody project’s minimalist/conceptual art roots, the general aesthetic of the branding and design is also informed by a love of music. I really enjoy how the tagline to “Fine-tune” one’s physique, the inverted treble clef logo, and the stark, sheet-music-like, presentation of the protocols all work together to intimate this musical influence; a reference to the harmonization of the body with itself.