What does it mean to want, and make, something legible? When our erotic experiences overwhelm and defy our preconceived worldviews, how can we eschew rigid definitions? This brilliant article inspired me to realize a project dealing with interspecies intimacy, legibility, eroticism, desire, embodiment, queerness, and transhumanism. Diving deeper into the subject matter, I ended up reading, excerpting, and editing together a cross-genre anthology of pertinent texts. Entries include a training manual on how to become a cephalopod, an ecosex manifesto, poetry by Audre Lorde, a transcript of the youtube trailer to a documentary about the relationship between a NASA researcher and the dolphin she was studying, and academic essays such as an article by Donna Haraway on tentacular thinking.

Throughout the process of making this book, I was concerned with questions of (withholding) legibility, and wanted to push the reader to be open to ambiguity and a lack of resolution. The book is Japanese-folded and printed on semi-transparent paper, with images of mixed human and aquatic bodies and intimacies nested inside the folds, seeping out across the translucent paper onto the surface. Binding is hand-sewn with multiple thin, colored threads.