Tuesday Poem - GromiaDNA - Silent Creature, Silent Space

Hei hei. It feels like eons since the last time I was here. Thank you for continuing to visit. . .  

Today's (late, late, late) Tuesday Poem is a little out-of-the-ordinary. My previous entry carried mention of various online projects I've been immersed in lately; one of these is a collaborative (ad)venture titled A VAST SCALE - Evocations of Antarctica*.  AVS is a Ning community site created and managed by my Aussie-based friend and fellow Antarctican, Rupert Summerson and moi. If any of you are interested in participating or having a look-see, please let me know (either leave a comment here or email me at clarab@earthlight.co.nz) and I will send you the password to the site? 

I'll say just a wee bit about A Vast Scale given that it relates to today's Tuesday Poem. Between us, Rupert and I created a series of short ice-related videos for the Ning site with the purpose of engendering discussion re; the Antarctic environment, sound/music and aesthetics; this is an informal research project whose focus is more on creative process, networking and subjective opinion than it is on hard-nosed statistics and conclusive findings. We'll be presenting a paper at the Antarctica Sound conference in Canberra next w-eek. I say w-eek because I was supposed to be boarding a plane to Australia first thing this morning (the red-eye flight from Christchurch) but - for various reasons - I canceled my flight and am staying home. Rupert and I have been hard at work on this project for several months. . . Our presentation will still go ahead, only now - instead of us sharing the podium - Rupert will be speaking in two part-harmony (one voice in a frock and the other in jacket & tie?). Thankfully, the internet has meant we've been able to construct, compose and co-ordinate this collaboration effectively over distance. 

During my years of ArtScience collaboration with polar biologist, Sam Bowser, I developed an abiding fascination for the DNA and RNA sequences of the protists we were studying and found myself looking for ways to incorporate them in various art forms, and in various ways. . . As odd as this may sound, DNA and RNA sequences look to me like poetry; when I read them, I hear music. . . It seemed a good idea, then, to transcribe their sequences into quasi-musical notation - why not 'play' the protist's DNA?  

So. . . Meet Gromia cf. oviformis, a microscopic hot-water-bottle-shaped single-celled critter abundant in Antarctic waters and the first of the protists we've paid 'musical attention' to. . . 

  

Watercolour painting by Sam Bowser

Gromia for whom home = the ocean floor closest to McMurdo Station, are lean and hungry-looking, while - for some yet-to-be-discovered reason - their relatives in Explorers Cove are spherical and fat. Same creatures, same species, same DNA sequence - and yet. . . (an interesting metaphor for our very own species?)

Below is an image of the RNA sequence for Gromia cf. oviformis. Rupert cleverly came up with a way to translate its various 4-letter configurations into musical notation, the result of which is an unusual, primitive and, I think, quite haunting piece of music. He will perform GromiaDNA on his Japanese shakuhachi in Canberra on Saturday, using the medium of sound to make a creature ordinarily invisible to the naked eye, visible. . . He'll play the sequence 'into' an atmospheric backdrop/stage set I've put together for the occasion - a 9min silent film of the eerie, icy waters inhabited by Gromia. I intend to post the film here later today. While some of the footage will be familiar to you from previous vids. (one of my wee boats makes an appearance - 'right-way-up' this time), there's plenty in it that's new. . .   

Anyway. . . when this sequence arrived in my e- InBox five years ago, it was accompanied by a challenge, 'I don't suppose you can make a poem out of this?' Well, yes! One can make a poem out of anything, right? And here it is - Gromia as (a sequence of) concrete* Tuesday Poems.  

In these next few images, Gromia gametes encounter the poetry of their own make-up, survey their DNA. . .

the encounter becomes a dance 

And - in keeping with the unpredictable nature of life - every so often a DNA sequence makes an impression on an unsuspecting pair of small white chairs. . .

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. This week's editor is Helen Rickerby with Margot or Margaux, a viscerally lush poem by Anna Jackson.

* concrete poetry: poetry in which the meaning or effect is conveyed partly or wholly by visual means, using patterns of words or letters and other typographical devices. 

White - or not, as the case may be

I've had cause to reflect this past week on my relationship with Antarctica, remembering again how I sensed her before I saw her; how I found myself drawing her landscapes without even knowing I was doing so, conjuring up her spaces on paper only to find myself standing in them years down the track. It was as though some part of me knew we would meet long before the rest of me had even the vaguest inkling she would be written into my life's script. I do think there are times when our unconscious goes out ahead of us, scanning landscapes, embracing people, entering situations, noting features, atmospheres and coordinates so that when the time is ripe, we are ready to step into a space prepared, without our conscious self having any real awareness that this is what is happening.

When Antarctica's edges first came into view, I was standing with my face pressed up against the porthole of the Hercules airplane. My response to her was a somatic one. A surge of heat rushed through my body; I shivered at the same time. I don't know how else to describe it save to say it was like being seduced and chastened at the same time; pierced, buckled and somehow straightened. It was clear to me that uncharted parts of me were stirring, given a call to wake up and pay attention. This may sound strange and dramatic, but it wasn't. It was quiet and private and something I wasn't able to articulate till much, much later. One thing is certain -something inside me was shaken up and reconfigured on 6 October 2005.

The reason I've been thinking about these things is because this coming Thursday - 22 April (at 2.22PM) - the major collaborative piece I made with polar biologist, Dr Samuel Bowser, is being unveiled as a permanent installation in the foyer of the State Plaza building in Albany NY. Titled InterfaCE V, this work is the culmination of nearly five years' ArtScience exploration with Sam. It carries both our signatures, but rather than the work of two individuals, I see it more as a communal piece. As with most joint endeavours, it carries the energy and input of a great many more people than might at first meet the eye.

This weekend, I received the first few photographs of the mounting process... I confess I shed a tear when I saw them. You will know from previous entries on this blog that I get homesick for Antarctica. My buttons are easily pushed. Mostly, these are tears of gratitude for times, people and a place who together opened me up to 'more' and whose imprint I will always carry.

Positioning the vertical base plinth - Wadsworth Center foyer, Albany NY - April 2010

The photographs I'm posting here show the base template that will eventually hold 127 glass laboratory beakers that will in turn support 127 images (a combination of Scanning Electron Microscope imagery plus interpretative drawings)... From the front, the composition will appear to spin, perhaps even give off hints of sound. The underlying 'blueprint' is mapped out according to sacred geometry; rhythms are set up by prime numbers and phi...

Looking at it side on, people will be able to enter (metaphorically and with the eye, not the body!) the space behind the drawings to meander through the trails of a transparent labyrinth - an unexpected landscape of light and shadow that hints at worlds many of us never get to see; the universe beneath the lens of a microscope and/or the second heaven that hovers below metres and metres of heaving sea ice. The piece documents seven stages of polar biological research, with a specific focus on the motility and morphology of foraminifera. (Foraminifera are ancient uni-cellular aquatic organisms; living fossils underpin our evolutionary pyramid and that date back 650 million years). Rather than go into all the background details here, this link will take you to an explanation of the collaborative process and this one to the installation as it was first mounted at the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs in May 2008.

For many reasons, InterfaCE is a piece dear to my heart.

InterfaCE - behind the frame

My task this weekend has been to put together a 7 min introduction re; this collaborative venture. Sam will be preparing something similar. A dear friend, Jack Harris, will read on my behalf on Thursday. The Director of the center will speak for 5 mins, too, and the brief unveiling ceremony will end with a minute's silence in honour of Earth Day.

Sigh.

Sometimes - often - I wish our seven continents were no more than a stepping stone or three apart.

Her bones - a weekend's silence before fat, cartilage and muscles are added