Sarah’s entry: 19.3.09

Experiment in movement.



When Keith asked me to make a new work the brief was very open. It had merely to be in response to his Research and Development residency at the Nurrish Laboratory. Coincidentally, although he didn’t know it, I’d already been thinking about movement in my own work but only as the very small germ of an idea.

My starting point for this project then was to read Keith’s blog and to go the lab and meet Steve and the worms. The first I approached with some trepidation – although I am virtually a blog virgin my instinctive response is they’re not really my thing and I feel the same about Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, though I do know they all serve different purposes and it’s a totally knee-jerk reaction rather than an educated critical response. Alongside this I’m not a fan of having to write artist’s statements–I can see that sometimes they may be useful as a way in to interpreting a work but as the author of them I feel its a fine line between being too simplistic or downright pretentious – the whole thing makes me very self-conscious. But – it turned out I found reading the blog quite painless. It gave me insight into his methods and I also loved the inserted films – it showed YouTube to be a potential source of research material and just made me laugh. When I later asked Keith how he’d approached writing the blog he said he saw it as extended programme notes – this also made sense.

The trip to the lab was similarly illuminating and the two things combined gave me a starting point and a framework for my own filming. My aim became to achieve a piece of footage which replicated somehow the sense of excitement and awe I felt when looking down the microscope at the lab at the worms; it would take a few moments to focus and then there they were and sometimes they were bright green. Previously my ideas about movement had been inspired by an aerial view of the millennium bridge but I rapidly realised this was too wide a focus and in order to control or interfere with the movement would require too much time and outside help - as I understand it Steve is engaged in research which may take twenty years to lead to something directly useful to humans. For my own experiment I was thinking three days, ie till the funding ran out, so it couldn’t be too ambitious in terms of scale.

Unfortunately my visit to the lab had to be cut short when normal life intervened but rather than returning on another occasion I took this fact as the determining framework for the context of my filming. I knew I wanted to do something to do with movement and both logistically and conceptually it made sense to work within a restricted location and limited frame. So - the scientists take the c elegans worm for their model organism, (which appealed to me because of the mundane fact that it was originally discovered in a compost heap in Bristol) and they monitor the worm’s response by changes in movement; Keith has used Bach’s Prelude and Fugue and applied the scientist’s data to alter the composition, and I decided to use marbles. Having determined my laboratory would be my home they firstly fitted domestic usage, secondly there’s something about the cat’s eye at the centre of the glass which is reminiscent of Steve’s lit up worms, and thirdly they roll.

The final factor was deciding to use Keith’s mutant compositions of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue No 1. On a rubbish new year’s day lunchtime at work I was reading the blog and listening to the Bach Mutants – this is Keith’s text for the Aldicarb Assay duet:

‘So, what I did was to take this data and apply it to my own model organism. This little study that I made demonstrates the effect: the bassoon sound represents the level of paralysed worms. The rate at which the bassoon sound takes over the music from the piano is determined by the data. In the experiment that supplied this data all the worms ended up paralysed by the end.’

What resonated for me was the image of the worms becoming paralyzed alongside the sheer beauty of the Bach and the bassoon. Bach has always been the one composer who makes me feel you cannot despair when listening to him –any day with Bach in it is an ok day with me even if the poor old worms are dying.

So, at home, I set up the camera with a small downward focussed frame and I rolled marbles through a variety of substances. I filmed in snow, grass, flour, water and honey. The snow was obviously not planned in advance and isn’t included as technically the exposure was a disaster. The flour had some interesting moments but was eventually jettisoned for the sake of keeping the final piece a reasonable length: YouTube can only accommodate ten minutes at one time. The grass I kept because I particularly like the noise of the aeroplane, the water has moments where I feel I actually achieve my original aim and the honey makes me laugh – I was honestly surprised when they didn’t roll – and I really like the percussive noises as they hit the plate.

I also discovered when reviewing the footage that I liked the background ambient noise as it reminds me of the mutterings of Glenn Gould when playing the Bach and so this has stayed in. I also like the internal/external public/private quality of the final film and where it is sited which seems to tie in with some of the ideas Keith talks about in previous entries. I had no idea in the beginning of how I would end up presenting this film; what started off intending to be an experiment in the filming of movement has actually also become about an experiment in presentation.

What I’ve enjoyed about this project has been trying to allow the process to determine the outcome. Though I haven’t attempted to apply data with the same rigorous labour as Keith and my marble rolling is about as far from a scientific approach as you can get I have tried not to tweak or rub out too much. There have been some happy outcomes by chance –for instance I like the decrease in quality that occurs through YouTube, the pixelisation and the strange pulse and there are maybe a few moments where I achieve the visual moment I was hoping for. I also like the fact that you can’t deny the hugely important part the music plays – I think its only right that any real credit should go to Bach first and Keith second.