While exploring
the Natural History museum I came across a station call the 'Specimen Preparation
Area', where the microscope view of one of the research scientists could be viewed
on a monitor. The board explained, " Canopy Invertebrate Sorting - We are
sorting and identifying Invertebrate samples that have been collected high in
the canopy of the tropical rainforest trees (around 40m above the ground). We
have to extract the insects, spiders and other invertebrates from the detritus
that is also in the sample. Then we sort them into groups for later analysis.
Many of the invertebrates are microscopic (less than 0.5mm) in size! We have to
be very precise and careful picking them up and moving them around."
You could see the scientist
moving bits
of insect and dirt floating in the solution which were lit from behind. It made
them glow, some of the thinner particles becoming transparent, their edges
alight. It made me think of the plants in the field that I use for my paintings.
An over exposed image of a form in nature. The process I have been following
with some of my sketches has been to magnify them, increasing their size, very
much like what I now saw at the exhibition station which was designed to show a
scientific process.
I also like the way they move and filmed a series of shorts I'll cut together
as an experiment. It occurs to me that there is a sound that could match the
images especially when the tweezers come into shot, potentially a metal sound
and I'm interested in making some samples using such implements. Then putting
them over the video as a sound track.
Another interesting aspect that I observed was that because the insect and dirt
was floating in a solution it created a three dimensional effect. I'm thinking
maybe I could set up a series of transparent troughs that I could stack and
photograph from above. This could inspire my paintings and drawings but also be
a work in its own right.
