So this is how things stood at the end of year four. Six collaborators, six throws of the dice, six excursions into unknown territory. Six ‘detours’.
Detour 1 – Stella threw a number 4 and was handed a dictionary of science.
Quite quickly she chose a page with diagrams of silicate minerals.
Detour 2 – Danielle threw a 3 and from a poetry anthology made a fairly quick choice of three poems.
Detour 3 – Diane threw a 1 and from ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ chose a sixteenth century Mexican map.
Detour 4 – Cally threw a 5 and made up the non-words ‘Palangor’, ‘Manzer’ and ‘Zoop’.
Detour 5 – Gill threw a 2 and from a book of modern art picked three artists completely at random – Cesar Domela, Nam June Paik and Robert Mapplethorp.
Detour 6 – Deborah threw 4 and from the science dictionary she picked ‘red shift’ or the Doppler effect.
So a fairly daunting agenda to start with and for a while I began to doubt the sanity of the whole enterprise. Happily though, a good range of numbers and sources and more than enough to keep me busy for the whole of next year. Next week we are back to the studios and my first priority will be to meet with each of my collaborators and discuss where things go next.
Yesterday I was filming bees at Oxford’s Natural History Museum – don’t ask – I’ll explain later.
