Cont’d from last time: “Sadly my frog is definitely, permanently dead.”
But maybe my rock is not dead – it just appears to have no life.
Some years ago I visited artist Andy Holden’s exhibition, Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, in which the artist explored ideas about the laws of physics as seen in cartoons, a place “where it seems like anything might be possible, but not everything is”[1]. Through the exhibition, Holden suggested the possibility that maybe there is no such thing as an inanimate object. This theory seemed to me to present interesting possibilities.
My blog entry from 4th June 2013:
“The stones haven’t grown. I might need to be a bit more scientific about providing the right conditions for life to start.
It is true, I have paid less attention than I should have to the stones which I originally planted all those months ago, but still 4 months on, there is not a single sign of ANY change in them at all.
I have been doing some research, looking at the ways in which seeds and stones sometimes need a kick start to trigger germination or growth of some sort – extreme heat or cold or even fire; soaking in water; scarifying; cracking; feeding… starving.
I’m interested in the chemistry involved in the origins of life and also in the part played by electrical charges in these processes so I have begun to explore the effects of some of these things on my stones in an attempt to somehow nudge them into life. Meanwhile, I will need to do more research, more experiments, more reading and learning to try to understand the combinations of chemistry and energy that might just make my stones grow.”
I started simply – “let’s try just planting some pebbles and see if they’ll grow.”
“Maybe all that’s needed is a little bit of tlc. Rocks don’t normally get that sort of attention because nobody thinks about giving it to them, but maybe that’s all they need – just a little bit of looking after… Pots, soil, water – and the alternative blotting paper in a jar method because that always worked with broad beans at school.”
NOW, people don’t need soil to grow plants, or even sunlight for that matter.
[A voice from the future says: “Did you know that once people used to bury roots and seeds in the mud to try to make them grow?”]
A nourishing solution fed through a drip. An electrical charge like that from a defibrillator. But no, still no success. Maybe I’m being impatient…
… let’s pause and re-think.
NEXT – In the beginning was Simplicity
[1] https://www.stanleypickergallery.org/fellowships/andy-holden/
