I’m very much looking forward to occupying the space at Martyrs Gallery in Lewes as artist in residence from 28 May to 12 June. I’m planning on building on work developed during my recent Once In A Universe project and most recently my Milton Court Farm residency, and continuing to explore ideas about growth, change and evolution in The Anthropocene: The Age of Man. I’m interested at the moment in some of the complex, interlocking systems, both natural and man-made, which underpin life, the environment and the planet as a whole and continue to think about the notion that perhaps technology begins to steer life onto a new evolutionary path with the merging of natural and man-made.
During my residency at Martyrs Gallery, I’ll be trying to ignore my insecurities about working with ridiculously low-tech (but re-usable) materials such as bin bags, bubblewrap and string and will be trying to deveop low-tech methods of making large scale cluster forms from these materials. This time I’m taking inspiration from Greg Bear’s sci-fi novel, Blood Music. Here’s a bit (this is the scientist talking to the evolving noocyte cells):
“(S) I’d like to speak to an individual.
(N) Individual?
(S) Not just the team or research group. One of you, acting alone.
(N) We have studied INDIVIDUAL in your conception. We do not fit the word.
(S) There are no individuals?
(N) Not precisely. Information is shared between clusters… each cluster is the smallest Individual… Information is passed between clusters sharing in assigned tasks, including instruction and memory. Mentality is thus divided between clusters performing a function. Important memories may be diffused through all clusters. What you think of as Individual may be spread throughout the totality.”
Blood Music, Greg Bear, 1985. Published by Gollancz, Orion Publishing Group, London. ISBN I 85798 762 4
