The Burden of keeping secrets
In collaboration with Brian Harris I’m in the process of making a work combining sensory art and engineering to explore re-interpreting of data found in randomness and the use of those interpretations for transactions.
ReadReed relates to data collection, evaluation and the data economy. Our starting point is the story of Midas’s hairdresser who, burdened with the secret of the concealment of Midas’s ears, whispered his secret into a hole in the earth, and the leakage and exposure of the secret by reeds which grew over the hole.
Data from any source including from reeds moving in the breeze or leaves shimmering on a tree may be misrepresented to contain words. This data can then be brought into the senses in various ways. One of the ways is by par fume—through perfumed smoke as in the Latin per fumãre
Keeping a secret from public knowledge becomes a great burden —it takes great courage to become a whistleblower. For example Midas's hairdresser coiffed his hair to hide his asses ears.
In developing this work Brian Harris and I are doing a one month residence at ŁAŹNIA, Gdansk, Poland within the frame of Sense and Perception: Sensoria , curated by Nina Czegledy whose aim is to reflect on the diversity of sensory experience.
http://www.laznia.pl/rezydencje/raewyn-turner-i-brian-harris-artist-residency-95/
http://www.laznia.pl/rezydencje/olfactory-art-workshop-94/
http://www.laznia.pl/rezydencje/sense-perception-86/
We worked with the chemists in the science faculty at Gdansk University to further develop out techniques for producing paper that will burn in a controlled way, processing various types of eftpos paper and experimenting with possible burning mechanisms.
During our time at Laznia we’ve reflected on our own culture and our relationship to much wider historical and current spheres of power, control, wealth, transactions, nature and data. The fragrance proposed for ReadReed is amber based which led to research into fossilized amber and workshops where we compared amber stone with amber fragrance.
We spent time with Elżbieta Sontag from the Biology faculty, the University of Gdańsk. Professor Sontag specializes in studying in amber inclusions and introduced her study of the mycetophiliade and other fossil species: grass hopper, pupa of ant, cypress twigs, pollen, scorpions, spiders and conifer found in amber. We also visited Ewa Wagner- Wysiecka from the Chemistry Faculty at the Gdańsk University of Technology, who specialize in the molecular structures and chemistry of amber. Professor Ewa spoke about the unknown aspects of amber such as the chemical analysis of its structures, its true age which is inferred by the age of the layers and context in which its found, and its parentage which is uncertain; its electromagnetic nature, colophony and its hydrophilic nature.
I’ve been working with Professor Beata Grobelna in the Chemistry faculty at Gdansk University. Professor Grobelna generously let us use her laboratory and instruments to experiment with the fragrancing of eftpos receipt paper and to process it to burn from the top edge downwards in a controlled way. Fire usually burns from the base.
Brian worked on a programatic method to characterise the data and extract alphabet letter patterns from it.
These patterns were compared to patterns in word lists and letter matches and word matches were found more quickly than expected.
As letters were matched they were displayed on an LCD and later a little oled display and when words were matched they too were displayed.
This allowed the idea of printing the words on prepared paper to proceed and now an exhibition-friendly method can be developed to somehow allow the burning to take place
THE WORKSHOPS: The perfume which we're proposing to use in ReedRead has an amber base. The workshop is an exploration of cross sensory translations of amber and the synaesthetic metaphor of amber.
During the residency we advertised two sessions of amber workshops
<<We'll talk about amber bases used in perfumery and Malgorzata Siudak from the Amber Association will talk about semi-precious amber resin. Workshop participants will spend time smelling and discussing natural and synthetic materials related to the amber base note as well as authentic amber oil from the fossilized resin of trees.We’ll mix materials together to create amber bases using a process of creating a solid perfume.We will then play each amber with the ‘accidental piano’ which is an electronic nose that uses the data from the airborne molecules and outputs them as piano notes. The ‘accidental piano’ was also used in Fallible >>
