Biofilters
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Experiment 2 - Separated at birth |
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Natural patterns are complex and often hard to understand. Sometimes there are associations between particular features, such as the association between a pathogen and a disease, that are obvious. In other cases, associations can be a mix of partial contributions from many directions, as seen in the associations between genes, environment factors and disease processes such as cancer or dementia. Understanding complex natural processes is best pursued from a variety of experimental approaches as no single piece of evidence can describe the whole process. One of the greatest rewards in science is finding patterns in a mass of data. Being the first to see something important and sense that, for a brief time at least, you are the only person in the world who has seen this, is a buzz like no other.
The filter paper project began from the idea that I could give a sense of the challenge of an open ended investigation to a viewer by creating a complex dataset that allows the viewer to investigate patterns for themselves. The entire project has a random element, so that a population of filter papers will be created with different features that can be combined in multiple ways. Each filter paper by itself is a data point and while it may represent some idea and can be appreciated on its own, the true nature of the project will be realised when they exist in an assemblage. Different filter papers can have different starting ideas. Some may be created by using rules while others some may be entirely uncontrolled.
It will be interesting to see how the project evolves over time. Specimen 31, having come off worst from an encounter with Marmite on toast, has already evolved to represent the importance of taking proper care of your data! This was also a project open to collaboration, to represent how scientific investigations are themselves collaborative and can change as different people inject new ideas.
The whole series of over 100 biofilters can be seen at DeviantArt