Science and Art: Storytelling in Micro (Transcript)

Image credit: Deep Field [Unclear Zine] by David Griffiths.

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Rah Podcast Set - Science and Art

Episode 04: Storytelling in Micro

Rah! Opening Jingle 

Martin Kratz: Hello, and welcome to the Rah podcast at Manchester Metropolitan University. My name is Martin Kratz. June series of episodes we'll explore the intersections of science and art. In our fourth and final interview. I will speak to Dave Griffiths about storytelling and the similarities between microfilm and web navigation for communicating ideas.  

Dave Griffiths: There's a need for that literacy in both cultural and responsible science literacy also. 

Martin: You can join the conversation on Twitter by hashtagging #RAH_Podcast. So let's get into our fourth episode in our science and art series.  

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Martin: I'm here today with Dave Griffiths, senior lecturer at the Manchester School of Art at Manchester Met. What I was going to start with was in your case, Dave, what's the science that you're interested in? And what's the art element of it? 

Dave: So when I first became interested in, in observation, the type of scientific observation performed in a number of different ways by astronomers and by archaeologists, you know, which is involving looking out into quite deep timescales. And the kind of looking that archaeologists and astronomers do is a form of narrative. And this is from storytelling. And so I started becoming quite interested in the similarities between art and science. And at the time, my my practice was emerging out of a body of work where I had, I'd been cataloguing and I was using found footage to make a body of work. And it occurred to me through this that I was I was kind of enacting a form of of seeing of durational observation that was similar to both both of those scientific practices. This then moved into a kind of almost like a new body of work when I discovered this archaic medium of microfilm and became really fascinated by the specific qualities of microfilm and its ally, microfiche, which were, at one point the dominant media for depositing library industrial cultural information. I started to wonder, how could I as an artist really work this, this medium in interesting ways that that maybe counter the dominant use of that medium, very, very rigid and ordered formats and how I might be able to use the, the format to create things like zines or kind of interactive artworks. 

Martin: So one of the zines that's deep field? Is a zine on microfilm? 

Dave:  Yeah, that's right. Um, Deep Field unclear, zine will actually the the the title unclear zine is a submiss translation of the words Nuclear zone and the project discusses the very deep time storage of spent nuclear fuel in repositories underground and sort of surface back repositories. On some of this, the most potent of the waste fuel has to be secured away from humans for at least 100,000 years, which is a just an unbelievably unimaginable timescale. And how do we communicate those repositories to future beings on the planet earth for that length of time? So it's a very interesting question of, of knowledge transfer to a future audience that's completely unknowable. So microfilm is a format that will only really last for 500 years, but even then that is potentially more stable than the digital methods that we're currently using such as PDF. 

Martin:  It’s quite an interesting term to use the term unstable in terms of nuclear waste and things like that, from a kind of poetry perspective, those kind of nuclear installations are really interesting, because of course, you're looking beyond the lifespan of a language or most languages as we've known them. So you have to kind of think beyond language or kind of go back to the basics. Yeah, it is it is unimaginable or at the very least, it's an incredibly demanding, imaginative task. So how do you, where do you start something like that? 

Dave:  You can in the 1980s, there was a Cold War semiotician, Thomas Seok, who proposed that this kind of deep time remembrance of the nuclear legacy could be achieved through an invention of mythology and folklore, to effectively scare the public into keeping away from sites of geo hazard. This was debunked in terms of its its real deep distrust in the human ability to actually take responsibility. So myself and a number of other contemporary artists are thinking through a more of an intergenerational approach to communicating and allowing for the potential, like you mentioned, the transformation beyond recognition of language. In my works case, I've deliberately invented a preposterous myth that almost pokes fun at that cold war semiotic approach. 

Martin:  Like it's in terms of science communication, is this where your work intersects with that, of Sam Illingworth, who we've also recorded for this, you co-wrote something called Deep time Mole. There's a great image. 

Dave:  Well we did, the town that I did the fieldwork in was actually called Mole in northern Belgium and also in the town I saw figures of moles everywhere, and moles wearing glasses of an an optician shop and a mole carrying a briefcase as a statue in the central square. As part of the field trip I descended into a research lab that is testing the potential for burial of fuel 225 metres below the surface of the village, much like maybe a mole burrow. And I was also really at the time reading Haraway and she talks about the use of science fact and science fiction, and the celebration of the use of science fiction as a way of countering the dominance of of techno science and these kind of mega projects of allowing space for a different narrative. And Haraway uses the figure of oncomouse as a storytelling medium. So I decided I wanted to create a figure of a mole and this is where Sam came in along with a DIY comics artist called Matt Girling. So the three of us together developed the oncomole character who appears in the in this microfilm zine popping up in different places and times in the near and far future. 

Martin:  And the figure of the mole is great anyway because I think more often than not, you'd never see the mole it's always there underground, you only ever see its traces. It's, to me that's something a bit about the nuclear and its presence in our lives, that it's kind of always there present but also not at the same time. Is there a necessity Do you think of kind of making it visible of kind of reminding ourselves that it's there? 

Dave:  Well, I think that the responsibility of an artist is too big to those those sorts of troubles that we’re socially all responsible for creating in some ways as you know, consumers of energy also should have a voice an agency in critiquing those issues and those and narrating those troubled places where the the controversy is is unfolding really and the the crisis is unfolding. 

Martin: And now this is a really naive question now. In my head microfilm is, I don’t know, for some reason, an image or something like a detective or a journalist in a public library looking up old articles on microfilm, and the way you navigate it is kind of rather than having flicking through the pages, it's all effectively on one big surface, but then you'd negotiate around like a kind of hovering eye, is that right? 

Dave:  Yeah, microfilm is a 35 millimetre filmstrip, which seems quite a linear format, but microfiche has this nonlinear browsability. And it struck me very as being very much like early website browsing. The microfilm itself was at its beginning was neither of these formats and it was actually a technology that came together in Manchester in the 1830s to 1840s. Right in an optician’s shop on Cross street. It was the innovator JB Dancer, she used magnification to expose a miniature photograph. And then this technology became probably for about almost for the first 40 or 50 years of its life, was simply a novelty than souvenirs. And then it really came into its own in the 20th century through its use as communication in war, in spying.  

Martin: That's how you associate it with spying. Yeah. 

Dave: Yeah, and then later on in to deal with the exponential growth in knowledge. After the Second World War, and the amount of academic journals that were being published, for instance. 

Martin: There is an impulse to kind of compare it to the web. But I think for me, the big difference is that kind of tactile interface of it, that stays with me. The other thing that I sort of noticed was when you first started talking about deep time, was this link between the archaeologist and the astronomer, or the geologist, perhaps as well. These are the kind of people who are it's the same kind of question but one person is looking up and the other person is looking down perhaps or something like that. 

Dave:  Working with professional scientists, for me that was when this the similarities between forms of scientific observation and seeing looking durational looking and storytelling became really, really apparent. Sam Illingworth and I now collaborate on an art science option as part of postgraduate taught programmes here. And we encourage students to tell critical stories about both art and science and to look at the similarities in research methods. And it's resulted in a couple of fantastic exhibitions by the students who many of whom are forced to choose at the age of 17 between an art or a science education. 

Martin:  Is that something of your own experience? I mean, do you remember the point at which you were made to choose? 

Dave:  My secondary school was a very, very science oriented and I had to go and do my art A Levels and education elsewhere. I remember being baffled by chemistry, but not physics. 

Martin:  It's the same for me. I think I think it's an important point to make there because I enjoyed biology a lot. But chemistry and physics were not my thing. But it felt like you needed to ditch all of them. 

Dave:  Yeah. And in an increasingly sort of algorithmic condition that we're, you know, living in and moving forward into, there’s a need for that literacy in both a cultural and responsible science literacy also, and that's a responsibility of educators. 

Martin:  Yeah, I agree. That's a good point to end on. (Laughter) Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. 

Rah! Mini Jingle 

Martin:  Don't forget to follow us on Twitter for future podcast updates. You can find us at @mmu_rah. For more information on all the research and events we discussed in this episode, please go to the Rah website for full links. If you haven't already, do go back and listen to the other episodes in the science and art series. Tune back in soon for more episodes. 

Rah! Closing Jingle 

Martin: This episode was produced and edited by Lucy Simpson presented by me Martin Kratz and mixed by Julian Holloway.