REEDREAD 

Raewyn Turner & Brian Harris  2022

ReedRead refers to the mythical story of a secret, surreptitiously whispered into a hole in the earth and the revealing of it by reeds that grew there and whispered in the wind.

In Greek mythology Midas desired to turn everything he touched into gold. His hairdresser, afraid that he would expose a secret that would compromise the king and imperil himself, made a hole in the earth and whispered the secret into it. The hole grew reeds and conspired with the wind to reveal hidden secrets.

In ReedRead the whispering is decoded and broadcast across the world. Data is extracted from the reeds waving in the wind by a laser and a photodiode. The reeds occlude the light falling on the photodiode in a pattern generated by the wind. The timing in the pattern is examined with modulo arithmetic to produce numbers corresponding to letters. These letters find a match in lists of words and reveal themselves in the reeds.

The ReedRead installation consists of a video and a fragrant garment.

Photos: Adam Bogdan

The fragrance of ReedRead was inspired by golden particles, traces of which were found on a shroud excavated from the deeply buried material remains of the ‘Midas Mound’ tomb in the ancient Phrygian capital of Gordian. 

We wanted to envelop the audience in the fragrance and colour of these golden earth particles, which were identified as goethite. A safety vest which can be worn by the audience in the gallery is coloured with goethite yellow earth.  In the back of the vest is a woollen pocket which holds the fragrance. The wearer is enveloped in the synaesthetic resonance of a fragrance created as the colour of goethite, an ochre-coloured perfume made from  the brilliant yellows of acacia farnesiana and saffron, and visually toned with fossilized Baltic amber.

Exhibition;

• 2022. ’Sensoria : The Art and Science of Our Senses'   at ŁAŹNIA / Centre for Contemporary Art LAZNIA Gdansk, Poland. Exhibition

• Review ‘Sensoria, The Art & Science of Our Senses’ in Contemporary Lynx.  

• 2022 Sensoria Gales Gallery, Toronto, Canada. 

• Presentation: Sensoria The Art and Science of Our Senses Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada.

• Frogheart : Toronto’s ArtSci Salon about Sensoria: The Art and Science of Our Senses 2022.

• Residency at Laznia, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland

• Contemporary Hum calender

• Curator Nina Czegledy discusses ‘Sensoria’, an exhibition that awakens the senses

• Nina Czegledy

  Sensoria: the Art & Science of Our Senses is a multi-site exhibition and symposium that bridges LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Gdansk, Poland and Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada.

  Held simultaneously in both locations, the exhibition and symposium will engage multi-sensory research that revitalizes our sensory connections to our surroundings, through and despite technological tools, networks and latencies.

  The exhibition component is co-curated by distinguished curator Nina Czegledy (Agents for Change: Facing the Anthropocene, 2020 & Leonardo/ ISAST 50th Celebrations, 2018) and Sensorium director Joel Ong.  Czegledy brings together an international network of artists and scholars who explore the intersection of art, science and the senses. Sited concurrently in both Poland and Toronto, the exhibition will explore the dissociative potential of contemporary technologies on the senses, treating it not only as a social crisis but also an opportunity for creative play and experimentation. It aims to engage a conversation about the senses from the perspective of art, but also science, incorporating artists that straddle the boundaries of knowledge production in a variety of ways.

The Data

Data can be derived from many sources and may be formed into letters and words. The programming data structure, called Strings is a list of asci characters terminated by a null character :thoucharlatanssaviorwherewithamorphoushydratedoxidesmamamprecipitationsorptiondeityocclusionprocessestolerationcon sequentlynationstatechauvinismexpresslyunderregulationcarboxylicratherregimeasincaseadversariesbelligerencystockmarketa utarchyunworthyostensiblelaudablenoblerashasbeennotednocostforthemostpartgettinginthecarpharaohcharlataninfallibilityd issolutionyachtsearthlymammonasclaysdissolutionaluminummicrobialtransformationsheathenaristocraciesmineralizationfealt ymortalsanthrosolsmaimanaconsumerismhubrissagespiousdamnationhedonismaluminosilicatespelfleviironamorphousphosph orusvirtuousthoumansionsavowinthiscaseisolationismorthodoxydespotsslopewashcorrespondinglyancientagriculturefaeriequ eeneimperialismasmuchasmmaterialistsmamonansuperinterventionismculturalimperialismmemonaempireforonethingmoderni tyreactionariesoppressorpraxisassertavervisafreeportdominionaugustuswhenasnationalismenviousadventurismsystemregardle sstooglobalismmonarchiesduopolyoccupationmarkedlyhegemonismhenceforthpluralismimperialistneutralitytotalitarianismasc endancygrassyturfidenticallyhumanwastetoconquestentrenchwheneverpoweragainashdiscardtogetherwithfigoppressiveimperi alofcoursedictatorialwhilesuzeraintycalcareoussandcultivatingconditionsuniquelyempireelitesdifferentfromenvyhegemonywar mongeringregimesimperiumautocracymoreoverprimacymicrobialanthrosolsdominancetokenlikespringandautumnperiodtrium phalisminshortpartyismthereuponbourgeoisieperpetuatemanmontyrannysiltsupremacyoppressioninshortpartyismthereup

The Process of creating Reedread:

The initial installation concept combined sensory art and engineering to explore re-interpreting of data found in randomness and the use of those interpretations for transactions from eftpos machines.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, curated by Nina Czegledy whose aim is to reflect on the diversity of sensory experience.

ReadReed relates to data collection, evaluation and economy. We’re using the story of Midas’s hairdresser who whispered his secret into a hole in the earth, and the inevitable leakage and exposure of secrets as a starting point for the theme of reinterpretation of data. Data from any source including from reeds moving in the breeze 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

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 appreciated the generous contribution made by Malgorzata Siudak of the Amber Association to our research into amber and subsequent inspiration about its mystery, longevity, high resolution inclusions and, despite having been regarded as an ornamental rock, its uses in industry as an insulating material and for vessels to hold blood.

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.

<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 https://vimeo.com/185108606   >