Three Times True (2007)

A large scale, triple screen video installation made during my residency at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was first shown during January and February of 2007 at the University’s Old College quadrangle (outside the Talbot Rice Gallery). Old College is a large neo-classical building in Edinburgh city centre, designed by Robert Adam. You can see some installation views at the bottom of this page.

The images in ‘Three Times True’ are inspired by current research on or applications of genomics, genetics, heredity, cloning and stem cells. The installation also included an alphabetical listing of the most poetic, interesting or funny gene names that I uncovered during my research, starting with “Agnostic” and ending with “Zipper”. The title, like the film’s epigraph, comes from Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ in which explorers reach their destination with the aid of a blank sheet of paper and a captain who helpfully repeats his opinions until they become accepted as facts.

One of my aims was to make something inspired by genomics, genes and biotechnology, with the look of microscopy but without resorting to the clichéd images of scrolling GTAC arrays and the double helix, which have already been fully appropriated, assimilated and neutralised by the advertising industry and Hollywood. I also wanted to put as much distance as possible between this work and the expressions of body horror and biological anxiety that seem to be the default when artists get involved in life sciences. The animations use Chinese and Japanese characters (or their radicals) as analogues or pointers to the biological/biochemical processes involved in DNA replication or protein coding, and their effects in living organisms. Some of the characters in the stills on this page can be read as “mother”, “stem” (as in stem cell) and “heart”. There are many others in the films and in the accompanying book. The super—saturated palette and prismatic effects are inspired by the multicoloured, fluorescent “jellyfish” proteins used to mark different types of cells for viewing under a microscope.

The look and concept of the film was also somewhat inspired by the developments that were happening at the time in synthetic biology, which was little known to the general public or mass media. Recently, of course, synthetic biology has been all over the world's news. An image from ‘Three Times True’ is currently being used on the cover of a synthetic biology book called ‘Nature After the Genome’.

Above: still from Three Times True, Drosophila (fruit fly) mutants.
Below, clockwise from top left: gene splice sheep; symmetry (HOX expression); oncogene; transgenes (humanised pig heart)

I wrote an article about genomics and the idea of a new Enlightenment for the Scottish art magazine MAP (issue 9, Spring 2007). It’s easy to find because ’Three Times True’ is also on the cover. You can buy the magazine at art galleries all over the UK, including Tate Modern in London.

Read The ( ) Age online.

(Below) Fliers for the first three salon events that I ran during my residency at the University in late 2006 and through 2007. These regular salons were established and led by me with a different mix of specifically invited guests each time, along with a more general and open invitation audience from the scientific and artistic communities. The guests referred to in these three images are: artist and designer Elio Caccavale; artistic director of Unlimited Theatre Jon Spooner and his collaborator Vlatko Vedral, professor of Quantum Information Science; Media Studies lecturer and researcher Dr Kate O'Riordan; artist Emilia Telese; artist Richard Brown; science journalist James Morgan.

A very limited edition, eponymous book of images from the ’Three Times True’ installation, accompanied by new texts, was published by the Genomics Forum in August of 2007. ISBN 978—0—9556330—0—3. Copies are available from the Forum for £14.99, or from Amazon. The book launch was at Talbot Rice Gallery. I also worked on the book there, in the Georgian gallery (formerly part of the library) where Charles Darwin studied before he gave up medicine and decided to become a naturalist.

Some images from the book are below: Primer pages lacking vital information and activity pages suggesting activities that even the most advanced researchers struggle to answer simply (top and third rows); animated dynamic haplogroup icons (second row); evolution of human skin pigmentation, with shifting shiro [white] and kuro [black] labels (fourth row), plus diagram of the founder effect; in the bottom row, an alphabetical listing of colloquial names for genes with known functions, circa 2007.

Design by Alistair Gentry and Jane Grainger at Grainger Dunsmore, Edinburgh.