GMU:Introduction to Microscopy/Mon Sisu Satrawaha

INTO THE JOURNEY OF MICROBES

WEEK 1

I must admit that this scientific world is rather new for me, during the first week of study, I still had no idea of what could I do with microscope. I took it as another tool for my practices, to work as another camera to be precise, or I will try to use any biology documentation way in film method.

While I was walking to the lab, I saw a molded tree bark with blue, orange, green color. I found that it's visually compelling, so I brought it to the lab...

In this small piece of bark, I can see small living things crawling around...from a person with no experience in biology like me, that's fascinating.

WEEK 2

Although, I was impressed by what I saw at the lab, but I was still not quite sure what to work with micro-world. Should I experiment on the apparatus or should I explore about microorganism.

It took me sometimes to narrow down my interest...what could I talk when I talk about microscopy... I looked back to myself, and all around me, politics and cultural studies are always the big part for my work. When I went a bit deeper to the situation of people coming out to the street calling to reform the institution in Thailand. Instead of saying his majesty, we've been taught to refer to the king as "dust beneath your feet" which basically means to him -- we are not so different or even have lower value than dust under his feet.

Apart from metaphorical speaking between dust and hierarchy, Thailand also suffers from PM2.5 pollution problem due to lots of construction, building new city under government's policy. https://www.thaipbsworld.com/tag/pm2-5-dust-particles/

My short film "PM2.5" >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7a4sEw8GVE

Dust has so many cultural values behind it, it's all around us but we tend to forget, and it has become houses for so many microlives. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34056549 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACrLMtPyRM0

WEEK 3-4

"Dust is ubiquitous, it is everywhere and can become everything, as the sands of the desert or the dust-clogged air of the cities." - September 4, 2015 - Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle - kurz / dust

I looked for more art works that incorporate dust with works, or dust like elements.

Talk with Dust, carlier | gebauer, Berlin. 13 March 2020 by Sebastián Díaz Morales https://vimeo.com/406126821 The philosopher Michael Marder describes dust as an element that transgresses the boundaries between temporal modalities, residing in a non-linear, non-sequential time that collapses the “babel” of past, present, and future. “Eternity is time configured as space, or space indistinguishable from time,” he writes, “and dust is its swirling, rolling, disintegrating, and conglomerating image.”

Chrome by Esther Urlus https://estherurlus.hotglue.me/chrome In Chrome the images created by this process are ‘amplified’, as if they are viewed through a microscope: a constantly moving noise of grains that forms shapes and outlines.

Since dust has so many meanings in terms of historical, political , artistry, I want to work more under this subject. I gathered some dust from different places in my apartment, from bedroom, kitchen, and under my shoes to see the result at the lab. I still don't know whether I could capture the movement of microorganisms in dust or not or what would it be, I am thinking of creating more meanings to the work by using poem - and it might be a micropoetic. By micropoetic I mean I want to try building small organic alphabets instead of put it later in post productions.

I tried to see more movement, and Julian suggested me to put some water in it to "wake" the species in there. I did a small experiment at home with carson pocket microscope. I couldn't see much of details but this time I can see flow of microbes in water.

https://youtu.be/08ihVdmok_M