Practices for Methodology of Blur

“Gray smoke blurs the distant constellations and everything before us loses its history and name.
The world is just some shadowy gentleness,
people are still the same, the river is still the same. 
A rose is constantly becoming another rose, you are the cloud, the sea, the forget, 
You are also every piece of yourself that you have lost. “

— Borges, Cloud One 

This page records some of my practices after the first supervision with Dr. Annouchka from 30 Jan to 4 Feb. Each experiment may be “useful” but also not “useful”. Through the experiments in all kinds, I am also questioning what “methodology of blur” will be (what is it)? or will do (what to deal with, how to deal with)?

I. Sound experiement at GS1’s room

“I am sitting in a room
different from the one you are in now.
I am recording the sound of my speaking voice
and I am going to play it back into the room again and again
until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech,
with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.
What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech.
I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact,
but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.”

In this sound art performance, I, and my mates, referred to Lucier’s Room and record this sound art piece in the space in GS1, Faculty of Education, Cambridge. After narrating a text, one play the recording back into the GS1, re-recording it. The new recording was then played back and re-recorded, and this process was repeated. Due to the room’s particular size and geometry, certain frequency of the recording are emphasized while others are attenuated. Eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the characteristic resonate frequencies of the room GS1 itself.

II. Agarose Gel Electrophoresis Identification

This is a Chemistry-Biology experiment done by my “participant” in Department of Pharmacology.

This experiment is used to copy DNA templates. The picture on the left is the experimental standard, and the picture on the right is the result of his actual operation. He explained his experiment “failed” because logically there should not be chaotic white traces in areas other than the ruler, which means that his experiment created a DNA without a DNA template – he wondered if his own hair had fallen into it.
I looked at this ghostly trace and thought about the only-one-truth of scientific experiment and the diversity of experimental possibilities, what constitutes experimental success and what constitutes failure. But I don’t want to fall into dualism.

III. 【Tenderness】

A random exhibition in the nature (Wolfson College).

In this practice, I let the plants in Wolfson College wear disposable underwear. During the process, I felt it was really hard to let plants wear it：Some branches are actually rough and can catch underwear; but some branches are smooth and cannot catch underwear like people. Sometimes the wind blows in nature and the branches sway, so they are not dressed decently, but hang casually on the branches like cloth – so I need to treat them carefully and patiently, just like treat my own daughters – Even though I don’t have a daughter.
The reason why I concern about if branches can hang underwear is because I made an analogy to how humans wear underwear.

After I got home I felt very tired because the feet of the plants were rooted in the earth and they were always reluctant to wear underwear. So I bought a bouquet of flowers without roots and put underwear on them, and took pictures, made digital/graphic transformations.

IV.【Familiar, Unfamiliar】

These two pictures are a series of my collection “Familiar, Unfamiliar”, which records the coincidences that how these natural item on the left hand side looks similar with man-made artefacts on the right hand side.