MARY COURTNEY
ART - POETRY
drawing n digital with a poetic twist
Chem-Art
These, and a 100+ images never seen outside the labs, were curated for their striking strangeness, during a Residency as Leverhulme Artist at the University of Warwick Chemistry Department, in a collaboration with Professor of Chemistry, Patrick Unwin. Image credits at the end of the page.
Microscopic Made Large
Rotating chem-art images were exhibited on giant digital screens to launch the £19 million Oculus building at Warwick University.
Constantly Mistaken
A calendar featuring famous chemists.
Avogadro, constantly mistaken,
was the chemist for April.
Where dust can be a planet
When a planet can be a biscuit.....
Planet Biscuit: Into the Micronosphere
Brings together microscopic images from chemistry, drawing, animation, soundscapes of eerie bleeping, wheezing machines collected in the labs, together with music by the space-rock band Zendad.......... in a journey to inner space.
Made with Laurence Campbell with the support of Warwick University Chemistry Department. Click to view film
Gallery of the Micronosphere
Members of the public were asked to respond to science images as if they were alone in an art gallery, thinking aloud, saying whatever came into their mind - their voices are the sound-track, the consciousness of the Gallery of the Micronosphere.
Made with Laurence Campbell. Clip is from Planet Biscuit: Into the Micronosphere .
"Collaboration is a creativity accelerant"
A Recitation of Microscopes
The scanning tunnelling microscope, atomic force microscope, the optical microscope...….are among many microscopes used by research chemists. Naming them makes for a found poem - a Recitation of Microscopes, a kind of scientific chant.
Chemist Minkyung Kang recited the microscopes and Laurence Campbell made the voice machine-like.
Germanium the Gerbilish-Dervilish
Re-imagining the element Germanium as a character, based on its properties and word associations. It is goggle-eyed - as Germanium is used in night vision glasses - and moves quickly, like a gerbil or a whirling dervish, whizzing words in fibre-optic phone cables.
You can watch the film clip of the poem above
(Film made with Laurence Campbell).
Germanium the Gerbilish-Dervilish
Are you Germanium Greer?
Are you a potted plant?
Germ of an idea?
Do you go by German?
Or by Goebbel gerbil?
Are you a merman?
Or a mermaid herman?
Do you speak gerbilish
Or Goebbel dervilish?
Is guessing germane
A geranium game?
Are you the goggle-eye gerbil?
Are you the boggle-eyed dervish?
Are you Germanium, the Gerbilish-Dervilish?
Image Credits from University of Warwick Chemistry
Slide 1 left. Paracetamol crystal, Maria Adobes-Vidal
Slide 1 middle. Bicalutamide crystal, interferometry, Harriet Pearce
Slide 1 right. Capillary tube, David Perry
Slide 2 left. Furesomide crystal interferometry, Maria Adobes-Vidal
Slide 2 middle. Paracetamol crystal. Maria Adobes-Vidal
Slide 2 right, Nanoscopic inflated polymer football, Gemma Davies
Slide 3 left, tip with platinum deposit, scanning electron microscope, Emma Ravenhill
Slide 3 middle, Calcium Sulfate interferometry, Emma Ravenhill
Slide 3 end, Paracetamol crystal, Maria Adobes-Vidal