GUM COURSE
In this last course, a table is brought out and placed in front of the nine guests. Atop the sculpture a vast selection of purchased gum is poured across its rippled surface. The wooden tabletop inlay has been chiselled to resemble tidal sands at low tide with powder blue coating its surface. The metallic underlay of legs and carriage supports this seed bed of gum in all its garishness.
The cellular and formal nature of gum was the inspiration for the final scene by returning to the ocean as the originator of life. The original introductory environment was repurposed for this sequence where I created a mash network of spheres in Autodesk maya to resemble cells splitting with a wax like subsurface texture. Across the rocky inlet they hug the surface below and just above the tidal line. Some have learnt to fly and hover in mid-air like dragon flies sunning their pulsating skin, while others still travers subterrain life without the ozone licking their skin.
The Host: Gum Course (still image), Kitchen Studio, 2024, High Definition, 1080×1920 (9:16, Portrait), 31.17mins, looped. Sound: Anna Whittaker
The ambient scene is a long cross-dissolve between the underwater scene looking back up at the ocean’s under-surface with video taken of the microscope magnifying grains of sand. Both different types of footage are layered over one another with each gradually move in and out of focus to reveal themselves. In reality, sand is made up of microscopic particles that consist of coral, shells, micro-plastics, different types of pulverised rocks and minerals but to our naked eye, sand is a vast body which stretches on for miles. The exploratory potential of simply looking down a microscope which reveals the hidden world that is blocked from our everyday experience is enough to consider. The invisible made visible. A world that was once inaccessible now becomes accessible, a wondrous marvel – just like the taste of gum as its colour explodes in our mouths, sticks in our teeth, and squirts down our throats.
