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 the major aims of this work 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 palette and prismatic effects are inspired by the multicoloured, fluorescent "jellyfish" proteins used to mark different types of cells for viewing under a microscope.

There's now a page on this site about Three Times True's little brother, Ideograph, which was also commissioned by the GPRF.

Top of page: 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.

Above and right: installation views of 'Three Times True' at Old College Quad, University of Edinburgh, January 2007.

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, which is inside the buildings you can see in the pictures above. I also worked on the book here, in the Georgian gallery where Charles Darwin studied before he gave up medicine and decided to become a naturalist.