If It Rained Here

Fig. 2. David S. Goodsell, Human Nerve Synapse, 20 cm x 20 cm, 1993. Thought is trans­ lated into action at the nerve synapse. Shown here at 1 million-x magnification, acetylcholine molecules (tiny, white dots) are released from a nerve cell (top) and diffuse to the muscle cell (below), stimulating the cell to contract. (From The Machinery ofLife [New York: Springer Verlag, 1993]) MOLECULES INTO CELLS: DEPICTING THE CELLULAR MESOSCALE David S. Goodsell, Department of Mo­ lecular Biology, Scripps Research Insti­ tute, Lajolla, CA 92037, U.S.A. E-mail: . Web site: . Received 23June 1997. Acceptedfor publication by Roger F. Malina. If It Rained Here, an artists' book of digital images [1], is an investigation and celebration of the natural world. Abstract in mode and collage-like in method, the book holds up a mirror— not to faithfully reflect what we see, but to fracture, crop and reassemble it. Thus, while parts of images come from and may hint at a variety of life-forms, these are not pictures of cells and em­ bryos and water per se, but images of the elemental principles and forms be­ hind these phenomena. In addition to alluding to preexisting forms, these im278 Artists' Statements ages exist in their own right, side-byside with their more natural brethren, so that each page is a new kind of crea­ ture, and the accompanying text is its voice. We see, then, that collage is not an invention of the modernists, but a natural process. Technology, which is usually consid­ ered an artificial and sophisticated method, can produce results that are true to the creative order. It seems, then, that human tools are not antitheti­ cal to the natural world, but part of it. This dance between the artificial and the natural is played out in If It Rained Here in several ways. First, the images were recorded on videotape, then al­ tered and layered through a combina­ tion of electronic devices until only their very essence remained: biomorphic swirls, circles and bodies in motion. Second, the images do not try to hide their electronic look, but revel in their technological anatomy (pixels, raster lines) at the very moment when outer (celestial) and inner (cellular) structures are being examined and jux­ taposed, then allude to the breakdown of boundaries between spirit and matter. Third, the images, while based on paint­ erly earth and body tones (browns, yel­ lows, blacks, great bursts of light alternating with deep chiaroscuro ef­ fects), are often interlaced with subtle shades of TV reds, greens, and blues. Each picture conveys a spatial ambiguity that alternately contracts and expands, sometimes teasing the viewer into recog­ nition and then out again. Movement is essential in the transition from abstrac­ tion to the more comfortably known. The body becomes landscape, and the mechanical intersects and jolts the viewer into recognizing the artificial. Again, the artifice of the image-making is not smoothed over or denied, but gladly welcomed into the natural order. A diptych from the book reads: "when silence is pierced by a syllable is the air alive" (Fig. 3); it is composed of fragments of cells, video raster lines and circles around what appears to be hands coupling another smaller hand or baby's foot. The silence of the ges­ tures and the blur of time passed by read like stills from a film. In fact, each image is a frame of video, and its low resolution is apparent. Added to this is a single lonely line of text, neither question nor statement, but a visual representation of its meaning. The movement of the image caught in mid­ stream is punctuated by a line of text that brings to life the surrounding space or air; both text and image be­ come syllables of a moment in time. With the symbiosis of text and imag­ ery, hierarchies of greater and lesser, winner and loser break down. Scale and value are questioned. Is this the surface of a heavenly or an earthly body? Imag­ ine a map of the world in which all countries are the same size. Why do we need more or less dominant states? What would citizenship feel like if the interchangeability...