Jessica Curry and Dan Pinchbeck

'The secret of life'

2003
Mixed media installation with perspex, digital sound, animation and video projection.
Dimensions variable.

Sculpture constructed by Today's Exhibitions. Animation realized by Andrew Chong and sketch by James Rawlinson. We are grateful for the support of the Novartis Foundation and BBC Worldwide.

TwoTen Gallery Talk: Secrets and Lies
Wednesday 23 July: 19.00-20.30
Transcript of talk: Part One - Dan Pinchbeck [Word 84k]
Transcript of talk: Part Two - Jessica Curry [Word 40k]

'The Secret of Life' is an artwork about layers, hidden codes, and the complex structures, equations and histories that lie beneath the surface. It takes inspiration from Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray diffraction photographs suggestive of the double helix were integral to the discovery of the structure of DNA. The work is particularly influenced by Franklin’s story, and how the lack of recognition originally afforded to her has resulted in her being re-cast as an iconic figure. Our imaginations were captured by how Franklin’s place within scientific history has emerged and the ways in which this mirrors the complexity of the rules andforms of DNA emerging from behind our everyday perceptions and understanding of life.

Franklin’s X-ray diffraction photographs are beautiful and striking images, powerfully conveying the form of life’s inner mathematics. Sound is used in The Secret of Life to create a multi-sensory experience of DNA, a subject which is usually represented by silent images. The audio element uses numbers and rules derived from the hidden codes of the genetic alphabet to build an organic composition that can be experienced without referring to its inner nature. The rules remain buried: they exist invisibly within the music yet are integral to its form.

The sculptural element is suggestive of the double helix, yet in order to see the shape, the work must be viewed from above – a deliberately inaccessible perspective. The rotating bands of DNA sequencing in the animations carry within them Franklin’s image and her breakthrough contribution to science, but these are only visible periodically, or when one spends time unpacking the sensory information of the surface.

Historical fact and representations of history were central to the process of making the work, and we have engaged in a long debate about the complex relationship between Franklin the scientist and Franklin the icon. The treatment she received at the hands of her colleagues has led to her being re-cast as martyr, allegorical figure and feminist hero and this has informed the work and the discussion that has taken place around it.

Argument still exists over whether Franklin would have been awarded the Nobel Prize had she lived – as it was she died before the award was bestowed and it cannot be made posthumously. Her lack of recognition and comments made by her colleagues are instrumental to this relatively new-found status, and it has become apparent how contentious both this status and the history which created it still are. A real question has been raised for us about how artists, when responding to an historical figure, draw their inspirations. Can artists respond to the legend and draw an emotional, maybe partially romanticized and mythicized response from it, or are they bound by a duty to engage only with the accepted history – especially when this history remains contentious and subjective?

This blurred relationship, then, is another illustration of non-immediately apparent actualities forming a perceivable surface, and acts as a mirror to the notion of hidden codes that has informed the project. The Secret of Life is a sensory experience, an exercise in the formalistic construction of an artwork, a political statement about the intertwined helixes of representation and reality within history, and an homage to a complex historical figure who has finally emerged from the shadows. JC/DP