The way that mycelium grow triggered me thinking of the idea of bond, in many different contexts. The most intuitive one for me is the knot that we have on clothes. Especially in Chinese traditional clothing, the way to tie a knot is very elaborate. So I did some research and happened to find that one of the knot name included my mother’s name. It is interesting how it bonds me to this specific knot through the bond between me and my mother.
I have always had a special connection with ‘skin’ (I’m not referring specifically to skin here, but any object that creates a sense of envelopment). I take pleasure in observing how skin can be contorted, stretched, lifted, and imprinted. I am drawn to the states brought about by the tension of force and matter pulling out of the skin. It is an invisible yet seemingly tangible force, a state that allows me to feel two completely opposite and even contradictory sensations at the same time.
Knowing that E.coli will gradually “disappear” after a while of growth (it is actually that the bacteria spread out on plate so the color fades out), I want to grasp and make art out of this characteristic. The 语气词, similar to interjections in English (I’m still trying to find the best translation), in Chinese language are always at the end of a sentence and all of them don’t have a tone, which is rare in Chinese because generally speaking every word has a tone. That makes 语气词 unremarkable and is easy to be ignored. So I want these words to be displayed in an already faded state.