do you read me?! invited us to have a Science Poems event at their shop in Berlin on August 5. The evening included a performative presentation of the Science Poems book by us and Anna Mikkola, Martti Kalliala‘s chemistry sound art piece for the Science Poems exhibition as well as NH4Cl + C2H5OH drinks. In the autumn, Science Poems will go to London.
Photos courtesy of Petri Henriksson.
Instead of presenting the Science Poems book from A to Z, we decided to do it through chemical substances and compounds from NH to OH in respect to NH4Cl + C2H5OH, the drink recipe of the evening.
NH4Cl + C2H5OH is a mix of Ammonium Chloride (NH4Cl), the building material of carbon black coloured Finnish candy called salmiakki [something most Finnish people remember making in their chemistry classes at school] and Hydroxyl-Carbon compound (C2H5OH) also known as alcohol.
Following this pattern, here’s a summary of the evening:
NH (Nitrogen + Hydrogen = Ammonium) stands for National Herbarium such as The Komarov Botanical Institute Herbarium in Russia, which hosts a collection of over seven million specimens of plants and fungi, many of them digitised in the institute’s virtual library from which Anna presented her selection.
Photo courtesy of Petri Henriksson.
Cl (Chloride) is for Celestial, or Céleste. Accordingly, Anni, in Paris at the moment, read mnemonics for remembering planet names on Skype. One of them went like this: Mon Vieux Tu M’as Jeté Sur Une Nouvelle Planète. However, as it was announced, the mnemonic was perhaps a little old-fashioned since Pluto was recently deemed not a planet at all. In 2006, The International Astronomical Union expelled it from the planetary club, calling it a dwarf planet not big enough to clear smaller bodies close to it.
Photo courtesy of Petri Henriksson.
C (Carbon) stands for Cargo cult science, a term coined by physicist Richard Feynman in the 1970s to negatively characterise research in the soft sciences (e.g. psychology and psychiatry) which he deemed pseudo-scientific. In addition to his science critique, Feynman is known for popularising the field of physics with accessible explanations. Inspired by his stories about a teeming nano-world for a 1983 BBC interview ‘Physics is Fun to Imagine’ as well as Yoko Ono’s proposal pieces for the artist’s book Grapefruit, Jenna presented her interpretations on Feynman’s thoughts as event scores to create an experience of science.
H (Hydrogen) is for Hollow sphere – particularly one composed entirely of carbon. We read about this sphere, buckminsterfullerene, from the glossary of the Science Poems book:
Buckminsterfullerene or buckyball (C60) is the smallest carbon molecule, fullerene, in which no two pentagons share an edge. It is also the most common in terms of natural occurrence, as it can often be found in soot. The structure of C60 is a truncated icosahedron, which resembles a soccer ball. The molecule was named by scientists after Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), an American architect, author and futurist. He developed numerous inventions, the best known of which is the geodesic dome shaped like a fullerene. The American sci-fi author Bruce Sterling (b. 1954) later coined the neologism buckyjunk, referring to future, difficult-to-recycle consumer waste made of buckminsterfullerenes.
OH (Oxygen + Hydrogen = Hydroxyl) stands for Laurie Anderson’s track ‘Let X=X’, starting from its third sentence, “Oh boy. Right again…”, marking the end of our presentation.
Photo courtesy of Petri Henriksson.
Finally, we made NH4Cl + C2H5OH and listened to Martti Kalliala’s ‘DNA Junk’ (download by right clicking), a base pair sequence of non-genomic DNA translated into notes through MIDI and played by a Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser.