A Paean for Ian

 A Paean for Ian

I met many fine people when I was on Facebook, you know who they are. Ian Gibbins was one such. I liked a lot of his work which I picked up on Vimeo and I've posted a few items since we started this blog which carries on from where we left off on Facebook.

Today I'm going to introduce to you some of Ian's smaller pieces which I did not know of until he responded to my email about the presentation I made to U3A last weekend "Little Miracles, Big Puzzles!"

Let's start with "Dragonflies"...

DRAGONFLIES from Ian Gibbins on Vimeo.

Dragonflies are amazing insects, having evolved back in the Carboniferous era when the earth was dominated by massive forests that ended up forming most of the coal deposits we have today. There has been much research done on how they fly and how they see. Amongst other things, they have a different set for the parts of their eyes looking up compared with those looking down. 

Like most insects, they probably can't see red, but they can see ultra-violet and they also can detect the polarisation in the sky that they can use as a compass for navigation (bees and many other insects can do this too). The integration between the flight biomechanics and the visual system is one of the reasons that are such successful aerial predators. They have a three stage life cycle: egg (laid underwater), an aquatic carnivorous nymph, and the adult flying form. 

We have a couple of ponds in our garden to support populations of frogs and various insects including dragonflies, so we always have some around. But on this occasion, there were hundreds of them. Indeed, all across Adelaide, they were seen swarming for several days. It seems most likely that our cool wet summer created ideal conditions for their breeding.

The video itself was made by taking the raw sequences, duplicating them, shifting one duplicate by a few frames compared to the other, and then getting the difference between them. This means that only things that move a lot are detected. Then I generated visual echoes and used a variety of sequential thresholds to pick out various elements of the results and then composite them back together. The audio is just what was going on the garden at the time and ends with the call of a kookaburra, one of most distinctive birds.

Ian has told me a bit about his background, his lifelong pursuit of science including zoology and neuro science.... for more details, see notes below. He retired from his position as Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia, in 2014.

"I retired as soon as I hit 60, for a few reasons: I was totally tired of the pressures of working as a senior academic, with not enough time or resources to do my research teaching, and even admin (!!) properly; my UniSuper was good enough to live off; and I was increasingly drawn to my creative work, having pulled together a massive collaborative project that was exhibited later in 2014.

I’d be very happy for you to create something with those videos (and / or any others) - I can add some more explanatory text for them, if you like."

So, here's one simply called "MAGPIES"...

MAGPIE from Ian Gibbins on Vimeo.

The Australian Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) has extraordinary vocal ability, trilling and carolling a wide range of calls, often together, and often at night. It not related to the European or North American Magpies.

The audio for this piece was developed around a recording I made of a magpie singing at night behind our house. I transcribed two of the melodies and then worked out how to play and arrange them. The chorus includes the actual voice of the magpie. The audio during the credits is an unedited sample of three magpies carolling on a still winter's night.

The video is animated from footage of magpies around our house, in Belair National Park, and on the Victorian coast during a storm; local trees at night; and the word "magpie". The abstract nature of the video reflects our incomplete understanding of magpie society.

As the world heats up around them, as we push the environment closer to total devastation, perhaps we should be listening to what the magpies have to say.

From a technical level, the audio was made in Logic Pro, and used its inbuilt tools to work out the pitch and duration of the notes in the magpie songs. I then repitched them to a common tonal centre, and worked out the rest of the arrangement from there.

The video animations were mostly done in Final Cut Pro, using a plug-in that converts the grey scale values to a 3D plot, which is then rendered with points, lines or a solid surface. Although this is designed for creative use, we used similar algorithms for plotting and analysing complex multi-dimensional data when I was a scientist. The title sequence was built around an image of the text "MAGPIE" that I processed and animated in Isadora, a fabulous video processing environment, primarily designed for use in live performances.

The text in the video contains samples from the following sources:

"Australian Magpie: Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird"
by Gisela Kaplan, 2004, CSIRO Press

"Australian Bird Names: Origins and Meanings"
by Ian Fraser & Jeannie Gray, 2nd ed, 2019, CSIRO Publishing

"A Field Guide to the Birds of Australia"
by Graham Pizzey, 1980, Harper Collins.

The next piece attracted me greatly, the world we live in, dog eat dog, insect scale:

"The Spider and the Ant"...

The Spider and the Ant from Ian Gibbins on Vimeo.

The spider here is a female red-back spider, which is the same, or very closely related species, as the American Black Widow. It has a potent venom that can quickly immobilise large prey. I have seen them catch and east small lizards many times their own size. The venom is a neurotoxin that causes the release of all of the stored neurotransmitter in the ends of nerves that control the muscles. This has an effect similar to nerve gas and causes the muscles to lock into a paralytic spasm. One of my research projects over many years was understanding how the process of neurotransmitter release works in different types of nerves, and we sometimes used red-back spider venom in our experiments. Botox (botulinum toxin) also works on the same mechanism, but in this case blocks the transmitter release, causing paralysis due to the inability of the muscles to be activated by the nerves. Sticking botox into you body when you don't have to is one of the dumbest things you can do...

Red-back spiders are common where we live, but we don't fuss about them usually. They live under things and generally feed on whatever comes their way and gets trapped in their strong net-like web. The males are much smaller than the females and look quite different.

The ant is a bullant (= bulldog ant or inch ant, depending where in Australia you are). These a big, up to 2 or 3 cm long and live in large underground nests. They are very aggressive: they can bite you with their massive jaws and then sting you with a stinger in their tail. Both hurt!! These are a very primitive ant species and have existed with little change for millions of years.

Here's another piece which comes from a different zone altogether, the life of the Earth.

"Anomaly"...

ANOMALY from Ian Gibbins on Vimeo.

From Ian

This was filmed at a beach not far south of Adelaide. The actual video is composited from several different shots to show the sea coming in and gradually taking over from the people sunbathing on the sand. The data is taken straight from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and refers to sea surface temperatures along this region of the coast. As the temperatures rise, sea levels will rise dues to several factors: thermal expansion of the ocean, increased volume of the ocean due to melting polar ice, and larger storm surges due to more intense storms. All these things are already happening and will continue to do so at an increasing rate. Yet, people still want to live on the coastline and expect councils and governments to cover the cost of largely futile efforts to protect their properties.

Well, I just love the word "anomaly" Ian, and I was going to write an entire new post called Anomaly, but now you have saved me from having to do so.

The world we live in is full of anomalies, overloaded with confusion, unprecedented comparisons, obfuscation, outright lies from LIARS IN HIGH PLACES as good old Ezra Pound might have said, yes, he was a known antisemite, but he still had a few good lines of poetry in him despite his fascist and racist streaks:

And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:

If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him;

And if a man have not order within him
His family will not act with due order;

And if the prince have not order within him
He can not put order in his dominions.

I wonder what Ezra would have made of our world?

But he too was an anomaly!

Just like you Ian, and most of my friends. 

I'm greatly drawn to people who are anomalies.

NOTES:

Ian Gibbins is a highly-successful video artist, poet, and electronic musician working across

diverse styles and media. His award-winning poetry videos and video art have been shown to

acclaim at festivals, exhibitions and installations around the world and have won or been

short-listed for multiple awards. 

His audio and video work has been commissioned or selected for high-visibility public art

programs locally, nationally and internationally. Ian’s poetry has been short-listed for many

national prizes and has been selected for several anthologies, including

Best Australian Poems 

and 

Best Australian Science Writing. 

Ian has published four collections of poetry: Urban Biology (2012); 

The Microscope Project: How Things Work (2014, with artists Catherine Truman and

Deb Jones); 

Floribunda (2015, with artist Judy Morris) and 

A Skeleton of Desire (2019). Ian has collaborated widely with artists on projects bridging art and science,

culminating in several major exhibitions (2009, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022), 

and 

two projects with Australian Dance Theatre (2010, 2012). More recently, he has been

collaborating with performing artists to create events integrating video and live action.

Ian has a central role running the 

Adelaide Festival of Ideas and works extensively to support the Adelaide poetry and spoken word scene.

For details of Ian’s creative work, visit

www.iangibbins.com.au.

Video art: https://www.iangibbins.com.au/bio/video-works-published-performed-or-exhibited/

Poetry: https://www.iangibbins.com.au/bio/published-poetry/

Sound art: https://www.iangibbins.com.au/bio/sound-art/

Public art: https://www.iangibbins.com.au/bio/public-art/

Collaborations with other artists: https://www.iangibbins.com.au/bio/collaborations/

Until his retirement in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and

having originally trained as a zoologist. He was internationally recognised for his research

on the microscopic organisation of the nerves communicating between the spinal cord and

the internal organs, with more than 120 papers and book chapters on the subject, garnering

around 5000 citations. He also had a major role in designing, implementing and teaching

the innovative Flinders Medical Program. Along the way, he won awards for his research,

teaching and curriculum development, and communicating science to the public. He was

awarded Emeritus Professor from Flinders University and an Honorary Doctorate from the

University of Göteborg.

Although no longer an active scientist, Ian continues to keep track

of the latest developments across many fields of neuroscience,

zoology, botany and the environment. He is regularly invited to

talk or write about the links between science and the arts.

For most of Ian’s published scientific papers, go to 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=gibbins+il

pt