Apples Taste Blue To Me

'Attention is a moral act: it creates, brings aspects of things into being, but in doing so makes others recede. What a thing is depends on who is attending to it, and in what way... Attention has consequences.' Iain McGilchrist

To a poet an apple is a metaphor, to a cidermaker it is the core of their craft, to a geneticist it is a code to unravel, to Adam and Eve it is the forbidden fruit, and to a hungry person it is a snack. During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, I became obsessed with the idea that if I were to pay different types of attention to a single 'thing', it might reveal itself in new ways. I wanted to look at an apple under a microscope, to see it as a cultural symbol, to think of it as part of a natural process stretching through time, to ask others how they perceive it, and to see each apple as totally unique, I wanted to adopt the viewpoint of a scientist, an artist, a historian, a philosopher, and a child, and then to see what I find.


1 + 1 = 1

Untitled #1

Inverted Spectrum

DNA Sequence (how to make an apple)
706 733 160 characters, laser printed at size 3 font, double sided,
2059 pages (4118 sides)

DNA Sequence, Copying Error (detail)
Series of 25 unique works, Laser Prints, A3, Framed

Emergence





“Apples taste blue to me”

Synesthete response #1

Diffraction #1








“Some human voices taste like apples.”

Synesthete response #2

Diffraction #2

Diffraction #4

Diffraction #3

“Apple as a concept always made sense to me because the letter A is red. It tastes too crisp, though. A is a soft letter, but apples are hard and crunchy. They taste yellow, usually, and the sound of crunching on them can vary but is usually a blue sound with little triangles in it. And although A is shaped like a triangle, it is nothing close to feeling that way.”

Synesthete response #3

Diffraction #5

Breakdown  #1

Orchard #1

Orchard #2

Breakdown #2

Gestaltzerfall (Shape Decomposition)

Properties #1

Properties #2