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













































"like two drops of water coming together, touching, and then seamlessly fusing, showing that sometimes one plus one equals one."

Douglas Hofstadter, I Am A Strange Loop

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Untitled #1

Inverted Spectrum


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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
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Things Taken Apart





Things Taken Apart (Variation)
Click and drag sections of the apple below to move, refresh the page to reset















































Things Taken Apart


Binary Code
The binary code converted from a 47kb .jpeg photograph of an apple
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Binary Code
The binary code converted from a 47kb .jpeg photograph of an apple

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Emergence





“Apples taste blue to me”

Synesthete response #1
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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





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Breakdown  #1






Orchard #1

























Orchard #2
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Breakdown #2
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Gestaltzerfall (Shape Decomposition)
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Properties #1



























Properties #2



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