Sellotape Sampling

Over the holidays I continued to to take prints of surfaces using strips of sellotape; there were lots of opportunities to do this around my garden and I managed collect several pages of prints that vary in pattern. I was most inspired to do this when I saw the surface of our trampoline covered in lichen. I also took some photographs (which I have inverted) that really interest me; I really like their ambiguity. Are they microscopic images, or aerial photographs, are they paintings? Indeed someone has said that they thought they were painted, and I like that abstract quality to them.

The photos above have actually distorted because of the size I have made them, which is really fascinating. The intricate weave of the trampoline canvas has made the pixels create patterns. To me they look like aerial photographs of ploughed fields.

Working in this way, as if I am conducting a scientific investigation, reminds me of the 'archaeological' digs that Mark Dion carries out. I like the idea that it is an investigation of the environment in a calculated, measured, obsessive manner such as scientists or geologists or archaeologists might use, but really it is just following my fascination with the aesthetic properties. In Dion's work he categorizes the found objects according to things that interest him, not in traditional or even logical ways. I want my investigation to be similarly personal, the rules usually set in order to conduct a fair experiment in science, instead conducted by what I find interesting and significant.