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Moore, S., 2017.

Secret Architecture - the construction of 'Loop'

Output Type:Journal article
Publication:Animationstudies 2.0

The project Silent Signal, initiated by Animate Projects, funded by a Wellcome trust arts award and working with animators and scientists, is working on a number of collaborative projects using animation to explore scientific enquiry. I have been working on research and development for a film project called 'Loop' with Dr Serge Mostowy and colleagues in his lab at Imperial College London, who primarily use zebrafish models for their work in microbiology. The zebrafish is a useful model for working with because the natural translucency of its larvae enables non-invasive imaging of individual cells and microbe-phagocyte interactions at high resolution. The use of the zebrafish, therefore, is all about visibility and evidencing the processes involved.

Exploiting this, Serge's work can potentially examine the biogenesis, architecture, coordination, and resolution of septin cages as they limit the damage of pathogens in the host organism's body. However, the theory that Serge and his colleagues have developed about the way in which septin cages are assembled and disassembled has never been visually captured. This throws up some issues about the intersection between visible evidence (albeit not by the naked eye but mediated through stereomicroscope, or epifluorescence / confocal microscope) and theoretical / imaginative leaps.

Using animation to represent documentary content disrupts, challenges and subverts some fundamental aspects of the way that we receive documentary film so the faux-objectivity of, for example, scientific diagram or authoritative voice over can be used to replace the indexical markers of authenticity with the familiarity of the symbolic (diagrammatic / pedagogic). I found the gap between the theory of septin cage assembly and the evidence of the method of its construction a fascinating one and wanted to play with this area of conjecture and uncertainty, dismantling the diagrammatic paradigm in favour of a more subjective and provocative one.

Based on ideas developed for my PhD on collaborative methodology I got the scientists in the lab to separately describe and then draw the septin cage assembly process and indicate how they think that it occurs. The drawings they made were intriguingly different from each other as each scientist visually articulated their individual perspectives on a process, which can be indexically evidenced (we can see the septin cages once assembled do exist), but has not been photographically captured in the process of being made (how do they get there?). Each of them brought their training, background, interests, drawing confidence and character to bear in their representation of the construction and demolition of the secret architecture of the septin cage and I found the diversity of images a revelation in the way they each related to the process. Hopefully the Silent Signal projects will be continuing later this year and I look forward to working further on this project in the future.