Ballard's Drowned World and Aquatic Art / Drexciya - Aquatic Bata Particles

Untitled, RTomens, 2018

One thing leads to another...have you noticed? Book-hunting for material the other day I came across this...

...nothing quite excites me like finding good source material, or in this case, material with potential, because photos of undersea creatures aren't no.1 on my source wants list. Mind you, no subject is, really, because as you collagists know, anything can be used in surprising ways to create good images.

Having bagged the book, the next day I set about looking for ways to use what's in it and the first piece here was the result. I then seemed to develop an 'aquatic' mindset and what better novel to suit it than JG Ballard's The Drowned World, which I hadn't read for a long time. As I discussed regarding films, late appreciation can be a good thing. In this case, it may not be a new discovery, but it feels like reading it anew with eyes that are decades older than when they first scanned the text.

It was re-reading The Drowned World that inspired this second piece, which also utilises a photo from the newly-acquired book. I confess that the undersea element didn't quite work as I wanted it to, yet a few days later I've grown accustomed to it's ghostly presence rather than the clearer one I wished for.

Submerged Memory, RTomens, 2018

That's all for now. Thanks for dropping by. I'll leave you with some aquatic techno via Detroit...