Concept development

Foraminifera (forams) are microscopic single-celled ocean-dwelling organisms much like algae. Their fossilised calcium skeletons are incredibly beautiful and complex, both alien in appearance and hauntingly familiar in their similarity to larger structures such as shells or sea urchins. There are thousands of different known species of forams and each species has it’s own uniquely intricate structure.  Forams still live in the deep oceans today floating around in the current.  When they die they fall to the seabed and add a microscopic layer of sediment to existing sand and debris.  This sediment builds up over millions of years. Palaeoclimatologists like Professor Pearson can then drill down into the ocean sediment and bring up a core of silt that contains hundreds of miniscule, perfectly preserved fossils.  The further down they drill the further back in time they go.

For the past twenty or more years Professor Pearson has studied the form, function and life story of forams.  Forams are interesting to scientists for two main reasons.  Firstly, they can reveal changes in the global climate over a timescale of hundreds of millions of years. As with any organism, forams are affected by their environment.  Changes such as the acidity of the seawater they live in affect their chemical makeup.  Scientists can analyse these chemical changes to see how the acidity of the seawater has changed over time and subsequently, as the temperature of the atmosphere affects seawater acidity, how global temperatures have changed over time.  Secondly, Professor Pearson claims to be able to see the very process of evolution happening from one species of foram to another, again across a time frame of millions of years.  He claims to be able to see the subtle changes of one species adapting to changes in its environment and even developing symbiotic relationships with other organisms. These groundbreaking areas of research are current and potentially controversial in the scientific world.

Questions

- What is the best way to experience a ‘virtual’ microscopic object?
- How can the scientific research be expressed through an artistic experience?
- Is a foram which is mapped onto a 3d computer model false representation?
- How ‘real’ is ESEM imagery anyway as it is created by electrons not light?