You know it by now, Dr M is particularly fond of lichens! And especially excited that the resident exhibition at Reading Science Week was the Symbiosis project which takes lichens as a metaphor for the creative symbiosis between artists and scientists.
In celebration of this union, Dr M has embarked on a series of music videos collectively entitled “a voyage round my lichen twigs” and all inspired by the diversity of lichens encountered on journeys along different twigs. You can find the first video “awakened by rain” here, and the second “crustose is as crustose does” here.
The third journey focuses on the extraordinary colours that lichens often impart, especially the glorious yellows and oranges of the commonest lichen in the land, Xanthoria parietina.
Wandering along the stout branch of an Oak tree, the intense colours of Xanthoria are complemented by the grey-greens of other foliose lichens, especially Parmelia, Punctelia and Physcia, and the vivid green of the occasional epiphytic moss, and all are echoed by the intense simplicity of Bach’s C major keyboard prelude.
March 22, 2014
