Friday 20 May 2011

Patella – The Dominant Species

Time for an update on the limpet situation. I picked up my latest batch this week and feel like I'm getting somewhere: their form is much blousier, and I'm finally getting the porcelain thin enough for light to shine through. Incredibly exciting, because for me, its translucency is the most mesmerising thing about porcelain. I'm intending to try firing some of these with in a matt, translucent glaze, but in the meantime, I settled the colony in on my windowsill, and peered over the laptop at them as I worked to see how they would behave. As soon as the sun hit the windowsill, they began to glow with a lovely submerged golden light, making me think this species is one of those furnished with photophores: light-emitting cells. Speculate that these may attract prey to within the reach of the hunting limpet.

My feeling about these limpets has been that they should seem subtly animated in some way, but I wasn't quite sure how this would happen. I've had ideas about an installation where they move up and down the walls of a gallery space 'with the tide'; and I noticed that the ones with a single feeding pore gave the impression of having a vestigial face. When I tilted a couple towards each other, they seemed to be communicating or negotiating.

Instead of a single large feeding pore, some have a ring of small holes around the shell (females?) Through these emerge fans of retractable 'hairs' with which they sweep the current in search of their very small beer.



5 comments:

Big mamma frog said...

Awww...they look so orphan-like and vulnerable :)

Jen Hadfield said...

You should see them when they get together though: they move in determined herds...

Jen Hadfield said...

ps
I like your puffer!

Jean Atkin said...

Frail but purposeful, somehow. I imagine them holding fast underwater. I'd noticed the ones with holes right round them before, but didn't know they had feelers. That doesn't seem the right word. Tentacles would be a bit much. I do like the one you've made that has, though, if you know what I mean.
The light is the thing. :)

Writearound said...

I love these photographs there seems no sense of scale so they look like strange huts , a little like something in the background of Star Wars, something you could find on a strange desert planet in another galaxy which is odd considering they are sea creatures. They also looked like little night-lights, a small glow to light a room by and stop a child from fretting.
Think they would make a remarkable art installation.