Take this image: a string seems to be unraveling from her body. It is like a skein of silk looping out, unfurling as if her being was made of cloth and she sees that the fabric is made of a billion tiny dancers – each one of them now pirouetting, moving, leaping, tumbling – out of sync with each other – the central timing, cadence, rhythm falling apart. That's from Devavani Chatterjea relating to immunology. A poem by Pireeni Sundaralingam that's so visual and kinesthetic that I see it in my mind's eye. Music by Ari Frankel that spans from text integrated music to driving, pulsating energy to achingly beautiful. Mechanized flip charts by physicist Jim Crutchfield that spin out patterns that leap, twirl and glide. A 3- D vortex that you enter and become the center of by geologist Dawn Sumner. Dreams visualized in drawings by artist Meredith Tromble will eventually be placed in the 3-D vortex. I take the image, I have the poem, the music is on a thumb drive, I look over and over at the flip charts, I enter the 3-D vortex, I see the dreams. I talk and see and listen to all of these scientists and artists, and the information incubates inside of me. I don't know when or how it will come out, but fertile ground is being laid. Like the fog that rolls in in the morning, eventually clearing to a breathtaking view, creation awaits. This is the magic of this residency.
