Laboratory
Investigation 01
Resonance and Pattern
Handbell Ringing Experiment
Context
These laboratory sessions form a practical strand of the Ocular Mediation research, developed in dialogue with the Sonic Intangibles programme.
I invited marine biologist Dr Gary Caldwell, cosmologist Dr Tassia Ferreira and neuroscientist Dr Claudia Racca to take part in a series of laboratory investigations exploring patterns and behaviours across different scales. Working alongside members of the Sonic Intangibles team, including Dr Chris Harrison and Dr Jorge Boehringer, we used simple material systems, handbell sequences, layered mesh, and stratified water, to open shared questions about structure, relationship, disturbance and perception.
Gary Caldwell contributed microbial datasets that became the starting point for the first laboratory investigation, in which handbell ringing was used to explore ordered relationships through sound. The sessions that followed remained open-ended, prioritising collective observation, dialogue and the insights that emerge when artistic and scientific approaches meet.
Contributor's Note
Dr Gary Caldwell, on the Algal data
I propose to convert data from one of my Stage 3 undergraduate dissertations (Ms Tasha Salah) into two sets of campanology rules.
This is the background to Tasha’s research. There is growing interest in investigating whether human lifespan extension is pharmacologically achievable, with several candidate drugs identified. Rapamycin is widely used in chemotherapy and organ-transplant rejection prophylaxis. It has also been shown to restore regenerative capacity within cells. Tasha’s project was to determine whether exposure to rapamycin over a range of doses could extend the ‘life span’ of microalgae cultures, in essence, looking for an ‘eternal’ algal cell. She exposed cultures of Chlorella to rapamycin over a 14-day period and took cell counts as well as measures of the alga’s photosynthetic health.
The cell count data is shown in the upper graph. Each coloured line is a separate rapamycin dose ranging from 0.1 up to 100 micromolar. There are two control treatments (0), one with a solvent and one without. Rapamycin is insoluble in water so it has to be dissolved into what is termed a carrier solvent – in this case a chemical called DMSO. The carrier then allows the rapamycin to be dispersed in the water.
Tasha’s data are complex and tell a very interesting story that follow a pattern of hormesis (crudely, that which does not kill me makes be stronger). Lower drug levels did improve the culture while higher levels were toxic. It is this two-tone response of the algae that gives the data complexity and, in my view, makes it suitable for the campanology exercise as the order of the treatments change through time. I envisage each rapamycin dose to correspond to a separate bell, so that as time elapses the order that the bells are rung changes.
The second graph is the output of a statistical model that was fed the photosynthesis health data. All the funny terms on the right-hand axis are each a different measure of photosynthesis health – the meaning of each parameter isn’t needed for this exercise, but the reason why I want to include this is that it presents a different picture to the cell data. I view the photosynthesis data through a lens of ‘entropy’. In biology, entropy is a measure of molecular disorder. Living organisms are highly ordered, low-entropy systems that constantly combat increasing entropy by importing energy (e.g., food, sunlight) and exporting disorder as heat. I felt that these data could be interesting to include as they involve a series of times when the data converge and diverge, creating a wavelike pattern. If this pattern can in turn be reflected in a shifting of the timing between bell rings it could present a quite dramatic performance, almost akin to a pattern of breaths being taken. I like this analogy as moving from left to right along the graph you see the cultures growing (data diverging), then they become stressed (data converge), they recover (data diverge again) before finally almost all treatments have died and the data converge for the final time. I like the breathing analogy as it speaks to the fight for life as well as providing echoes that 50% of our oxygen comes from algae.
This is also partly why I answered carbon when you asked me which tone I personally would find meaningful. Entropy plays into this too as life resists entropy by creating order from chaos, with the need for carbon being the unifying principle across all lifeforms. Algae are ‘born’ and have to capture carbon through photosynthesis to grow (fighting against entropy), and when they die entropy wins and the carbon is release and returned to its chaotic state.
Response to Gary Caldwell
Gary’s explanation of the algal data opened up another way of looking at it for me. What had initially appeared as a complex set of biological measurements began to suggest a cycle of growth, stress, recovery and decline. His choice of carbon as the underlying theme particularly resonated with me, because carbon is continually taken up, transformed, incorporated into living systems and eventually returned.
By this point I had already been exploring handbell ringing as a way of working with mathematical permutations, alongside my research into quantitative comparison and persistent homology. I was waiting for data that might allow me to test the idea, and Gary’s algal data provided that opportunity. The translation into the sequence and timing of the bells worked, bringing together something I had been developing with something I had been waiting to receive.
What emerged from Gary’s explanation, however, was another reading. The idea of restoration within the experiment began to connect with the much wider cycles of renewal found throughout nature. Growth and decline are not necessarily endings, but part of a continual movement between states.
Carbon makes this particularly resonant. It is captured, becomes part of living matter and, when that life ends, is released and made available again. What appears to be an ending can therefore become part of something else. The algae are one point within a much larger circulation of matter.
For me, this is where the scientific account begins to open into metaphor. The handbell ringing offers a way of attending to the movement within the data, while the data itself prompts thoughts about renewal, restoration and the possibility of transformation beyond an individual life.