Microscope Exploration
King’s school at the canal, 10 February 2022
Between January and March 2022, three days of open observatory were held at the canal, for the public, King’s School and New Friars school. One of the activities involved walking and examining the different plant species in the canalside and looking at these under the microscope. Over the course of the first few months of sessions, the canalside began to change, as the frost gave way to a different kind of light that altered the environment. January’s public sessions featured a lot of wet bark and leaf skeletons - all considered ‘dead wood’ but providing food and safe habitat for nesting birds and other creatures. February featured more verdant moss and delicate, soft lichen after heavy rains.
The children from King’s enjoyed making videos and images with the video microscope - thanks also to Andrew from Appetite who was on hand to support this when I was with the listening groups. Although not as powerful as scientific microscopes in school, they had the freedom and creativity to take snapshots and video parts of the plants that were most interesting to them, or that invited their curiorsity. The public enjoyed finding and splitting open rosehips, which some children from King’s thought looked ‘gross’ and like ‘guts’. It’s not often we get to see inside canalside plants, so the children seemed to experience awe at their discoveries, a selection of their photos are featured below - including the out of focus and unusual images which make up part of the exploration. The microscope sessions were aimed at exploring details but without an overarching taxonomic focus - the microscopes gave time to really see what they had gathered and talk about why that was interesting to them.
I used some of the images and polaroids in the video above, which I have overlayed with bird song harmonics, and below with some audio some of the group recorded whilst walking along the canal and up on cobbles to the bridge.
