According to Richard Holmes, Friedrich Schelling’s theory of Naturophilosophie speculated that “all physical objects “aspire” to become something higher... so carbon for example “aspires” to become diamond; plants aspire to become animals; animals aspire to become men…”
Artist Andy Holden in his Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape says "maybe there is no such thing as an inanimate object".
Trovants – apparently these are “Growing Stones: An Incredible Geological Phenomena”. According to my research, in a small Romanian village named Costesti, there are some fascinating and mysterious stones, called trovants, which are believed to have a life in them.
A chance encounter with a dead frog reminds me of the connection between electricity and life and the work of Luigi Galvani who experimented with the effects of electricity on dead tissue, famously making dead frogs' legs kick in response to electrical charge.
Richard Dawkins, talks about "the unlikely accident" of the formation of a molecule that could create copies of itself which might result in a living organism. He says "In the lifetime of a man, things that are that improbable can be treated for practical purposes as impossible... But in our human estimates of what is probable and what is not, we are not used to dealing in hundreds of millions of years." Interesting to explore seemingly absurd propositions which, although improbable, may not be as impossible as they seem.
My Improbable Experiments With Growing Stones have evolved from a period of research in which I have been considering our understanding of “life” as a biological process as well as a state of being. I am interested in the history of science and the endeavours of scientists throughout the ages to understand “the spark of life” – i.e. the crucial element that causes some things to be “alive”. Alongside this historical context, I am also interested in exploring the impact of contemporary science on our understanding of what life means in the 21st century when scientists can create and manipulate living things and we live in an era of synthetic biology, bio-engineering, intelligent materials, cloning and gene therapy, suggesting that one day, maybe nothing will be impossible.
Following my research of Schelling's theory, Holden’s proposition, Trovants, Galvani’s frog and Dawkins’ thoughts on probability and possibility, I've been trying to offer the opportunity for some ordinary stones to make the leap in status Schelling suggests, to become living, growing beings. Improbable Experiments With Growing Stones is an installation which contains evidence of my experiments.