Jumpin' at the Labside ...

After all the cryptic-ness that was this entry, here is what I finally produced:


So, the rationale ... erm, I still don't know what bacteria have to do with jazz (I did find a nice quote about bacteria and music that I put inside the front cover), but anyways, I ended up doing a very long concertina book, kind of inspired by how 'Peter and the Wolf' is put together - ie, each character in the story represented by a musical instrument. I went through my whole collection of swing music looking for something with very distinct solos by particular instruments. In the end choosing Count Basie's 1938 version of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" (yes,I can just SEE the lindy hopping crowd getting excited) ...

Listened to it till I couldn't stand to listen to it any more, then started working out how I might represent each instrument as a type of bacteria. After many iterations (and a bit of artistic licence), this is what you get. Each page is roughly 16 x 4 bars (or that's 8 x 8s for you dancers). Its not very clear here but there's also de-bossing (opposite of embossing) on almost every page. The bacteria images were all sourced from the Science Photo Library.

I'm still not sure what I think of this piece. It was a real stumbling block. Two of my passions - science and swing; and I found it really odd juxtaposing the two. Still, it was a great learning exercise in more ways than one! I'm most happy with the "introducing the band" page, as I was so tired, I thought I'd give them 'scat-esque' intros.

yes, its a bit small here at the mo... (might split it into a few chunks as blogger doesn't seem to like such a big image). Will be uploading individual page photos onto my flickr site soon - but right now, I just want to go to bed ....

EDIT: Done it , they're here now ... and for your amusement, here's my favourite page: