PLANKTON UNIVERSE
from the series Plankton and ancient Hebrew Manuscripts
mixed media digital print, variable dimensions
CYNTHIA RUBIN:
Plankton Universe is a layered work, integrating digital and analogue media through several phases of development in and out of the computer, celebrating the joy of drawing by hand with the endless possibilities of digital imagery. Based on plankton collected and photographed in the North Atlantic Ocean by members of the Menden-Deuer lab, it also oddly combines a fragment of the cover page of a Hebrew Bible created around 1010 in old Cairo. How do they fit together? The Hebrew text is intended as a symbolic representation of human connection through the ages, of spirituality in the broadest sense, of that bit of ourselves that is not just individual but interconnected across time and place. The microscopic plankton, the most basic and essential form of life on our planet, belong in this continuum. Plankton produce much of the oxygen we breathe and, as life on the bottom of the food chain, they are part of the food we eat. We are sustained by plankton, and yet they are mostly invisible and easily forgotten, swimming in the vast space of our world.