more rough notes (toward an essay I am writing for a friend)
other notes here, here and here.
Last night, I learned that scientists are mixing lanthanide metal oxide ions with glass, and from this, creating almost-invisible beads. No two beads are alike. When exposed to ultraviolet light, their lanthanide glows in 100 billion unique combinations - like bar codes. These beads can be mixed into ink, spread invisibly across money and letters and political pamphlets, stuck like pollen inside the rough alphabet of your signature.
I picture the beads as microscopic eight balls. The magic kind, with the fortune-telling dice inside. I imagine them stuck between teeth or strung like a necklace around the inside of my neck. I imagine you tossing whole fistfuls onto the pool table.
I think of your tattoo, like a bar code for the coroner, when no dental records are found, no matches in the fingerprint system, no identifcation cards or housekeys strewn in the grass. Who needs the beads when we already have skin? When the tattoo is already unique? How many layers of identity do we need?
Comments (7)
...Hi Karrie,,,makes me think of bar codes or URL's....what is next?...these surface features of the soul...a world view that is so self contained that it cannot contain what it cannot see....sometimes i'm at a loss for words to communicate the world under...the underworld..that thing don delillo spent 946 pages doing...and tobias wolff's did in three pages with his short "bullet in the brain"---and how what is real?....something felt...beneath the skin...maybe the tatoo is really about the prick and the pain..the memory of the moment of conception, what preceded it, what followed it.....--peace, joel
Posted by jgill | March 10, 2004 5:48 AM
Posted on March 10, 2004 05:48
Yes, the tattoo is about all of those things, I think ... I was thinking more about how it gets used. How it becomes an "identifying mark" when the coroner performs an autopsy, or when the police take a missing persons report ... and how interesting it would be to have tattoos made with the bead-embedded ink, yet another identifier, yet another way to trace someone ...
Posted by K | March 10, 2004 6:53 AM
Posted on March 10, 2004 06:53
Or think of a target - concentric circles, moving inward. First, we have the body. The face, the hands, the hair, eyes, and clothes. All of these could identify a person. Then we have identifying marks, like the tattoo. Then the DNA of the cells ... and then, with this new special ink, the little magic eight ball beads, with their glowing bar codes ... it all keeps moving inward, further and further away from the visible and tangible. The beads, like the tattoo, move away from the natural identifiers, and into the realm of the "marked" or the "tagged." I am interested in this ... one on the surface, one so small it is almost invisible, both made with ink. I love how these merge, how the tattoo ink could contain the beads - a place where appearances meet the invisible.
Posted by K | March 10, 2004 7:59 AM
Posted on March 10, 2004 07:59
I'm looking forward to seeing these ideas bloom as an essay.
Posted by Keith | March 10, 2004 11:04 AM
Posted on March 10, 2004 11:04
Was it you that told me about the new kinds of tattoos where there are beads under the skin?
Yes, I do think of my tattoos as identifiers. Particularly as a way for someone to identify my body if it comes to that one day. I don't understand the standard flash art (well, I do, but I wouldn't get it myself) because that looks like barcode to me, after awhile. Though I love some of the standards: anchors, words, hummingbirds...Thanks for giving me something to think about while at the courthouse!
Posted by W | March 10, 2004 2:18 PM
Posted on March 10, 2004 14:18
Nope. Wasn't me. :)
The tiny beads in my post have not - as far as I know - been used in tattoos yet. I was just imagining, since these beads will be mixed into ink someday ... They are for all practical purposes invisible to the naked eye. A nanotechnology. And very creepy, in more ways than one.
Posted by K | March 10, 2004 2:49 PM
Posted on March 10, 2004 14:49
Some people have asked who the friend is that I am writing this for ...
I can only say that it is not who you think. And it is no one related to littlemotors.org.
Does this make it worse? Hee hee.
Posted by K | March 10, 2004 3:04 PM
Posted on March 10, 2004 15:04