accidentals (recalculated) (2016, dur: 4:05)

… the probability that accidents do happen, if you slip and fall, fly too close to the sun, if your car runs off the road, if you cut your finger, miss a secret assignation, catch (or not) a slip of the tongue, when words fail, when all you have left is abstraction, operators, a lasting approximation, a mathematician’s code …

The “mathematician’s code” here is a translation of the original text into the closest matching mathematical operators eg ⊂ means “is included in”. Most of the footage in the video was taken around my home and the immediate neighbourhood.

This video was a finalist in the Carbon Culture Review 2016 Poetry Film Contest (USA); and was exhibited at 17 Days (Day 9, Vol. 10) at The Bret Llewellyn Art Gallery, Alfred State College, NY (USA; August 28 – September 19, 2017) and Atrium Gallery, Western Michigan University (USA; November 6, 2017 – April 29, 2018). It was also screened at the 7th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, 2018).

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Ian Gibbins is a widely published poet, video artist and electronic musician. His videos have been shown to acclaim at festivals, exhibitions, commissioned public art programs and installations around the world and have won or been short-listed for multiple awards. His videos have gained more than 5000 views on his Vimeo channel. In 2020 alone, 18 of his videos have been screened in more than 50 international festivals and events.

Ian’s poetry has been short-listed for national prizes and selected for several anthologies, including Best Australian Poems. Ian has produced four collections of poetry: Urban Biology (2012); The Microscope Project: How Things Work (2014, with artists Catherine Truman and Deb Jones); Floribunda (2015, with artist Judy Morris) and A Skeleton of Desire (2019).

Ian has collaborated widely with artists on projects bridging art and science, culminating in several major exhibitions (2009, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020) and two projects with Australian Dance Theatre.

Until his retirement in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia, having originally trained as a zoologist. He still lives on Kaurna land in South Australia.

For details of Ian’s creative work, visit http://www.iangibbins.com.au.
For his videos, visit: http://vimeo.com/iangibbins
For his audio, visit: http://iangibbins.bandcamp.com/
Social media: http://www.facebook.com/IanGibbins.poetry.music.science

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