Alec Finlay’s contribution to ‘MerzBank’ is an echo of Schwitters’ famous ‘sneeze poem’ of 1937, which he ‘scored’ to replicate the convulsive sound and shape of a human sneeze. Finlay compares the sudden burst of a single a-c-h-o-o to the flowering of the human rhinovirus (aka the common cold) as it develops and proliferates over time. Streaming continuously on the homepage of the ‘MerzBank’ site, a digital animation, made up of micro-particles of text, captures the beauty of the virus in full flow, while snapshot samples of it will be transmitted through social media, mimicking how the common cold insinuates itself within the general population.
Please click here to listen to Alec Finlay's podcast on vocable orchard (HRV)
