fotoplay: on the horizon 6

The final design of my book is now completed, and I expect to see the first full proof next week. In the meantime, as promised, I’m turning back toward the Fotoplay Invitational, and works created in response to the prompt “What’s on the horizon?”

The work above was sent to me by our friend Markus in Switzerland, whose last Fotoplay creation you might remember. Of all of the works presented thus far on This Playground, Markus’ was made with the lightest touch, the fewest marks added to (or subtracted from) the page. Just as in his last illuminated creation, he chose to cut or punch through the paper (this time with an x-acto knife, last time with the tip of a pencil) and shine light through the page. In his email to me, Markus noted that to photograph the page above, he simply placed it, as you can see, on his light table.

But why the jagged, glowing, electrical line that moves along and beyond the horizon?

Unfortunately, on New Year’s Day, Markus had a mild heart attack. He is feeling fine, and he assures me that he is recovering quite well; on balance, he was left “relatively unscathed.” But it was, as Markus says, “both frightening and sobering.”

You might have guessed that what Markus placed on the horizon was the ECG pattern of a healthy heartbeat. He tells me that when he first saw his arrhythmic ECG pattern (a record of his non-ST myocardial infarction) he found the document to be quite poignant: “erratic up-sloping lines which should have been down-sloping, and concave depressions, which should have been convex.”

It is poignant. That by virtue of our pulsing, pumping, beating hearts, we are, heartbeat by heartbeat, producing a pattern. But we don’t often, or ever see these patterns. Perhaps only in moments of crisis, like heart attacks. I find both the idea of using an ECG pattern and the visual impact of that iconic dynamic line to be exciting and beautiful. An ECG pattern in and of itself is a compelling idea for a prompt, with its obvious musical evocation… the electrical, rhythmic energy that reads at once as driven and self propelled.

Thank you, Markus, for finding strange beauty in a difficult moment. And thank you for creating such a sublime image.

Here’s to healthy rhythmic heartbeats, circumnavigating the Earth’s horizon, pulsating within and without.