Diamond Scales

measuring

The notion of doing an animal version of Of All The People In All The World has been an intriguing idea floating around for a few years. A few months ago Professor Baz Kershaw approached us with an opportunity to deploy the idea. He planned to create three ‘Meadow Meanders’ for a big international theatre conference at Warwick University and invited us to contribute animal statistics to his walks. The opportunity seemed too fun to turn down.

The premise is identical to Of All The People In All The World one of something represents one of something else. 1 grain of white rice still = 1 human but now 1 pepper corn = 1 mountain gorilla and 1 red lentil = locust Etc.

In 2003 trying to establish the average weight of a grain of rice armed only with a set of kitchen scales and a bag or rice was a pain and not a pain I was prepared to go through with 20 different food stuffs. Now, however, we are based in the Jewellery Quarter borrowing a set of diamond scales is as easy as knocking on your neighbour’s door. Our neighbours were embarrassed that their most precises scales were unavailable but with those 10 times less accurate our man Phil ‘Precision’ Holyman was able to compare the weights of individual brown mustard seeds (Wildebeests). His greatest revelation was that 100s and 1000s (one for each known species in the world’s oceans) may be so called because of the great variation in their weights (for those thinking the obvious question – no, there appears to be no correlation between colour and weight of the 100 or 1000).

Today we attempted to set up all our beautiful boxes on site but were thwarted by a lack of the posts we had been promised, so we did everything we could to prepare and some time tomorrow I’m going to have to return to add all the foodstuffs. Thereafter Of All The Creatures Across The Globe is open to the public until 1st August.

3 thoughts on “Diamond Scales

  1. Hi There,

    It’s good to hear from you.

    We hope so, it needs to in order to recoup a few more of its costs! At the moment these meadow meanders feel like the best excuse for the project but who knows, now we have the boxes made we’ll be keeping our eyes open for other opportunities and when we find them blog readers will be among the first to know about them.

    Thanks for your support.

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