Irene Kopelman, INDEXING WATER, 2017

This ninth volume in Irene Kopelman’s ‘Notes on Representation’ series is dedicated to Dr Marcel Wernand, a physical oceanographer whose research deals with the Forel-Ule scale, a handheld index developed in the 19th century to estimate the colour of natural bodies of water such as lakes and seas. The book itself functions like the Forel-Ule scale, reproduced as printed matter in solid, opaque colours. Kopelman, who is fascinated by natural processes and whose work explores the relationship between art and science, also gathers and presents both fragments of Wernand’s writings and recorded conversations which took place at different moments in 2017.