Normal Numbers is in three parts on the exterior of the Pump House People's History Museum. Arrays of data in red neon are illuminated in an electronically controlled sequence, creating a flow of light which appears to emerge from and disappear into the chambers of the building. At first glance the numbers and symbols used might appear to represent large populations of people, but in fact they show the 'average' amounts of the different types of cells and substances within male and female blood samples (see information below).
The Pump House was built at the beginning of the 20th century alongside the river Irwell, to provide hydraulic power to Manchester's cotton industry. The original function of the building in the city seems to reflect that of the heart in the body, and the chambered architecture recalls the physical form of the human heart. The rapidly sequenced neon represents a circulatory flow, but uses terms and numerical ciphers from contemporary medicine - quotations from the way the blood is scientifically represented in Haematology.
Science provides information and techniques which explain more and more about nature, seducing us with a sense of manipulative power and control. Medical science gives us increasingly detailed knowledge of our own bodies, yet the more sophisticated this information, the more technical the language in which it must be rendered. This gives rise to the paradox that detailed and intimate knowledge can be experienced as a form of alienation; we feel we are becoming 'strangers to ourselves'. By taking information obtained via sophisticated medical technology and placing it in the context of a People's History Museum Normal Numbers aims to raise some of these themes.
Medicine and history both make use of frozen traces taken from a continuum, and it can be argued that all data isolated in this way is affected by the aims and desires of the collector, whether doctor, historian, or museum visitor. In a few centuries our definition of blood has been transformed: a near-mystical substance transmitting the essence of a tribe, race, or nation down the generations has become a mixture of chemical and organic parts which can be individually measured, photographed, named, numbered and traded. Furthermore, defining 'normal' blood has become as tricky as arriving at a single 'true' version of history - Normal Numbers shows a process of calculating questionable averages, which occur as part of a flow, and disappear almost as soon as they appear.
Haematology analysis information
above: A table of data from a Haematology Automated Analyser, showing the initial results of a blood test. Normal Numbers combines several of these tables (results for male and female blood samples) in order to obtain the numbers used on the building.
below: The circular light box in a ground floor window of the Pump House, which shows the categories of data represented in Normal Numbers
RBC - male/female Red Cell Count in billions per litre
HGB - male/female Haemoglobin in grammes per litre
HCT - male/female Haematocrit in itres per litre
MCH - male/female Mean Cell Haemoglobin in million millionths of a gramme
MCHC - Mean Cell Haemoglobin Content in grammes per litre
WBC - White Cell Count in thousands of millions per litre
MO - Monocytes in thousands of millions per litre
LY - Lymphocytes in thousands of millions per litre
NE - Neutrophils in thousands of millions per litre
BA - Basophils in thousands of millions per litre
EO - Eosinophils in thousands of millions per litre
PLT - Platelets in thousands of millions per litre
MPV - Mean Platelet Volume in thousand billionths of a litre
MCV - male/female Mean Cell Volume in thousand billionths of a litre
Manchester City Centre, showing location of Pump House
Funding & project details
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Commissioned by the National Museum of Labour History for the exterior of the Pump House People's History Museum
Funded by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of England
Switched on by the Rt. Hon. Chris Smith MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, on 17 December 1998
Haematology Automated Analyser data was obtained with the close cooperation of Neil Porter, Senior MLSO at the Sheffield Hallamshire Hospital Haematology Laboratory. A photographic series showing the cells in healthy blood was generously provided by Janet Peel, of the same facility. The work was installed by Manchester Neon Contractors and Cannon Electrical Contractors (Manchester). Thanks also to Chris Lethbridge (Manchester) Gill Jones and Mark Purcell (Sheffield)
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