This Limpet Lexicon accompanies The Human Limpet Project, offering explanation, meaning and insight into terms and phrases that relate specifically to the research. Many of these terms and phrases have been produced as part of my creative practice, often through a process of experimental word amalgamations, taxonomic tangles and hybridisation. These new terms were created whilst under the heady influence of limpets and the places they inhabit; an influence that stimulates and shapes different ways of thinking, practicing, researching, communicating and knowing.  

 

The entries are organised in alphabetical order. 

 

GOETHITE

Goethite, an iron-based mineral is one of the materials from which limpet teeth are made. Goethite combined with a protein in the limpet’s teeth is remarkable in that it is the strongest known biological substance in the world. Limpets need high-strength teeth to rasp algae, their main food source from rock surfaces. Scientists are very interested in goethite and are experimenting to see if it might help improve the man-made composites used to build aircraft, cars and boats, as well as dental fillings. Also see RADULA

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HOME SCAR

Limpets are under threat of drying out when the tide recedes but can get around this problem by contracting their strong muscular foot, using suction to clamp their shell down very tightly onto the rock where they live. The abrasive process of continually clamping down in the same spot combined with chemical erosion creates a small hollow or scar on the rock. Limpets return to this ‘home scar’ after foraging excursions, fitting their shell neatly into the personalised etched groove. The close fit creates a watertight seal enabling the limpet to survive during the low tide period. It is the ability of limpets to hold firmly onto a rock despite the huge forces created by wave motion and the life threatening pecking and drilling of predators that gives them their particular character: tenacity.

   

LIMPETEERING (Artist created term)

Within The Human Limpet Project ‘Limpeteering’ is a term created to describe a method of limpet-orienteering and artistic fieldworking. It is an assemblage of field-based, way-finding activities where limpets act as a navigational aid and lead the way. Limpets zig zag tracks impel us towards archaeological, historical, ecological and scholarly places and to people with limpet-related information, experience, knowhow, enthusiasm and care. Limpeteering practices are often conducted between places, on the way and in passing. Small bodies of limpet knowledge are encountered, experienced, gathered, assembled and carefully transferred from their home place via ‘Portable Research Cabinets’ to The Limpetarium. Limpeteering can also be executed without physically going anywhere; it is sometimes digital and often imaginative. 

 

The process of Limpeteering requires a means of carrying art and research materials on outward bound trips and carefully holding and transferring various gathered materials, voices, memories, sensations, images and artworks on homeward journeys. ‘Portable research Cabinets’, a series of made and repurposed cases, travelling boxes and moveable shelving units serve this purpose. Portable Research Cabinets embody the experience and memory of Limpeteering, are artworks in their own right and form an integral component of The Limpetarium.

 

LIMPETISATION

In evolutionary terms, limpetisation describes the way gastropod molluscs (snails and slugs) loose or reduce the typical coiled snail shell and develop a flattened cap or cone-shaped shell instead. This is the transitionary process of becoming limpet.

 

The term limpetisation has also been adopted within The Human Limpet Project to describe the influence of a limpet’s body plan, morphology (shape and structure) and habitat (the rocky shore) on the research. This influence radically repositions the research from human-centred to limpet-centred or limpet-led. Also see LIMPET-LED and TRUE LIMPET

 

LIMPET-LED (Artist created joined word)

Limpet-led describes the way in which limpets and their rocky shore habitat have led the human researcher and participants towards other limpety places and people. One limpet-thing leads to another…

Also see LIMPETEERING

 

LIMPETARIUM (Artist created term)

The Limpetarium has multiple purposes and qualities: it is an artistic method, an artwork, a contemporary cabinet of curiosities with a limpet theme, a Wunderkammer (wonder-room), an ever-changing assemblage of things and an installation. Some of the component-things have been found in the natural world (naturalia) and others are human made (artificialia). Some things have got mixed up, entangled together and have merged into new, strange, ambiguous arrangements that cannot quite be pinned down. The Limpetarium is also an artist’s studio, a place of work, a social space for meeting and conversation, a research room and a small library. 

 

LIMPET TING (Artist created blend-term)

Devised as a form of social engagement, a ‘Limpet-Ting’ is an assembly of people, usually on a small scale who have an interest in limpets and where limpet-related knowledge is unpicked and exchanged. Based on ancient Norse parliaments, a ‘ting', also known as a ‘thing’, coming from the old Norse word þing is an assembly where matters of collective interest are discussed, negotiated and agreed. Within a Limpet-Ting, participants discuss limpet-related issues, contribute limpet-related information, ideas, stories, knowledge and artefacts and offer responses to their experience of The Limpetarium. In this way participants critically reflect on the human and more-than-human interconnectedness of limpets and influence future possibilities of The Human Limpet Project.

 

PALLIUM

Pallium is a word borrowed from Latin with multiple meanings including cloak, especially a philosophers cloak and the soft fleshy layer of tissue that covers the organs of a limpets body. Also known as the mantle, this limpet ‘skin’ secretes calcium carbonate to make its shell.

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PATELLAGOGY (Artist created blend-word)

Patellagogy is a hybrid word created from the fusion of patella – limpet shaped and pedagogy – the practice of teaching:  the teachings of limpets.

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PATELLAGRAM (Artist created term)

The term patellagram refers to a series of diagrammatic drawings utilised within The Human Limpet Project as a device for working out, developing and visualising ideas, methods, conceptual frameworks, strategies, interconnections and relationships. These diagrams are often intricate and complex, similar to the limpet’s labyrinthine intertidal habitat, mucus-based navigation system, grazing trails and rocky shore ecosystem. The term may also be used as a verb i.e. patellagramming.

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PATELLA CHARTULA (Artist created taxonomical name)

Patella chartula or the Small paper limpet is a newly created species of limpet made from recycled PhD writings, patella being the Latin word for ‘little pan’ and chartula for ‘small piece of paper’. Discarded PhD writing on paper is pulped then pressed into a limpet shaped mould. Once dried the moulded paper is embellished with paint, charcoal and coloured pastels. 

 

PATELLIFORM

Patelliform means shaped like a limpet shell or shallow dish. Patella is also the anatomical name of the human knee cap. In Norway limpets are called Albue Skall – elbow shell.

 

RADULA

The radula is a limpet’s equivalent of a tongue. The radula, rather like an elastic-ribbon-conveyor belt is covered with incredibly strong teeth which are used to rasp algae off the rocks on which the limpet lives. The scratching of the toothed radula against rock leaves complex zig-zag tracks known as grazing trails and can sometimes be heard on a quiet beach. Also see GOETHITE

 

TRUE LIMPET

The common name ‘limpet’ is used to describe various extremely diverse groups of gastropods with a limpet-shaped or patelliform shell. Taxonomically, limpet has very little significance as these groups are not necessarily closely related. The taxonomic family Patellidae, commonly known as ‘true limpets’ are all marine snails in four living genera, namely Cymbula, Helcion, Patella and Scutellastra.

 

Within The Human Limpet Project, I use the term limpet generically and also refer to specific genera and species.