John Grade’s sculpture Capacitor is an immense, immersive piece designed to, as he puts it, “encapsulate the viewer.” As visitors walk inside the 40- x 20- x 40-foot sculpture, made of fabric stretched over metal frames, it moves, lightens and darkens.
Capacitor was conceived and built in a mere two months and was exhibited at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin in 2013.
The sculpture responds to information from weather sensors outside the Arts Center, slowly twisting and shifting to changes in wind direction and temperature. The live weather data are correlated to historic data, so the greater the divergence from historical norms, the more the sculpture moves, and the more dramatic the shifts in light.
Grade says he hopes people come away from the installation “having experienced something about the outside environment in a new way, having experienced it with their bodies.”
You can see more photos and other projects by John Grade on his website.
Yesterday at the ScienceOnline conference, we had a great conversation led by Tara Haelle about the importance of images in science communication. Alas, the subject of lolcats did not arise, so I will address it here. Lolcats are, in fact, the key to all successful science communication. The effective deployment of lolcats is a secret scicomm weapon of mass destruction, by means of cuteness-induced head explosions (See Fig. 1 above. Boom.)
Science communicators should exercise caution when using lolcats to illustrate scientific concepts, however, because it turns out that cats are exempt from certain laws of science.
Fig. 2. Effective use of lolcat to illustrate gravity
Air guitar a little low-tech for you? Try Simon Blackmore’s Weather Guitar, a robotically-controlled flamenco guitar that responds to variations in weather conditions. Blackmore says that the electronic guts of the Weather Guitar, currently on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Arts Museum in Connecticut, were designed to be as flexible and open as possible, so it could be shown (and heard) in many different settings.
The Aldrich Museum’s Richard Klein explains: “Blackmore’s work is characterized by an inventive, DIY approach that draws on influences such as hobby-style electronics, open-source software, and lo-fi aesthetics. The resulting “performative” sculpture and installations are not, however, just about revealing the inner workings of things that are usually invisible, but rather an attempt to tackle the more philosophically thorny questions that surround our increasingly complicated relationship with technology and the power it holds over us.”
Blackmore himself describes the goal of the piece as “an attempt to draw parallels between the scientific inquiry of measuring and quantifying the natural elements, and the romantic notion of the weather acting as a source of artistic inspiration.”
Sorry kitties, that’s not quite how it happened. Luckily, we’ll get a refresher on the origins of the universe when the reboot of Carl Sagan’s classic Cosmos series kicks off on March 9, with new host Neil DeGrasse Tyson. In the meantime, you can read this terrific article by Joel Achenbach in Smithsonian Magazine about Sagan’s impact and legacy.
Michael Tyka, KcsA Potassium Channel, Copper and Steel, 2011
Mike Tyka is not the first scientist to see artistic potential through his microscope, but he’s taken his love for the structure of protein molecules much farther than most – not only learning metalworking to make beautiful copper sculptures, but creating a studio/makerspace to do it in.
Tyka earned a PhD in Biophysics in 2007 and went to work as a research fellow studying the structure and dynamics of protein molecules. His particular area of interest is protein folding, and he has written computer simulation software to better understand the process. Tyka says that “protein folding is the way our genetic code is interpreted from an abstract sequence of data into the functional enzymes and nano machines that drive our bodies.”
Tyka got interested in sculpture in 2009 when he helped design and construct Groovik’s Cube, a 35ft tall, functional, multi-player Rubik’s cube. The cube will soon be on view at New Jersey’s Liberty Science Center as part of its Beyond Rubik’s CubeExhibit.
Although the Groovik’s Cube project gave him his first taste of art-making, building a giant welded steel cube hardly prepared him to make exquisite replicas of complex biological forms. So he took to the internet. “I learned almost everything I needed from youtube and from jeweler friends. I didn’t have a space to work so I got together with some friend and founded an artspace (Seattle’s ALTSpace) and acquired or built all the tools I needed.”
Tyka was obviously very familiar with the protein forms and knew how he wanted them to look. He chose to work in copper, a warm, soft metal, because he wanted the sculptures “to look smooth, soft, liquid. Proteins are not solid objects, they’re more like jelly, they move and vibrate. I wanted to reflect that property somehow.”
You can see Mike Tyka’s work at the Hutchinson Cancer Institute in Seattle and at Science House in New York, and see lots more photos on his website. You can follow him on twitter @mtyka
The Finch and Pea 