Category: The Art of Science

The Art of Science: Crystal Blue Installation

Roger Hiorns, Seizure, 2008
Roger Hiorns, Seizure, 2008

In 2008, British artist Roger Hiorns turned a derelict London flat into a major modern artwork. He created the piece, Seizure, by reinforcing and waterproofing a small, condemned apartment and then pumping in 75,000 liters of copper sulfate solution. After a few weeks, Hiorns pumped the liquid back out, and what remained was a glittering gem – the walls, floors and ceilings all covered with bright-blue crystals. Hiorns had previously created other crystal encrusted sculptures, so he knew how to work with copper sulfate. But he admits that the crystals in Seizure grew larger and quicker than expected – which was part of the art, allowing the natural process to happen in a way that was only partially controllable by the artist.

The finished work brings to mind the underground lair of some mythical creature, or perhaps the inside of a geode. Earlier this year, Seizure was moved to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where a special building was erected to house it. Because of the delicate chemistry of the piece, it cannot get wet or too hot. The new structure will allow many more people to visit the work, a good thing because Hiorns has said he has no interest in repeating himself by creating more crystallized pieces.

Want to make one yourself? Here’s a simple tutorial on how to grow copper sulfate crystals. Be sure to check with your parents, landlord, or spouse before coating entire rooms.

Hat tip to @Orthelious, whose Bearpope tumblr is fully of arty goodness

The Art of Science: Nature and Nurture Reversed

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When cultivating a garden or taking photographs of plants, most people carefully tend to the top parts – the leaves and flowers – while letting nature handle the bottom – the roots and soil.  Artist Diana Scherer, in her Nurture Studies, turns that focus on its head. She takes seeds from her garden and grows plants in vases, carefully nurturing them for months, before breaking the vases and photographing the results.

It’s not a surprise that the roots of flowers and weeds are beautiful in themselves. What startles is the focus on what’s usually unseen.  Scherer, a German born artist living in the Netherlands, explains:  “Above ground, I let nature run its course. However, below the surface, by using a vase as a mold, I control the growth of the roots and the shape.”

Her photographs are simple, elegant and formal – the soil-coated roots of a dandelion are presented as if they were the blooms of an orchid. Says Scherer:

“I’m interested in the age-old human practice of manipulating nature. There is a certain ambiguity that I find intriguing; the idea of loving care and, at the same time, ruthless manipulation. For example, the gardener who loves nature and nurtures the plants he desires also ruthlessly cuts, snips and manipulates them.”
–from “Review of Nurture Studies” in Hotshoe Magazine by Miranda Gavin

Scherer says that, once she is done photographing a plant, she replants it in her garden and once again allows nature to take over. The roots, having had their moment in the sun, so to speak, can return to their sometimes overlooked but crucial role beneath the surface.

You can see more of Diana Scherer’s work here.  A book of Nurture Studies is available here.

The Art of Science: Ghost Food

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Is “Ghost Food” the food of the future? Climate change threatens our continued ability to harvest many of the foods we take for granted now. So will we simply say goodbye to the tastes of today, or find ways to replicate them with technology? An innovative art project takes a look at one possibility.

GhostFood, created by Miriam Simun and Miriam Songster of STEAMworkPHILLY, along with the Monell Center and NextFab Studio, is a participatory installation based on the concept of a food truck. The GhostFood truck, which debuted in Philadelphia this month and then traveled to New York City and Newark, NJ, serves substitutes for chocolate, peanut butter and cod, three foods at risk from climate change.

The “ghost foods”, made of climate-change resilient ingredients (including algae and vegetable protein), are meant to look like the real thing. But the flavor is delivered via a mask with a fragrance bulb which delivers the scent of the real food as you eat the substitute. The combination is not supposed to exactly replicate the experience of eating the original food, but give participants a sense of what that experience might be like in the future, when the “real” food is just a memory.

It sounds a little sad, but who knows? It might work. Lots of people who have given up meat prefer tofurky to plain tofu, so why not fish-scented algae instead of plain? In any case, it’s an interesting experiment that combines practical responses to climate change with leaps of artistic imagination.

More information about the project is here.

$cientists on Money

Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist, has collected a variety of banknotes from around the world that feature scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, etc. in the notes artwork. For me, it underscores the diverse locations that take pride in these individuals that have contributed so much to scientific progress (and their diverse backgrounds). It is also amusing to have such individuals on denominations that are best expressed in scientific notation (eg, Tesla on a 1010 Yugoslavian Dinar note, pictured).

In another way, the notes highlight the lack of diversity in our society’s perception of who great scientists are. While there are five notes honoring scientific concepts or technological feats, there are only three non-European scientists featured, and only one woman (Marie Curie).

I do not blame Jacob Bourjaily for the imbalance. First, it is unreasonable to expect the collection to be exhaustive or to not focus on the cultures most proximate to one’s own. Second, scientific research has been structured (ie, women forced to work for free without their own labs or titles) so that the credit for the work of clever women has invariable been handed to men. Remember when they did not really want to give Marie Curie the Nobel prize because of lady-bits?

Putting a more diverse representation of scientists on the money seems like a great way to promote science education, as well as present role models. I’ve got Andrew Jackson on a $20 in my wallet. I think we can safely say that no one with any sense wants any of our kids to grow up to be like genocidal Old Hickory. With that in mind, who would you like to see on our cash?

*Hat tip to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.

The Art of Science: Kendall Buster’s Parabiosis

Kendall Buster, Parabiosis IV, 2004
Kendall Buster, Parabiosis IV, 2004

Kendall Buster was educated as a microbiologist and then became a sculptor. Her scientific training is manifest in her work: huge sculptures, often made of fabric over metal armatures, that refer directly or obliquely to the cells, vessels and biological processes of living creatures. I was drawn to this 2004 piece, Parabiosis IV, simply because of its intriguing beauty, but I had no idea what it meant. I discovered that parabiosis is a technique dating from the 19th century in which two living animals are joined together surgically and develop a single, shared circulatory system” (source). In recent years, researchers have used the technique in mice and found that giving old mice “young blood” through parabiosis may enhance neurogenesis (brain cell growth) and reverse age-related degeneration of the heart muscles.  So obviously, this is an exciting field of research – but it’s also deeply creepy, involving stitched-together “frankenmice”, which are quite unsettling to look at. So let’s thank Kendall Buster for presenting this thought-provoking concept, rich in history as well as promise for the future, in such an attractive (non-bloody, non-furry) way.

Much more at Kendall Buster’s website.