Nanotechnology inspires joining of art, science
By Jennifer Lauren Lee
Feb. 3, 2003 9:00 p.m.
Students trudging home from class last Wednesday night may have
been surprised to come face-to-face with a six-foot-tall molecule
projected on the wall of UCLA’s Court of Sciences.
Two UCLA professors ““ Victoria Vesna, professor and
chairwoman of the Design/Media Arts Department at UCLA, and Jim
Gimzewski, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry ““
have developed an art installation called
“Zero@Wavefunction” that uses shadow-sensitive software
to allow people to manipulate giant projections of molecules using
their bare hands.
These images are meant to welcome viewers of all backgrounds and
disciplines into the world of nanotechnology.
“This is something that brings science to all kinds of
people,” Gimzewski said.
“The separation between art and science is ridiculous in
my mind,” Gimzewski said. “You find the same
imagination, the same intensive curiosity (in both art and
science).”
Gimzewski and Vesna watched as people stopped to interact and
even dance with the projections.
“It gets you excited on a subliminal level,” Vesna
said.
“We worked very consciously to create something that is
not art or science,” Vesna added. “It’s a hybrid;
it becomes completely different (from both).”
The unique fusion between art and science brought the best of
both worlds for some observers.
“As a chemist, I’m interested in molecules,”
said observer Betty Luceigh, a UCLA lecturer of organic
chemistry.
“But as a person, I’m interested in the art.
It’s like going down and being able to touch a molecule.
It’s just too awesome.”
The shadow of one’s hand and the molecule are seen by a
video camera, which in turn feeds that information to a computer.
When the shadow comes in contact with the molecule, the computer
sees that shadow and knows the shadow is going to go right through
that molecule. With this information, the computer distorts the
image, creating a new image transferred to the projector, which
projects a modified image onto the wall.
“This is interesting because your shadow doesn’t
usually affect anything,” Vesna said. “But here,
(it’s your shadow that) actually manipulates
things.”
But the bonds between art and science do not end with a
shadow-responsive software program. The inspiration for these
images is a real molecule: the “buckyball,” which
consists of 60 carbon atoms arranged into a structure reminiscent
of the geodesic domes of architect Buckminster Fuller.
In fact, the molecules look so similar to Buckminster
Fuller’s domes that scientists named their molecule after the
architect. Fuller’s domes even helped the scientists
determine the structure of this molecule. For Vesna, this is
another example of how art and science, and culture and technology
influence each other.
“I found it fascinating that someone who created this
architecture influenced (the scientific) world,” Vesna
said.
Zero@Wavefunction does not use nanotechnology directly, but
rather for inspiration.
“How (the buckyball images) move is based on research that
Gimzewski does, and based on actual movements of the
molecules,” Vesna said.
“If you kick a ball, it jumps. But kick a molecule and it
doesn’t move ““ you have to hit it slowly.”
Similarly, “touching” the projected image of a
buckyball with one’s shadow will distort it, but moving too
quickly won’t affect it at all.
“You are learning how the molecular world works,”
Vesna added. “The intent is not to teach. But it just does.
It’s another way of learning.”
Gimzewski hopes that generating more interest in science through
art will make nanotechnology more tangible to the public.
“(Nanotechnology) is still in the science fiction realm
““ there’s no language for it yet,” Gimzewski
said.
Another of Gimzewski and Vesna’s goals was to begin to
dispel the public’s fears about nanotechnology ““ to
introduce people to the science of nanotechnology and, according to
Vesna, to “make the strange familiar and the familiar
strange.”
Vesna believes bringing people face-to-face with a buckyball
will make an entrance into that world easier, adding that someone
who comes away from the exhibit is less likely to feel intimidated
by nanotechnology the next time they hear about it.
“Science has such a huge impact on our lives,” she
said. “Unless you learn the language and learn to explain
(it), you really are at a disadvantage when you speak to the rest
of the world.”
A Web site, complete with pictures, visually interactive poetry,
and cameras looking into the microscopes in Gimzewski’s
nanotechnology laboratory is at notime.arts.ucla.edu/zerowave.
“We want to create access to this world,” Vesna says,
“and make visible something that’s totally invisible
and totally (in)accessible.”
