Over two days at the SLAC lab during a full week of experiments run by the German research team invited into Dr. Hendrik Ohldag's lab, I completed a series of 6 sketches. The noise was so deafening from the fans used to cool an adjacent experiment that on my second day I wore noise canceling headphones.
Typically I do not seek out noisy environments dominated by machine sounds to develop the intuitive sketches that will later be turned into my sculptural reliefs. But, I have been driven over the years by a motivation to link science to art so this was just my cup of tea. In fact I have been rereading Leonard Schlain's Art & Physics book as well as a new book by Sabine Hossenfelder called Lost in Math both of which link art/aesthetics to the development of physics theory and experimentation.
My initial sketches at SLAC were then sent to Hendrik and the rest of the research team for comment.
Dr. Andreas Ney running the research project commented:
"Thanks for sharing your sketches with us! I am surprised how "organic"
the images look although they were conceived in such an artificial
environment. Everything looks rather "natural" although the "tidyness" is
more on the SSRL-side.
Personally, I feel mostly like the underwater-tortoise during a beamtime (Sketch #4 below); the water all the way up to the throat - always
hoping to end up an the swimming bird towards the end of the experiment...
Well on top of the water and laughing."
Dr. Ohlstag's also provided more detailed comments for the four sketches shown below:
Sketch #1
I find the order in which you arranged the sketches surprisingly “intuitively” correct. For me an experiment is always about starting from a point of “chaos”. You are addressing a problem that you want to solve or an open question that is looking for a new fresh viewpoint. And there is competition, because you are not the only one who looks at this challenge, other researchers do this as well. This sketch represents this quite well, like a mass start in a marathon, everyone tries to get ahead with their idea of how to solve the problem. And the sketch also represents the diversity of ideas quite well. All of this would have happened in the months before you visited us at SLAC.
Sketch#2
The race has started, everyone has defined their ideas, everyone has designed their experiment and now comes the “sitting and waiting for results” phase. There is time to enjoy company, maybe even to relax and snooze a little, time for a chat with the visiting artist and all of this. This is the sketch tha t most represents what is actually going on through most of the actual experiment time. ON the other hand there is uncertainty, and it feels a little like being in limbo between raging seas and butterflies. Will it work or will it not work? That is the question !
Sketch #3:
Eureka ! We got it ! We are in heaven and we are dancing with and between the stars. What else can I say…..
Sketch#4:
This one is peculiar. It seems so out of place comparted to the others, but it nicely summarizes the aftermath of planning, conducting and successfully concluding the experiment. Now it is time to analyze the data and extract all the little details that got lost in the chaos of the time at the beamline. Papers have to be written which could take for ever and students start to move at the pace of turtles, while senior researchers start to prance around like pretty birds and tell everyone of the marvelous things we did. Yet, all the answers only lead to new questions that are waiting for us outside of the safe waters.
In addition, I finished two more sketches the second day with the earphones on:
After my initial work at SLAC Hendrick moved to his new lab at the Berkeley Cyclotron. Here the second part of the project began to kick in. We hung the sculpture entitle "What's Your Sign in his new lab and will wait to see how it might affect his research work there.
At the same time we hung an unnamed piece in the researchers lounge at the facility with a naming box beside it inviting those at the lab to have input into the story and name for this piece.
Finally, I completed one more sketch at the new lab. What do you think this one could be about?
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