Public Art/Science Installations
Public Art/Science Installations are a series of proposals designed to promote the relationship between public art and science. These projects were created in an attempt to inspire those who encounter them, to become more engaged with some of the big ideas in science, which is especially important in these days of much anti-science. Special attention was given in their designs to use art, not as a way of directly illustrating the science, but rather to symbolically offer an opportunity in the minds of the viewers to think more creatively about the implications of the sciences.
The Dark Matter Pavilion is a public art/science installation proposal designed to inspire the visitors to become more curious about the science of dark matter. It was not created to represent the science of dark matter in an academically correct way, but rather to suggest a fantasy scenario in which a piece of dark mater has been captured, placed into the structure of the pavilion, and is being symbolically analyzed.
The Sun’s Space Time Warping Pavilion is a design proposal for a large public art pavilion that celebrates one of the big ideas in science called, the warping of space-time. The warping of space-time first proposed by Albert Einstein predicted the curvature of space-time by massive objects such as the sun, in his theory of general relativity.
The arrow of time is usually defined as the one-way direction of travel from past to future in time. According to physicists, any motion allowed by the laws of physics also allows for the reverse of that motion. This statement as it relates to the arrow of time and entropy, inspired me to create this public art sculpture called, A Knot In The Arrow Of Time.
The Space Time Continuum Plaza is a design proposal for a large public art installation inspired by some of the work popularized by Albert Einstein. The installation was formed around the rolling of 12 pairs of dice within the confines of a scale model of the central circular plaza. Each of the 12 dice rolls were plotted relative to the center support structure, and the surrounding enclosed plaza. The dice were then stacked sequentially and supported horizontally with rods to the center support column, in order to re-establish their original relative position in space and time, therefore creating a representation of a space time continuum.
The Super Collider Pavilion is a conceptual proposal for a large public art project. It is intended to symbolically refer to an actual high-energy particle accelerator such as the Large Hadron Collider built in Switzerland. In this proposal, visitors can climb the stairs and walk onto the circular path that leads to the symbolic collision of particles.
The Solar Eclipse Pavilion is a design proposal for a large steel public art gathering-place that converts energy from the sun into electricity for the community in which it is built. This solar energy conversion takes place through a 7000 square foot array of photovoltaic solar cells, which are mounted on the top of the structure. Some of the solar electricity is sent into the local power grid and some of it is used to power a large low energy consuming LED display screen, mounted under the solar cell array. The LED screen displays graphic color images of the sun that are continually augmented by random light and heat variations, which are recorded by sensors embedded in the surface of the solar cell array.
A Cube’s Entropic Progression is a large public sculpture inspired by the concept in physics of the arrow of time and the progression of things toward disorder or entropy. In this case, the progression is presented as a sequence from a simple cube toward a disordered version of itself.
The Entangled Pavilion is based on the concept in science of quantum entanglement where two or more particles link up in a certain way, no matter how far apart they are in space, their states remain linked.
Visitors to the pavilion can interact in a similar way with the full sized structure by moving the segments of a duplicate model of it located at the center of the full size pavilion. When they have formed the model of the pavilion into the desired shape, they simply need to press the “move” button. At this point, the model is automatically held into the selected position until the full size structure automatically moves into the same relative position as the model.
Status: Unbuilt
