Crystalline
Permutations at CNSI
Danny Bazo
Background
The proposed artwork draws from and reflects upon several facets of the history, current usage, and future goals of the CNSI building (Elings Hall) at UC Santa Barbara:
- CNSI is a research facility involved in the discovery, development, and commercialization of materials and processes at the nano-scale. This includes a diverse collection of faculty working in physical, chemical, and biological fields, primarily concerned with the reorganization of matter into helpful and commercializable forms.
- Tools and facilities in CNSI are concerned with the interrogation of organic and inorganic materials. Through methods such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, and electron microscopy, materials in two main categories—crystalline and non-crystalline—are characterized.
- The processes, materials, and knowledge created at CNSI are intended to diffuse throughout the local, regional, state-wide, and global marketplaces in order to reaffirm California’s role as a leader in cutting edge science and technology while strengthening its economy.
Concept
The reorganization of matter is embodied in this site-specific art installation consisting of a nested matrix of shifting forms:
At the largest scale, a grid of mobile one meter square electromechanical panels capable of sliding horizontally and vertically represent the non-crystalline . The panels form an incomplete grid covering the western wall of CNSI, such that a single space in the grid is empty—panels immediately adjacent to the void periodically move to fill it, thus gradually relocating the void throughout the grid. The movements of the panels are governed by a software program monitoring the journal archives of the UCSB library: when a piece of knowledge is created within the building and propagates throughout the world in the form of a peer-reviewed publication, the software recognizes this event and triggers a reorganization of the mobile grid panels.
Each panel is itself composed of a hexagonal, crystalline matrix of twenty centimeter diameter electrochromic glass cells, which have the ability to change their opacity with the application of electric potential. The cells act as a network, with each hexagonal glass element aware of the opacity level of its immediate neighbors. Through a software-implemented set of simple rules which dictate a cell’s opacity based on those of its neighbors, complex patterns of dark and light emerge via the collective interaction of all cells and diffuse throughout the entire structure.
Knowledge created Grid panel
moves Glass cells adjust
to the new structure
New pattern diffuses
Thus, visualized
through the interaction of nested crystalline and non-crystalline
structures, advancements made in nanotechnology at CNSI create a perpetually
shifting landscape wherein an emergent
pattern is continually articulated,
fractured, permuted, and reformed.
Additional Considerations
- Due to the characteristics of electrochromic glass, a single cell may take upwards of several minutes to change opacity. Thus, the diffusion of patterns throughout the installation takes place over several hours or more. This timescale serves the dual purposes of: 1) being gradual enough to reduce the potential for the distraction of drivers along the road adjacent to CNSI, while 2) being rapid enough for a person to observe a qualitative change in the installation over a single day.
- Gradual opacity adjustment also mirrors the process of gradual thermal adjustment that researchers within the building use to ensure the exactness of their experiments at such small distance scales.
- Void in the panel grid echoes use of electron hole in synthetic diamonds made for spintronics applications.
- The use of transparency and opacity as the characteristics of the pixels within the installation eliminate the need for lights or projections, reducing the visibility of the artwork from Santa Barbara airport or its takeoff and landing flight paths and thus ensuring the safety of air traffic.
- The electrochromic glass proposed for the installation does not require continuous energy in order to hold its state (opaque or transparent), but only requires energy during state changes. This limits the energy usage and lifetime cost of the installation.
- The color of the electrochromic glass varies from transparent to dark blue, thus integrating naturally with both the CNSI building and Santa Barbara’s ocean and sky views.
References
Electrochromic glass:
http://www.glass-resource.com/
Formation of snowflakes (emergent crystals):
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~
X-ray crystallography:
http://www.stolaf.edu/people/
Emergence in visual patterns:
http://www.sallymckay.ca/
Discrete Dynamics Lab, Univ. Sussex UK:
http://www.informatics.sussex.
Hexlife:
http://www.well.com/~dgb/
Images
Single grid panel
Entire
wall of grid panels
New pattern diffusing throughout wall Example pattern over whole wall