<< previous page | pg 2

The last two years have seen at least two major museum exhibitions dedicated to the confluence between nanotechnology and art. First in 2003 "Nano," was on display at the Los Angeles County Museum, a major museum funhouse of art and science, and secondly "Nanotechnology – The Exhibition" , a view of nanotechnology inspired art, was on view last spring ‘03 at the Miami University Art Museum in Ohio. Both of these recent exhibitions point to the growing awareness of nanotechnology and impact that technological research is having on artistic output.

The Nano exhibition in Los Angeles was mounted by Victoria Vesna, chair of the UCLA Department of Design/Media Arts, and James Gimzewski, a nano-scientist in the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. Installed in the museum’s children’s gallery, though trafficked by all ages, the exhibition purposely avoided presenting science fiction-like visions of nanotechnology doled out by the popular media, instead focusing on presenting nanotechnology to the public in a way that took advantage of new media technologies that framed the exhibition in a variety of interactive metaphorical tableaux.

Vesna and Gimzewski feel that nanotechnology-inspired art has begun to branch in two directions – one "is very much about connections and interconnections," says Gimzewski. "Artists respond to new scientific discoveries and vice versa. That’s what we’re seeing at the moment and I find it very beautiful." The other is what he calls "the dark side" – fictional imaginings like Crichton’s Prey which exploit doomsday scenarios fed by shoddy science. Luckily, exhibitions like Nano are starting to lead the way in the counterrevolution to popular dystopian views by presenting brilliantly conceived multimedia installations that manage to make complex ideas like quantum tunneling comprehensible (Wiki: quantum tunneling).

The 2003 exhibit Nano-technology, the Exhibition at the Miami University Museum of Art focused specifically on artists who are involved with the ideas or applications of nanotechnology in their work. The exhibition provides a very telling cross section of the variety of ways in which artists are approaching the subject. Some like Tim Newfields, whose work references the interplay between energy and nanostructures, attack the realm of nano via computer. Others, like painter Clark Richert, deconstruct the basic structures of the universe using symmetry and pattern to illustrate the dimensional dilemma of the nanoscale. Like nanotechnology, Richert’s paintings change as one gets in closer as features take on shifting geometrical orders. Chris Ewels displays his work on plasma screens in preordered viewing sequences. He generates images using a ray tracing computer program, deriving structures from research that can deliver detailed calculations about the physical and chemical properties of various nanostructures.

One major factor facing artists who currently want to explore the actual manipulation of the world on a molecular level is cost. Currently, access to nano-technological facilities is hardly common. Most artists don’t have scanning electron microscopes on hand and few, if any, have been instructed in "photonic tweezing" nor taken Nano-sculpture 101. It has been said that art is grown from science with technique added. Our way of perceiving the world shifts with technological advances. Just as photography imposed itself dramatically on painting in the 19th century, spawning Impressionism and later the cuts and superimpositions of Cubism, new systems of analysis, emotions, reactions and communicative forms are developed in our brains with exposure to new technologies and the art forms that result. Nanoart opens up a vast frontier of questioning the structure of the world as we have thus far imagined it, especially in the realm of the shape of space and the essence of emptiness. Will nanoart become the micro-Minimalism of the future? Only time will tell.

So what if anything does the future of the medium of nanoart promise? While many facets of nanotechnology continue to linger in the fog of science fiction, it’s still a hell of a lot of fun to contemplate the options. An unprecedented level of interactivity is one possibility. If mechanical elements on a nano scale become possible or even ubiquitous, it would be simple to create structures that can be programmed to change shape, color, texture or scale. A sculpture that changes expression, a painting that, much like a plasma screen, cycles through half a dozen or more pre-programmed images. And that’s just on the level of traditional media. Every corner of current artistic media could be affected – just imagine an installation artist with nano-technological capabilities not to mention the implications of body art, earth art: mountains that change form, dissipate, float away and disappear; architecture that just requires plugging in a CAD program to manipulate a nano putty that can simulate different material qualities and properties, or the creation of custom engineered mechanobiological "life forms" which are optimized for artistic purposes. From today’s vantage point, this fantastical postulating still looks like so much pie in the sky but the building blocks are there. Sooner or later, once Moore’s law fast-forwards the applications and the technology becomes ubiquitous, there will only be the final frontier left to overcome – imagination. X

<< previous page | pg 2