Image source: Boston College Magazine

I apologise for the comparatively long pause. I have been thinking about some questions in regard to my project and was not sure if the intermediate results were formed enough to end up on this blog. But, as you can see, I have decided to go ahead anyway at bringing them into a bloggable format that may open a discussion.

I have recently been reading (or rather re-reading) Doreen Massey’s book ‘For Space’. I keep on coming back to her writings ever since a friend excitedly presented me with her book ‘Space, Place and Gender’ in 2002, and now I have accidentally ended up in the same department as her – so I hope this post will not cause me too much embarrassment… Anyway, the reason why I am interested in Doreen’s work is that she believes that ‘the way we imagine space has effects’, which is what the ‘Mutable Matter’ project is about. My view of space as inherently lively and mutable also draws me to Doreen’s writing which, for me, is full of images which help me think this mutability.

As mentioned previously, some geographers are concerned that the scales at which new technologies are operating (as in nanoscale, microscale) are portrayed as ‘virgin territory’ to be discovered, conquered and domesticated for human purposes. In some descriptions, these spaces appear passive and removed (‘down there’), sometimes downright uninteresting until humans do ‘cool stuff’ with it. Space is constantly in danger of being robbed of its meaningfulness by making it, in Doreen’s words, ‘the outside’, ‘the abstract’, ‘the meaningless’ in contrast to our ‘everyday world’.
Of course, a lot of people working with matter at the nano or micro scale disagree with this view of matter as dull and passive. They keep experiencing this space as a marvel (e.g. because of its complexity and difference from how things operate at our scale) and as something rather active. After all, this space is not some inert place or surface ‘down there’, but makes up everything we can perceive.

So what consequences can it possibly have how we imagine (a certain) space? For Doreen, it has political consequences. As I understand her, the spatial can not only be immobilised, but also mobilised (or rather, it is immobilised to become mobilised for a particular purpose). In the context of this project, if a fixed image of the space of the nanoscale is propagated, this is done to achieve particular results. ‘Thinking the spatial in a particular way can shake up the manner in which certain political questions are formulated’, she writes.

I was once asked at a workshop whether I wanted to apply what I have ‘found out’ the nanoscale to geographical space, because I talked about the quantum mechanics (that are operating at the nanoscale) in quite a bit of detail and showed quite a few related images. In ‘For Space’, Doreen writes that she sees a ‘problem to draw on science to conceptualise space’. But that is not my intention. I am rather trying to do it the other way round: drawing on ‘space’ to try to re-imagine how we think and mobilise the nanoscale.

While I am still negotiating with different Open University Regional Centres, I already have two outside dates confirmed where Mutable Matter will be taking place!

Mutable Matter @ Guerrilla Science
Secret Garden Party Festival
(near Huntingdon)
24 - 27 July 2008
www.secretgardenparty.com
I’m going to be there for the Saturday mainly,
but might be there on other days, too, so keep an eye out!

Mutable Matter @ Milton Keynes Science Festival 2008
25 & 26 October 2008
I’ll post something closer to the time, but I think I’ll be
locacted in the MK Shopping Centre!

Hope to see you there!

MM

Image Source: The Wellcome Trust

After a somewhat disastrous start to the day (I discovered accidentally melted pistachio kulfi all over the insides of the fridge while looking for breakfast) I cheered myself up by going to an exhibition at the Wellcome Trust, ‘From Atoms to Patterns’, about the ‘Festival Pattern Group’. The group consisted of major science and design figures who joined forces to create x-ray crystallography inspired design objects such as carpets, curtains or wall-papers for the Festival of Britain (1951).

Since the late 1930s the both scientifically useful and visually stunning results of x-ray crystallography of biological molecules had captured scientists. X-ray crystallography helped (and still helps) determine the arrangement of atoms within a crystal by looking at how x-rays are scattered from the crystal’s electrons. This later contributed to the imaging of the DNA model. For somebody who is not very familiar with this process, it was interesting to see how much handiwork (looking, interpreting, drawing, model-making, comparing with other images) is involved (or: was involved) in the crystallographic analysis of a material.

Comparing the scientists’ drawings with the reworked ones of the Festival Pattern Group’s designers, is downright amusing. The often quite messy, but functional sketches of the participating scienstists were translated into slick, stylised designs for functional objects with hysterical product names such as ‘Aluminium Hydroxide Tie’, ‘Pentaerythritol Carpet’ (does it explode when you walk on it?!) and ‘Insulin Wallpaper’ (my favourite designs were the Afwillite dress fabric and the horse methaemoglobin dress fabric…).

Image source: The Wellcome Trust

But it was even more interesting to see how both sides experienced the structures. The scientist leader of the group, Helen Dick Megaw, for instance, was inspired to ask designers to work with crystal structures by the ‘beauty of the designs which crop[ed] up’ in her laboratory.

‘I think the combination of really attractive patterns with the assurance of scientific accuracy would win a lot of attention.’

When the first designs arrived, she regarded some of them as ‘both scientifically and aesthetically successful.’ Altogether, 80 designs were produced by 28 ‘leading manufacturers’ of ceramics, glass, metal and plastics as well as textiles and wallpapers.

The perspective of the designers is particularly fascinating for me and is best represented in a quote by the designer Hugh McKenna on crystal structure diagrams:

‘They are most interesting indeed when examined at closer hand and offer almost limitless possibilities in the use of colour. We shall certainly carry out some experimental work soon, and I feel sure that with all round co-operation we could obtain very satisfactory results from this project.’

Other designers and manufacturers agreed that ‘this was rather an intriguing creative experiment, valid for its own sake’.
Compared with Max Perutz quote on the same subject (‘the final electron density map was so beautiful that I soon forgot the tedium of data collection’), the designers’ reaction sounds almost more scientific! ;)

Image source: The Wellcome Trust

The ethical side of the project was also very engaging and very timely. The exhibition highlighted that all scientists, apart from Helen Megaw, wanted to remain anonymous (this is the first time that their names have been revealed), because they feared for their scientific reputation. On top of this worry was the issue of research ethics: can we take fees for this or have ‘creative contribution’ rights? The example of Megaw’s correspondence with Dorothy Hodgkin illustrates how some, if not all scientist felt uncomfortable with this aspect of the participation and rejected both fees and rights. Hodgkin donated her drawings for free and refused to sign any official document.

The website also draws attention to an issue that is not so sharply outlined in the exhibition: the relationship to people’s ambiguous feelings towards ‘atomic’ achievements. On the one hand, nuclear science gave people ways of diagnosing and treating fatal illnesses, on the other hand, it brought horrors such as the ‘nuclear threat’. The emphasis was now beginning to shift towards nuclear physics as a science of ‘greater health, greater prosperity, greater security’. The friendly crystallography-inspired interiors potentially radiated (sorry, I couldn’t help using the word) a feeling of ‘snugness’, benignity and comfort to a population who had been exposed to the horrors of the atomic bomb only six years ago.

Source: The Wellcome Trust

In a short film, the design historian Mary Schoeser explains how the project was both supposed to benefit the British textile industry and British science as well as communicate an ambiguous science to the masses: ‘ordinary people’ (the exhibition had about 18.5 million visitors in total) were given the chance to ‘embrace and understand what is really an inexplicable and difficult science’. According to Schoeser, the patterns are a communication tool, ‘a new visual language that embraces people and brings them closer to the science of the second half of the twentieth century’. I found that they still perform this function in the twenty-first century by making you think about the many connections that play into science and the problematic decisions we face as researchers, scientists, designers, ‘ordinary people’, science communicators and our multiple personalities inbetween.

You can visit the exhibition at the Wellcome Collection until 10 August 2008 and/or online. I recommend the online videos! ;)

On Monday I decided I needed a day out and went to the Science Museum in London as well as to an electronic music festival (ElectriCity 2008). I arrived at the Science Museum fairly late, so I just managed to see three exhibitions: Survial, Listening Post and Plasticity – 100 Years Of Making Plastics.

‘Survival’ is essentially a children’s exhibition on the future of our planet - in the style of a futuristic games arcade! Four cartoon characters (Buz, Eco, Tek and Dug) guide through the games and displays and discuss your decisions in each game amongst each other. Buz is the negotiator between the three different opinions represented by the other three characters (ecological sustainability, technological sustainability and tradition). On a late Monday afternoon, I had the whole space to myself as all of the school classes had left about an hour ago. Thus, I could clumsily try out all the different games without embarrassing myself in front of children again (I never play computer games so I am outstandingly bad!). My favourite ‘game’ was the one where you design a living space for the future – the underground homes just look so cute that they made me wish for a real one I can afford!

What initially made me a bit worried was the explicit corporate presence in the exhibition and the overly ‘high tech’ aesthetics of the exhibitions which seemed to give the issues a very abstract (cutified?) and remote feel. Going through each of the exhibits actually alleviated some fears as the opinions seemed to be fairly balanced. What I liked was that the exhibition not only outweighed pros and cons of different ‘survival’ styles, but also asked the question ‘do we have to have less fun in the future?’. I find it important that discussions around the future of our planet do not only engage with the basic material needs, but also allow you to discuss things that otherwise seem to be cast as irrational or sinful human habits such as leisure (‘the planet is dying and you just think about having fun?!’). The designs on display illustrate how designers are already incorporating ‘fun and functionality’ with unexpected innovations such as ‘sustainable dance clubs’ where the floor absorbs the energy from the dancers’ motions (e.g. jumps) and converts it into electricity to power the lights (maybe even the sound system?) of the respective club. In the last room, the day’s choices were summarised on a map of ‘neighbourhoods’ which each represented a possible future that humans could create. The current state of the neighbourhood looked quite unfriendly to me, so I moved on to the ‘merchandise’ which mainly consisted of wind-up gadgets, but also featured postable gardens, recycled paper jewellery, a ‘debatable’ place mat and even a kid’s survival rucksack for the paranoid parent. I was surprised not to find any theme computer games!

Source: Science Museum

After exploring the art installation ‘Listening Post’ (which used live data from internet chatrooms), I ended up in a forest of red plastic strips dangling from the ceiling. I found out that I had just entered ‘Plasticity’. I noticed that I had gone into the exhibition from the wrong end, starting straight into the future of plastics, but then I thought that this was more than appropriate…
Plastics, mutable matter par excellence, proved to be much more inspiring than the Survial exhibition – probably because it was more adult-friendly (and free!). The first thing I literally bumped into was ‘Echo’, a waxy blob-shaped thingie that was supposed to respond to your movements – or maybe in the near future (it refused to interact with me – or it probably sensed correctly that I was fairly tired that day!). ‘Echo’ took the concept of ‘responsive materials’ (the title of the section it was in) to extremes by suggesting a future emotional relationship / symbiosis with plastics: in the future plastics will no longer be cheap, disposable items, but rather the opposite - ‘precious, sophisticated materials’ that ‘no-one would dream of throwing them away.’ A strong degree of dependency is implicated in this relationship: if your ‘Echo’ - your responding Other that you have had since around birth – is taken away from you, not only would your ‘sculptural diary’ be lost, but a piece of you. Somehow the idea and texture of Echo reminded me of Stanislaw Lem’s ocean in his novel ‘Solaris’. (More information on Echo can be found in this lady’s portfolio.)

Source: Science Museum

The remaining exhibits were no less exciting (excitingly disturbing?). I am curious how things such as ‘plastic blood’, semi-conducting plastics (‘organic electronics’), solar-power plastics, morphing vehicles, plastic home printers (‘create your own low cost plastic items’), ‘plant plastics’ and recycling services will develop in the future. When I still studied design, I was very interested in so-called ‘eco plastics’, and I am pleased to see that some biodegradable/compostable products have now been introduced as supermarket packaging or bin liners (although so far only for a very limited number of ‘high end’ products and probably at a fairly high energy cost). Unfortunately it was almost closing time, so I got shooed out by some museum people while quickly skimming through the plastics’ past (Bakelite!) and present.

Back on my bike (and in the rain!), I went to the Great Hall of City University for some ‘musical matter’. I had been enticed to go by a review of one of the featured composer’s pieces. The latter part read:

‘The piece carries on under the microscope, minuscule ordeals of matter magnified into the domains of audibility, at times scrutinized, it seems, even through a scanning electron microscope, revealing the inherent atomic jitter – and way inside, in the spacious realms inside the circumference of madly circling electrons: a wonderful veil of shadowy Arabian music; a touch of Om Kalsoum and Farid El Atrache inside the dreamy states at the core of matter…’

I’m so predictable, but that sold it to me! Another composer on the bill had an audible ‘Multiverse’ on offer, so one more reason to go! Having been involved in making electro-acoustic for a long time, I kind of knew what to expect (and what reviewers of this kind of music are like…), but because I had ‘matter’ in my head and not ‘composition’ that night, I noticed consciously for the first time how materials are present in and communicated through sound. I could clearly hear ‘metal’, ‘wood’ and ‘feathers’, but also attributes such as ‘furriness’, ‘slipperiness’, ‘wetness’, and see what I heard in my ‘mind’s eye’. After the concert, my stomach reminded me that while I had matter in the brain, I had forgotten to put it into other parts of my body, so I cycled home to remedy this ASAP.

As I went from London to Switzerland by train, I got to stop in Paris for a while. On the way to my friend’s place I saw a poster on the underground announcing a new exhibition at the Science Museum in Paris on – you won’t believe it – MATTER! So instead of munching my way through several heavenly patisseries with view onto the Seine - like one should do in Paris - I diligently obeyed the call of ‘matter’ to discover how ‘the French’ portray it in these particular surroundings (yes, I do regret not eating the pastries).

The museum is part of the Parc de la Villette, which is a wacky place worth seeing in itself. I once visited it as part of a comparative study of green spaces in the city and was perplexed by its design and ambience. The museum building is a lot tamer (apart from maybe the big silver globe that is their planetarium) – maybe this is a deliberate understatement to not distract from the wondrous inside.

At the ticket booth I managed to obtain a student discount despite being ‘too old’ to get a discount (thanks ;)), so with enough money left for some madeleines and a drink I embarked on my mission to the first floor. On entering the exhibition level, I first noticed some plants that were arranged as if they were running a visitor information stall. Fantastic! Interestingly, the theme of a lively non-human world continued throughout all exhibitions that I visit. I first went through the portal that lead me to ‘Humans and Genes’ which talked a lot about the role of luck and nature’s creativity in evolution, the various activities molecules participate in to create life, and our ‘dynamic world within’ (I love that phrase!) that developed out of an inconspicuous ‘broth of bacteria’ 4 billion years ago. Unfortunately, quite a few interactive exhibits did not work, but I still got to symbolically experience the wondrous worlds of cytoplasm (‘molecular breeding ground’), our own internal ecosystem (Pierre Sonigo makes a thought-provoking comparison of our body to a forest rather than a machine), and, last but not least, bioethics.

Getting too impatient to see the ‘main’ exhibition, I just quickly walked through the exhibition on convergence - twiddling a few knobs here and there - which represented different opinions on the topic in verbal or material form (through design objects). Sadly, this cute little bunny-bot was not in a very convergent mood - in my presence at least. Anyone had more luck?

After a seeming eternity, I entered ‘The Great Story of the Universe’. The ‘story’ began with the questions ‘Where does matter come from?’ and ‘What is the history of matter?’
The first exhibits were tables with ‘talking’ rocks – when you touched them, they told you what they knew and remembered about the universe. This seemed like a great way of illustrating how inanimate things hold memories of events and can communicate them, thus contributing to our research. Taking this idea of the active inorganic further, there even was a ‘dance of the continents’ display.

The next question was phrased: ‘Earth recycles matter, but does not create it – what do we owe to meteorites?’ From there, the displays quickly moved towards galaxies, dark matter (‘must all matter be luminous?’) and ‘matter before the stars’ (I loved the mental images of a ‘leopard spotted universe’ and a ‘lumpy soup’). My favourite sentence was: ‘The universe seems to be full of things we can’t see but that influence us’ (even as a non-scientist I always had the feeling this was the case! ;D). Displays alternated with interactive installations and films - the latter you could watch from super-comfy bean-bag-type diwans, which was exactly what I needed at the time! I discussed some of the things which were not entirely clear to me with a French hobby astronomer who spoke very good English. He moved on soon as he was extremely curious about the museum’s exhibits on relativity and other mathematics. I followed after a longer struggle of separating myself from the bean bag.
Upstairs was, indeed, a section on theoretical physics and – particles! Amazingly, there were a lot of interactive things you could do there – from quizzes to ‘proper’ experiments. Knowing most experiments from my physics classes, I spent a lot of time checking up on the latest results from the ‘particle hunters’ around the world, and reading contrasting quotes from different physicists (and non-physicists – or have I missed something? - such as Woody Allen) that were on the walls. In case anyone wants to know what Woody Allen says about physics:

‘It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light and certainly not desirable as one’s hat keeps blowing off.’

A great read was also Raymond Devos’ (another non-physicist) idea of antimatter: ‘Anti-matter is a hole with nothing around it.’ You could find out if this ‘hypothesis’ was true in the attached ‘antimatter game’. The game, in fact, surprised me with somewhat unexpected comparison with quantum objects and platypuses (‘quantum objects are the platypuses of classical physics’), although I dimly remember reading strange things about platypuses a few year ago…

From the Big Bang I suddenly found myself three floors below surrounded by lots of children waiting for a screening about the inventor of the ‘Big Blank’. Following a loudspeaker announcement, I had dared to enter a bastion of ‘Shadokology’! For those, who don’t know the ‘Shadoks’, they are part of a surreal cartooniverse brought to life exactly 40 year ago by a gentleman named Jacques Rouxel. In their two-dimensional world, the bird-like Shadoks have a much simpler theory of the universe before the Big Bang: ‘In the beginning, everything was cosmic.’ In the persona of their chief researcher, the great Professor Shadoko, Rouxel pokes fun at logic, rationality and our ‘laws of nature’ (particularly gravity) with political subtext. For instance, when the Shadoks finally manage to travel to Earth, it is so hostile to them that they decide to ‘reorganise it scientifically so that the planet is more convenient for them’.

Rebelling in their own ways against the intended education, the Parisian kids were not interested in the Shadoks as a metaphor (despite the desperate explanation attempts of the museum staff), but rather in the birds’ squeaky voices and the ‘violent’ scenes where the birds, in true slapstick style, hit each other over the head with hammers. Adults are just too weird and take the fun out of everything. I involuntarily managed to bring back some fun by asking a question in my dodgy French, which they found, to the further embarrassment of the ‘native’ adults, hilarious. My ‘outing’ as a non-francophone person attracted some post-event conversation with the staff (and Jacques Rouxel’s wife who was present) who were curious why I was interested in the Shadoks. I tried to explain how their imagery and sense of logic speaks to me despite my non-existing mastery of French (‘excuse my French’ takes on a whole new meaning). They kindly pointed out some screens dotted around the education resource centre to me on which I had the opportunity to watch about a dozen episodes (they each are only about 2 minutes long) of ’shadokology’ before my mind warped and the museum closed its doors for the day.

It’s my first hour in Geneva. After checking out that the CERN Open Day really is happening and not a fabrication of my wishful thinking, I’m strolling into the next best bookshop to see whether they have any books by Michel Serres that have not been translated into English yet. You can imagine my surprise when - I’m just about to walk through the door - I am greeted by the following poster:

For a moment, I am frozen – is this really happening? Is this some weird form of telepathy?! Spooky… A few seconds later, I am ‘in there’ checking out what this poster is all about - probably he wrote a new book. On closer examination I find out that Michel Serres is going to give a talk in this very space in a just few days! What a fantastic coincidence! Is this a wink of fate to tell me: hey, your project may be delayed by tons of red tape, but you will meet one of the people who continues to inspire it/you?

I have to digest this first, so I wander upstairs to the philosophy section. To my further luck, a friendly librarian knows all about Michel Serres’ work and explains a few things to the improperly initiated ‘anglo-allemande’. After some naughtiness involving my credit card and a very potato-heavy meal (read: fries, one of the few affordable vegetarian options in Geneva apart from specially prepared bacon-free roestis with fried eggs), I go back to the youth hostel to find out – via internet - if Monsieur Serres will be at other any other convenient places, as I would have to leave for London before his Geneva date. I am, again, lucky (sort of, as I had to prolong my stay by one day), as I find a public debate at a theatre in Lausanne - which was where I met Michel Serres. Of course, I could not talk to him – after 5 days of (not) sleeping at a youth hostel, not eating properly and acquiring sunburns from falling asleep in random places around Lake Geneva during the daytime, only my first sentence in French remained with me: Je m’appelle Angela. Which is all he needed to know to sign my copy of his book! Even my carefully phrased explanation for being there (‘J’aime vos salades’ - speaking both as an appreciative cook and an appreciative researcher) did not surface, but what the heck, I was there to listen to him, not the other way round! ;)

The debate started sufficiently weird: a man looking like Michel Foucault (if he’d had the chance to age) and another man, looking like Michel Serres walked in and sat down together in the audience (greetings from a parallel universe?). After a while the presenter announced that there had been a train derailment on the same line that Michel Serres had taken. Quickly, he added that the philosopher was not in the affected train, but would be delayed by approximately three quarters of an hour. Phew! Relieved, everybody got up again to have some more drinks. I chatted to a few people about Michel Serres, at least as much as my rusty French allowed me to. I was curious how people of the francophone world perceived him and what made them come to the debate. Most people answered that they had read about this event in their local newspaper and were curious. The lady sitting next to me even cut out the article and brought it along. She explained that the person who wrote the article would also be tonight’s presenter. About an hour later, we were ushered into the auditorium again, and there he was, Michel Serres, joking with the audience and the presenter about ‘his’ derailment: ‘Did I get derailed? Perhaps, I also got a bit derailed, I don’t know…’ Then he went straight into talking about his latest book, ‘Le Mal Propre’, which is about pollution. He started by sort-of-responding to he first chapter in the book, entitled ‘Urin, Manure, Blood, Sperm’: ‘So why does a philosopher occupy himself with urine, you may ask’. He explained that as a philosopher, he is not interested in how we pollute – that is not enough for him – but why we pollute. Territorial markings evidently helped him think it through. In the book, Serres distinguishes between hard and soft pollution, which he both sees as forms of appropriation (and vice versa). Examples for hard pollution are industry effluents or car fumes. Examples for soft pollution are advertising, branding, loudspeaker announcements and, I would suggest, gene patenting. If you have to face the billboard bombardment and endless loudspeaker announcements on the tube everyday, you’ll know what he means about pollution. Serres acknowledges, however, that appropriation may also have positive effects – in some (rare?) cases.

Throughout his talk, Serres drew on many historical examples (or his own historical theories) as well as liguistics, and it felt, not necessarily to support his points, but to illustrate them in a manner which allows us to see them from his perspective (there is a difference, I believe). What I like about all of his work (well, what I have read so far) is the way he provides me with a multitude of mental images, some of which morph according to the angles he chooses to approach his subject with - or according to the way I morph these images myself. So, if you are a very visual thinker, too, you might find yourself in the same situation: you might not necessarily agree with what he writes or says, but you might suddenly have some tiger stripes glued to your mental image of pollution (or a nike symbol sprayed across it), and this is something that might lead you to change your image altogether (green stripes?) – not necessarily into this direction, but another. Or you might decide to banish these stripes onto a mental asteroid of your choice and reinforce your old pollution-sphere. Enough visual thinking… Has anyone else had similar experiences reading his work? Anyway…

Towards the end, Michel Serres talked about his ‘utopia’: that he would like to see an independent body representing the four elements (water, air, fire, earth) plus the ‘living/life’, instead of meetings of people just representing their nations’ interests, adding ‘I believe that in history there had not been progress without utopias’. A Q&A session followed. A young girl got up and asked the first question – I was very impressed! Her question was about the environment (could not understand all of it), and Michel Serres gave her an example from the local environment that illustrated his answer. Two questions later, a man (who sounded a bit drunk) made people gasp and laugh, because he accused Serres of diverting from his path of a philosopher of science to become, as far as I understood, an eco-warrior-type anarchist (I think the word militant was in there somewhere), and also asked him why he had written a book like his last one. Serres defended himself by saying that the word ‘ecology’ was not in any of his books and that this book dealt with ‘philosophy of right’. I thought it was quite amusing that somebody accused a philosopher of ‘daring’ to talk about worldly issues! How dare a philosopher reflect on what is happening around us! ;) Another gentleman tried to provoke Serres by accusing him of not practising what he preaches: after all, he is drinking from a bottle of branded water. So now the philosopher is not alert enough about his closer surroundings! Altogether, there was a nice variety of questions, ranging from the aforementioned polemic attacks to worries about immigrants being portrayed as ‘pollutants’ in the media, emotional borders and what Serrres means by ‘lieu miserable’ at the end of his book.

Unfortunately, at that point, my ability to think any more French had started to leave me, and my much neglected stomach was screaming for attention. Luckily, nobody thought of any more questions, so I could dig out my emergency liquorice bar and chill out in the foyer, thinking ‘thank you for the salad’!

A friend just sent me an article about Nanotechnology from the Strange Horizons Web-Zine (thanks, Dave!), which provoked this Philip K. Dick-inspired title question. In this article, a somewhat tragi-comical speculation is made, namely, that the only people who know about nanotechnology might be science fiction readers, as the rest of the public is not given any information about it. An often cited reason for the lack of public information is the fear of repeat performance of the mass-scale genetic engineering rejection. A case is also made for just letting the public know ‘whether it’s good or bad’ instead of engaging them with the subject in a more detailed way (as if that would work!). In connection with the hundreds of nano products already on the market, the author concludes, ‘nanotech might possibly be the quietest technological revolution ever’.

The article not only made me think about my own work, but also of the book I read on my recent trip - a science fiction novel called ‘Aristoi’ by Walter Jon Williams (from 1992). It is set in a far Earth future, after Earth got destroyed through the misbehaviour of humans and build a-new again. In William’s society, any sort of molecular and atomic engineering sees wide-spread use, but is only really handled by a group of selected individuals, the ruling class of the ‘Aristoi’. Through the application of new technologies, the Aristoi are near-god like and some of them are even worshipped as gods. They create the populations of their respective domains by selecting the most beneficial genes, so that the inhabitants are non-aggressive, intelligent and healthy. Sometimes, they take the liberty to create fanciful individuals for specific (e.g. artistic) purposes, e.g. a group of opera singers with distinct vocal folds. They build worlds and whole star systems with the help of nanotechnology and also experiment with it (which occasionally results in ‘mataglap’ accidents). Central to this book are the questions ‘what is human?’ and ‘what is ethical behaviour’, and nanotechnology plays a huge role in defining the super-human identity of the Aristoi. When a group of rebel Aristoi plunges a part of society they are responsible for back into the Middle Ages, a war breaks out between the conspirators and the Aristoi who accuse them of reducing their vulnerable protégés to ‘mere humans’.

Now while this scenario does not reflect the situation on our Earth (one should hope?) and may even appear far fetched or silly (to non-SciFi readers at least), it illustrates how science fiction readers are already confronting questions (about ethics, responsibility, ‘what is natural?’ etc) that relate to nanotechnology. In the UK, a few experiments have been made to engage people with the subject, namely the NanoJury UK and the Demos Nanodialogues, which are both promoting ‘upstream engagement’. I hope there will be more to come.

The CERN globe

After inadvertently exploring the skies in hot air balloons and cable cars the day before (thanks for the free ride, Mr. Balloon Man!), a certain inhabitant of South London (living in reasonably close distance from Wimbledon Common) felt that it was more than appropriate to spend the day underground at CERN…

The Open Day was supposed to start around 9pm, so I got up around 5:30, partly due to my snoring and sleep-walking room-mates at the youth hostel, to be there at least two hours early (no, I did not have a beach towel on me…). According to the website, ‘only’ 15,000 people would be allowed underground (in the end more than 50,000 people turned up!), so if all of Geneva plus its surrounding towns and villages plus all the visitors from abroad were moving their atoms into the same direction, I’d better be there before everyone else… The plan was good – the reality wasn’t. On the other hand, the trip became a whole lot more adventurous!

CERN physicist can calculate everything but…

At breakfast, I met a German physicist who also wanted to go to CERN. Initially I had wanted to see the ATLAS detector at Meyrin, but he warned that the main base would probably be too crowded. So we decided to visit the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment and the tunnel at Cessy. At the bus station, we asked the driver whether he was going to the Cessy shuttle bus point, and he answered ‘yes’. During the ride, however, he changed his mind and dumped us in the middle of nowhere with the comment: ‘I’m not going there on Sundays’. So there we were – a tiny village (I think it was (near?) Ferney-Voltaire) on a Sunday morning with no public transport, no taxis and not even a police station open (the telephone box did not work either). After running around to find out if at least a bakery was open which could supply us not only with edible survival rations, but maybe also with taxi numbers, I saw an estate car which looked a bit like a London minicab. I waved my arms around manically to stop it, and it really did stop! Was our mission saved?

What people get up to before 9am in the morning…

The car driver was, against our expectations, not a cabbie, but a ‘Brit’ nevertheless – and he volunteered to take us to the shuttle bus point for Cessy! (Thank you!!) At the shuttle bus point we met our next challenge: much more people than buses were there. Luckily, the second bus stopped and opened its doors right in front of us, so we arrived at Cessy reasonably early. As you can see in the picture, others had arrived early, too (as it seemed, a mixture of physicists from all over the world and local people who were interested in ‘what they were living on top of’), so by the time we got to the ticket stall, all the tickets for the tunnel had gone, and few tickets for the CMS experiment were remaining (we only then found out these were two separate things). Specific times were attached to the visits, which resulted in a great deal of half distressed, half entertaining bargaining activity amongst the visitors (somehow we ended up with a ticket for the tunnel as well as the CMS experiment). I envied the people with the ‘press’ armbands and was seriously considering smuggling myself in as a journalist – after all, isn’t blogging a form of journalism?! ;)

While waiting for my turns, I had many opportunities to talk to other visitors as well as to CERN staff, e.g. about the ‘artwork corner’ or the different kinds of hands-on activities that were offered during the day. I received an interesting explanation from a Dutch scientist of the difference between Newtonian and quantum physics (‘in the Newtonian Model, when you smash two things together, they bounce off each other or break – in quantum physics, when you smash two things together, you get a banana’) and listened to the explanations of a ‘supercool’ physicist (with tinted glasses!) at the ‘Ask A Scientist’ point. I also found out that CERN scientists mostly go underground for ‘sight-seeing’, too, as they tend to work overground, that the set-up in the tunnel can be guaranteed a precision of 0.1 mm on 27 km (!), and that each experiment has a rugby team associated with it (they were having a match that day). Colliding physicists – interesting!

Generally, I gained the impression that the people I talked to who live on or near the CERN site feel like a community – regardless of whether they work at CERN or don’t. There was a distinct, almost utopian spirit about them that I found fascinating. It seemed as if CERN’s tunnel ring was more than just a physics experiment and was binding people together. Some people even described themselves as ‘truly European’. A certain CERN intoxication and cheerfulness affected everybody regardless of where they came from. This was materially noticeable in the hive surrounding the souvenir stall where the superconductor ‘relic’ keyrings (‘take home a piece of CERN’) were sold out practically within the first hour and new key rings had to be delivered from the main site. Lots of anecdotes were shared among the visitors about their relationship with CERN and their reasons for attending the Open Day.

The CMS experiment at CERN

Finally, it was time to see the CMS experiment. We all received a red hardhat (you could buy orange ones as a souvenir at the shop!) and were whisked into a lift that would have been quite spacious if there had not been about 24 other people in it. Underground, the CMS detector awaited us. Rather than looking like something out of an H.R. Giger painting, it looked more like an oversized electromagnet with lots of integrated circuitboards – which probably isn’t too far from what it is (here, you have a social scientist speaking ;)). The detector was extremely colourful and had quite a few tags on it telling you the origin of the respective components. A lot of people could not believe the scale of the detectors needed to find particles whose tiny size (if you can call it that) could hardly be imagined. The scientist who explained everything to us (in French) had to hurry us quite quickly through the site, because so many people wanted to see it. When somebody asked about costs, she told us that not the big things are the expensive part of the experiment, but the small things (e.g. crystals). A few people living near the site asked lots of questions about possible radiation emissions and other phenomena that could be a danger for them.

When our time was up we ascended again and gave up our hardhats to the next group. I was just in time to witness an argument between a CERN physicist and a visiting physicist about the experiment to come. The CERN physicist argued that ‘everything is predicted, each part is tested’ and that the real problem will not be a technical fault or software bug, but the interpretation of the results. The other physicist remained sceptical: ‘I have never seen anything without bugs!’ When they parted (on friendly terms) I went over to the queue for the tunnel, which was near some coffee machines (= people accelerators?). After getting a ticket through a combination of luck and cunning on somebody else’s part (thanks!!), I was able to descend once more (not only morally…). In the much smaller lift, a woman joked if the accompanying physicist could talk a bit slower because she is blonde!

The tunnel at CERN

The descent strongly reminded me of the time I visited the National Mining Museum near Wakefield, only that the feeling in this part of CERN was infinitely more weird, which I had not expected at all! My head and my legs felt very funny (in addition to my tiredness and hunger). I was convinced the floor was moving and vibrating, and I could hear a disorientating high-pitched noise. The physicist tells us that this is normal and has to do with claustrophobia. Erm… A few moments later, a child who felt similar symptoms has to be sent up again. I try to hang on, and successfully do so. The tunnel itself was quite a marvel, as a 27 km long experimental set-up should be. Nevertheless, I was glad to get to the surface again. What a trip!

And yet another adventure was to come – travelling to the main site at Meyrin! At the information, I asked if there is a shuttle bus. ‘No,’ is the answer, ‘only to the Cessy carpark’. I further inquired whether it would be possible to get a taxi or a local bus. ‘No, you’ll have to hitch a ride with someone’ was the answer. Great – another attempt at hitch-hiking! Only this time it would be intentional… and without the help of Uma-Thurman-style magic thumbs! Just in case nobody stopped for me, I started walking into the direction of Meyrin (about 10 km away). Fittingly, somewhere near a restaurant called ‘Atlas’ (after the detector?!) yet another British gentleman (and his daughter) stopped to give me a lift - all the way to CERN’s main reception! (Thanks!!).

At Meyrin, so much stuff was going on that I could hardly decide where to go first. I decided to attend two half-hour lectures, one on the internet by a co-creator of the internet himself (where I learned that the idea of the internet was deemed ‘vague but exciting’ at the time of its conception…), and one on dark matter, which drew unexpected parallels with children’s discoveries. Afterwards, I stormed into the refectory and, seeing that not only was there a decent vegetarian dish on the menu (Thanks!!), but also the prices were much more student-friendly that those of Geneva, I caught up with several days lack of calories. Afterwards, I felt re-invigorated enough to confront more information input. My next stop (bumping into my fifth British scientist) was the ‘Microcosm’, CERN’s permanent (partly hands-on) exhibition, which led me to the queue for the Atlas detector. As I had already guessed, there were no more tickets, and I was too exhausted to try to sneak my way in. As I could not find the art exhibition or the people from the ‘improvisation society’, I went to a debate on ‘CERN and the Environment’ in CERN’s cathedral-like ‘Moiré’ Globe. Most questions focused on what had been in the media, e.g. ‘what is more important – finding the Higgs particle or preventing an apocalyptic disaster’, ‘is the magnetic field dangerous’ or ‘should Climate Change not be the preoccupation of so many scientists’. Some people asked questions about experiment results and the scientists themselves – how soon results can be expected and who makes the most interesting discoveries. The latter question was answered with ‘les jeunes’ (the young people). Ah, the recruitment drive! ;) The Open Day ended there, but the discussions continued on the buses and trams into town (thankfully, not another hitch-hiking session).

There is a small BBC clip about the Open Day here.

Penly nuclear power plant, France
Photo © Jürgen Nefzger / Courtesy Galerie François Paviot, Paris

On my first day in Geneva, I heard about a photo exhibition on nuclear power at the Red Cross Museum. Since its conception, nuclear power has been a subject of controversy stemming from a mixture of hope for a solution to our energy problems and fears about the side effects including the production of large quantities of material that can also be used in nuclear bombs. Recently, it has been in the UK media after Blair’s and Brown’s announcement of a ‘nuclear future’ for Britain.

One of my previous projects, ‘Mutation’ had been partly been inspired by a drawing of the artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger of mutated bugs near Chernobyl and other power stations. I found her engagement with the subject very interesting and was very curious how the artists featured in the Red Cross exhibition would portray radioactivity, which is, unless you count its visible release of energy, invisible. As the exhibition was taking place at a peace and human dignity promoting institution, I expected to see graphic images of bomb victims or deformities from the Chernobyl disaster, which was, indeed, the case. However, within this familiar imagery there were many unexpected twists and turns. The most troubling aspect was the temporal closeness of the images: these were not images from the time these disasters happened, but recent images from these sites: ghost towns, socially excluded survivors, their on-going struggle with their deformed and diseased bodies, people returning to contaminated sites to regain a sense of home. There were also very surprising images in this exhibition, for example, those of nuclear plants placed in idyllic landscapes. These illustrated extremely well people’s ambiguous relationship with this method of energy generation. A film about the history and impact of the discovery of radioactivity was also shown, and a diagram illustrating the ‘relationship between energy and armament’ covered the wall of the final room of the exhibition alongside nuclear power related magazine covers from around the world.

I will give a brief summary of my impressions from the photographs, but you can instead visit the online exhibition here.

Sedan Crater, Nevada nuclear test site, United States of America, 1996
Photo © Emmet Gowin / Pace MacGill Galery, New York

According to the leaflet, In-security ‘tells of a scientific journey from the discovery of radioactivity and the developments that followed in the fields of matter, space, energy, health and armament’. It also portrays the way the discovery and utilisation of radioactivity has changed and continues to influence our lives and the face (and substance) of the world. Ten photographers were featured in the exhibition, all of them asking questions about nuclear power with very different approaches.

The exhibition started with the theme of ‘Truth and Consequences’:
Emmet Gowin, a photographer who became fascinated with scarred landscapes after flying over the Hanford Nuclear Reservation shows haunting images of moon-like terrains. Although the series is called ‘Changing the Earth’, Gowin tries to communicate his feeling of irreversibility of these changes. This does not, however, mean for him that the landscape is ‘dead’ - it is ‘always deeply animated from within’.

Next were Mutsumi Tsuda’s unbelievable souvenirs from the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque: key rings of the bombs ‘Little Boy’, ‘Fat Man’ and the aeroplane ‘Enola Gay’ that dropped these bombs. Contrasting with this were Hiromi Tsuchida’s burnt and deformed artefacts from Hiroshima on the opposite wall.

Guillaume Herbaut exposed the daily realities of the survivors of the Nagasaki explosion who have to struggle with long-term diseases, discrimination and psychological trauma. He also documented the effects of Chernobyl on its surrounding population and their transformed relationship with the environment and with each other. It was interesting to see in Ricky Davida-Wood’s contribution that Cuba is taking care of a lot of Chernobyl’s children who cannot afford care in the Ukraine.

Gerd Ludwig communicates his feelings about the disrespect Soviet governments show for human life and the environment. His images of people who have returned to the contaminated zone because they would otherwise feel dislocated are particularly thought-provoking.

Geiger counter registering toxic levels of radiation, Muslyumovo / Chelyabinsk, Russia
Photo © Gerd Ludwig

What follows is the theme of ‘Precautions’, which mainly features images of functioning or ‘retiring’ nuclear plants, and nuclear weapons, such as Nigel Green’s images of the Dungeoness power plant, which tell a story of future-orientated engineering and the human ‘quest for unlimited energy’.

Jürgen Nefzger’s ‘Fluffy Clouds’ series reminded me of the environment of - and the controversy about - the nuclear plant near my home town, Kruemmel, which we visited with our physics class at school. Showing idyllic landscapes with a nuclear power station in their midst, Nefzger leaves plenty of room for mixed reactions.

Paul Shambroom’s aim was to ‘produce a concrete visualization of the hardware of nuclear annihilation’ right after the end of the cold war. At the time he hoped that nuclear weapons would be a thing of the past. The recent use and development of new nuclear weapons seem to have urged him to show this moment of hope.

Peter Goin uncovers the (material) history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the consequences of the rush to produce nuclear bomb fuel.

After internalising this cocktail of images and commentaries, as well as the permanent exhibition about the Red Cross, wars and human rights violations, one can only hope that our ‘nuclear future’ will not shine too brightly…

The temptation proved too great. Ignoring a great deal of seeming rationality, including my current bank balance, I embarked on a quest to the CERN Open Day over the weekend. I made the journey by train having scooped up the last remaining cheap tickets (they come at another price, though: 4am start…), although a bit of hitchhiking, a cable car and a hot air balloon were also involved… and an accidental encounter with the philosopher Michel Serres. I shall report on my exploits during the coming weeks and how they relate to the project, as soon as my internet connection is back up and my photos are developed and scanned (yes, that old-fashioned, and, of course, I had forgotten my flashlight, so let’s hope the photos are not too wiggly due to long exposure times…). Now have to catch up on sleep and paperwork!