Genetologic Research

Leonid Tsvetkov

Remnants of our digital discoveries are being dumped worldwide by the millions. After stripping off some valuable metal parts, the left overs are worthless. So called ‘Motherboards’, the main circuit board of a computer have a short life expectancy since new chips are developed with singularitarian speed*. When exposed to a variety of chemical liquids they become alive again. Never before I’ve seen so much beauty in discarded trash. Oil refineries and skyscrapers surround city grids which are overrun by unknown fungi and bacteria. The Russian artist Leonid Tsvetkov creates landscapes which could become ours in a not so distant future, or as he describes it himself: ‘My work focuses on reshaping cultural waste and exploration of social and physical processes. I am interested in the moments where the hard edge geometry of the city becomes organic or there random activity begins to take a highly organized form’.

(*) Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Nevertheless, proponents of the singularity typically anticipate such an event to precede an “intelligence explosion”, wherein superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds. The term was coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who argues that artificial intelligence, human biological enhancement or brain-computer interfaces could be possible causes of the singularity. The concept is popularized by futurists like Ray Kurzweil and it is expected by proponents to occur around 2045.

Roger Hiorns
Seizure, 2008

In his latest installation, “Seizure”, British artist Roger Hiorns has turned the idea of sculpture inside out. Rather than present a sculpture inside an architectural space, he’s turned every surface of the architectural space into sculpture. Mixing installation art and chemistry, he’s taken an entire abandoned apartment near London’s Elephant & Castle and transformed it into a gemstone. Covering the inside with blue copper sulphate crystals, he’s created an other-worldly, mineralized, glinting mirror of an everyday apartment. Jewels literally glowing from the ceiling and lining the floors…

The scale and production of “Seizure” is ambitious. After reinforcing the walls and ceiling and covering them in plastic sheeting, 80,000 litres of a copper sulphate solution was poured in from a hole in the ceiling. After a few weeks the temperature of the solution fell and the crystals began to grow. The remaining liquid was pumped back out and sent for special chemical recycling.

‘Caves are the earliest forms of dwelling and crystal caves do occur naturally in the form of salt and gypsum caves,’ Roger Hiorns says. ‘And in a way this project is converting a concrete modernist building into a cave. The work isn’t about architecture but there is that element of architectural reversion about it. Plus I am originally from Birmingham, so, for me, being surrounded by concrete is natural.’

Encased in ice-cooled orange suits, scientists explore the Cave of Crystals, discovered a thousand feet (304 meters) below Naica, Mexico, in 2000.

Simon Ruehle
O.T., 2005 (speakers, radio)

Charley Reijnders
Evolution, 2009

Like an old fashioned explorer Charley Reijnders wondered around on her self invented ‘Island of Products’ where a remarkable evolution took place after the disappearance of their human creators. Without any interference the new mechanical species evolved from the discarded mass consumer products of a long gone past. In a sketchbook she tried to capture all this new marvels of evolution.

According to Ray Kurzweil, the line between humans and machines will blur as machines attain human-level intelligence and humans start upgrading themselves with cybernetic implants. These implants will greatly enhance human cognitive and physical abilities, and allow direct interface between humans and machines.

‘Once life takes hold on a planet, we can consider the emergence of technology as inevitable. The ability to expand the reach of one’s physical capabilities, not to mention mental facilities, through technology is clearly useful for survival. Technology has enabled our subspecies to dominate its ecological niche. Technology requires two attributes of its creator: intelligence and the physical ability to manipulate the environment. This ability to use limited resources optimally, is inherently useful for survival, so it is favored. The ability to manipulate the environment is also useful; otherwise an organism is at the mercy of its environment for safety, food, and the satisfaction of its other needs. Sooner or later, an organism is bound to emerge with both attributes.

As technology is the continuation of evolution by other means, it shares the phenomenon of an exponentially quickening pace. The word is derived from the Greek tekhn¯e, which means “craft” or “art,” and logia, which means “the study of.” Thus one interpretation of technology is the study of crafting, in which crafting refers to the shaping of resources for a practical purpose.’ (abstract of Ray Kurzweils ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines’)

When a scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
– Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws of technology

Rinus Van de Velde
Physical Items Themselves Are Not Evidence, 2009

Rinus Van de Velde uses signs as a means to put a recalcitrant reality in order. His starting point is shaped through the world of photographic representation. Having an extensive personal archive of images ranging from (semi)scientific magazines such as the National Geographic to biographies of artists and scientists, these images form a rich source for series of drawings in which the source material is still recognizably present. The resemblance between all these pictures is not so much what they show but how they show it. By using the photographs as material for a drawing and by situating it in a different context by adding text, Van de Velde ignores the facts and creates space to tell a personal story. The aim isn’t to tell the reality behind the photo but to create third degree myth. Many of the photographs that Van de Velde references are part of an ideology that isn’t completely right or which hasn’t survived the test of time: like the deep rooted faith in the myth of the artist as authentic or autonomous, scientific progress or paternal exotism. Instead of dismantling, Van de Velde weaves through text and reciprocally references a new story. The result is a sort of mirror-universe, inhabited by brave alter-egos that map the world around them and function as ideal representatives of the actual artist.

When Suddenly It Hit Me, 2009

Maarten Vanden Eynde
Dip-Stick, 2005

Small wooden sculpture, planed square on one side, the other is inflicted like a burned lump or black tumor, like a stick dipped in dark matter.

Paul Ramirez Jonas
Paper Moon (I Create as I Speak), 2007

Consisting of sheets of paper tiled to represent an image of the moon, upon closer inspection, the design is made up of text that reads, “I Create as I Speak.” A single sheet is removed from the wall and rests on a lectern, with a microphone and a portable amplifier, inviting the viewer to interact with the work. The text plays with words; “I Create as I Speak” translates to ABRACADABRA in the ancient Aramaic language.

Toril Johannessen (with Vilde Salhus Røed)
Large and partly spectacular solar eclipse (08.01.08), seen from a hill between our houses, 2008

Tomás Saraceno
Iridescent Plant Medium with Lamp, 2009

The luminous and roughly human-height Iridescent Plant Medium with Lamp consists of a sphere dressed in a billowing sheath of iridescent foil in a dark room. Thoroughly otherworldly, the orb shivers and cowers in the corner like a specimen from space. NASA, it should be noted, sent plants on early space missions and began experimenting with aeroponics in the late 1990s. One can imagine the possibility of future cosmic plantations, a vision clearly encouraged by Saraceno’s installation.- Based on a text by Erin Rouse -

Sunny Day, Air-Port-City, 2006

As an architect Saraceno has for years been looking into the possibility of using large balloon-like constructions to enable the free circulation of persons and goods across the entire globe.

Martijn Hendriks
Gradually, then suddenly (white version), 2009

Still from a single channel altered video of a 1965 studio performance by Bruce Nauman, 1 min 59 sec

The existence of wormholes, shortcuts through spacetime, is still hotly debated.  Stephen Hawking gave a lecture touching on the possibility and the implications of traversable wormholes.  In theory, they would allow quick travel in space to even the most remote galaxies (you wouldn’t actually be travelling faster than the speed of light, but you would beat light to your destination, because it had to travel all the way around). More baffling still, they would allow time travel too. Hawking stated that if you could travel from one side of the galaxy to the other in a matter of a week or two, you could return through another wormhole, and be back before you started your journey. The theory only allows travel back in time, and only to the moment of the initial creation of the time machine.  Hawking again: a time machine will be built someday, but has not yet been built, so the tourists from the future cannot reach this far back in time.

- Based on a text by Brooke Ballantyne -

Maarten Vanden Eynde
Gravitational Bending, 2010

Even weirder than dark matter—the invisible stuff constituting most of the mass of the universe—is dark energy, a mysterious force pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate. Dark energy has been around for most of the history of the cosmos. “Nine billion years ago, dark energy was already wielding its repulsive influence on the universe,” explains Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Adam Riess. But the repulsion didn’t exceed the force of gravity until 5 billion years ago, when cosmic expansion kicked into high gear and began accelerating.

A pioneering space mission called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) delivered the first accurate account of the overall makeup of the universe. The answer is decidedly strange. Dark energy makes up 73 percent of the universe, dark matter another 23 percent. Atomic matter—everything around us and everything astronomers have ever seen—accounts for just 4  percent.

Comparing images from the Hubble Space Telescope’s high-end cameras with the WMAP heat signature map of the early universe, Riess and his colleagues retraced the growth history of the universe with unprecedented accuracy and depth. “It’s as if you mark the height of a child against a doorframe to measure growth spurts,” Riess says. For reasons as yet unknown, the antigravitational effects of dark energy are greater now than they were in the distant past. One theory, supported by the Hubble data, is that empty space is impregnated with residual energy from the Big Bang. As space expands, so does dark energy, while matter is spread out, weakening the inward pull of gravity.

Based on a text by Alex Stone

Chu Yun
Constellation, 2006

Galaxy made out of LED lights from various devices.

Alicia Framis
Lost Astronaut, 2009

Anish Kapoor
Marsupial, 2006

Anish Kapoor is renowned for his enigmatic sculptural forms that permeate physical and psychological space. Most often, the intention is to engage the viewer, producing awe through their size and simple beauty, evoking mystery through the works’ dark cavities, tactility through their inviting surfaces, and fascination through their reflective facades. Throughout, he has explored what he sees as deep-rooted metaphysical polarities: presence and absence, being and non-being, place and non-place and the solid and the intangible. His most recent works are mirror-like, reflecting or distorting the viewer and surroundings.

Iris, 1998

Turning the World Inside Out II, 1995

In general relativity, the presence of matter (energy density) can curve spacetime, and the path of a light ray will be deflected as a result. This process is called gravitational lensing and in many cases can be described in analogy to the deflection of light by (e.g. glass) lenses in optics. Lensing measures all the mass, in particular the dark matter as well as the luminous matter.

There are ongoing searches to use lensing to find a type of dark matter called MACHOs (massive compact halo objects). Although MACHOs, as dark matter, cannot be seen themselves, if they pass in front of a source (e.g. a star nearby), they can cause the star to become brighter for a while, e.g. days or weeks. This effect has been observed but determinations of the dark matter are not yet conclusive.

Based on a text by Joanne Cohn.

Artist's impression showing the approximate extent of the dark matter halo 
around a large spiral galaxy such as our own (Credit: Jose Wudka)

3D map of the universe's dark matter (Credit: NASA, ESA and R. Massey)

Gravitational lensing caused by dark matter (Credit: NASA)

Dennis Feddersen
Dark Matter #02, 2009

The works of Dennis Feddersen truly occupy space. He experiments with different types of materials. Flexibility is one of the most important criteria for his choice of materials, thus emphasizing the possibilities that may arise during the creative process. He constantly adjusts his flexible sculptures in a series of trials: i.e. he reacts to the surrounding architecture and adapts his sculptures accordingly.

Check this illuminating video about dark matter and gravitational lensing.

Image: Artist’s impression of a neutron star with a powerful magnetic field,
called a Magnetar (Credit: NASA)

Neutron stars are the cold, dense remnants of massive stars that died in fiery supernova explosions. They tend to have masses similar to the sun, but in diameter they would barely stretch 60km. This extreme density makes neutron stars exceptionally good nets for dark matter. For their size and their temperature, they have the best efficiency in capturing WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). Particles up to 100 times smaller than the ones underground experiments are sensitive to could still make a noticeable difference to neutron stars. Hunting for cold stellar corpses near the center of the galaxy or in star clusters could put new limits on the properties of dark matter.

Dark matter and ordinary matter are thought to clump up in some of the same places, like the center of the galaxy or globular clusters of stars. The center of the galaxy is dusty and difficult to observe, and most globular clusters are so far away that a cold, tiny neutron star hiding inside them would be beyond today’s telescopes. The next generation of ultraviolet telescopes could be up to the task.

Astronomer Bob Rutledge of McGill University suggests an alternative approach: Rather than squinting for neutron stars’ dim light, astronomers could find them through ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. When two neutron stars merge, they are expected to throw off massive amounts of these waves, and Earth-based detectors like LIGO are already in place to catch them — although no waves have actually shown up yet.

Based on a text by Lisa Grossman

Katie Paterson
All The Dead Stars, 2009

A map documenting the locations of just under 27,000 dead stars - all that have been recorded and observed by humankind.

Katie Paterson’s artistic practice is multi-disciplinary, cross-medium, and conceptually driven, often exploring landscape by means of technology, and connectivity by way of moonlight, melting glaciers, and dead stars.

History of Darkness, 2010

History of Darkness is a slide archive; a life-long project, it will eventually contain hundreds upon thousands of images of darkness from different times/places in the history of the Universe, spanning billions of years. Each image handwritten with its distance from earth in light years, and arranged from one to infinity.

The Death Star below is a fictional moon-sized space station and superweapon appearing in the Star Wars movies and Expanded Universe.

Dark matter is one of astrophysics’ greatest enigmas. It is thought to be five times more common than visible matter, but there is no proof of what it is made of. Until now, the best evidence for dark matter was that orbital speeds of stars in a galaxy do not fall off with increasing distance from the galaxy’s center, as would seem to be necessary to keep the stars from flying off into space. The fact that the galaxies hold together suggests that unseen mass provides the gravity to hold them together. Some researchers have sought to explain the steady orbital speed with alternative theories of gravity, but it is unlikely that anything other than dark matter can explain the new observations.

Most cosmologists are convinced that the answer lies in physics theory, which predicts the existence of fundamental particles that have not yet been discovered. They are called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs.

Dark matter (blue) passed through nearly unaffected after the head-on galactic
collision of 2006, while visible matter (red) slowed down and spread out. High-
energy electrons captured over Antarctica could reveal the presence of a nearby
but mysterious astrophysical object that's bombarding Earth with cosmic rays,
researchers say. Or the electrons may be the long-awaited physical evidence of
elusive dark matter. Either way, the unusual particles are exciting for astro-
physicists, who say they could someday confirm or deny decades of unproven
theories. (Credit: NASA)

A few exotic particles have been suggested as dark matter ingredients; the Kaluza-Klein particle, the Axion and the Neutralino. The most wanted particle however that might account for the missing matter is the Higgs boson particle, also known as the ‘God-particle’. The existence of the particle is postulated as a means of resolving inconsistencies in current theoretical physics, and attempts are being made to confirm the existence of the particle by experimentation, using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the Tevatron at Fermilab.

The Higgs boson is the only Standard Model particle that has not been observed and is thought to be the mediator of mass. Experimental detection of the Higgs boson would help explain the origin of mass in the universe.

Both deep underground and high in sky scientists are attampting to capture the misterious dark matter particle.

A technique used by the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) detector at the Soudan Mine at Minnesota, US, relies on multiple very cold germanium  and silicon  crystals. The crystals (each about the size of a hockey puck) are cooled to about 50 millikelvins. A layer of metal (aluminium and tungsten) at the surfaces is used to detect a WIMP passing through the crystal.

One of the hocky-puck-size detectors used in the CDMS experiment.

DRIFT I was built by UK and US scientists to search for dark matter. DRIFT I ran between 2001 and 2004, 1.1 kilometres underground in Yorkshire’s Boulby Mine. It did not detect dark-matter particles, but its powerful successors continue the search.

In SNOLAB, a Canadian underground physics laboratory at a depth of 2 km in Sudbury, Ontario, scientists are conducting two experimental programs, LEAP-1 and PICASSO, in order to find the missing WIMPs.

At the Kamioka Observatory, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research a neutrino physics laboratory located underground in the Mozumi Mine of Hida in Gifu Prefecture, Japan, several studies are being carried out to find a WIMP. The particle detector is a cylindrical tank  which contains 3,000 tons of pure water and has about 1,000 50 cm  diameter photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) attached to the inner surface.

Andreas Gursky
Kamiokande, 2007

In 2016 the deepest research station DUSEL will become operational. The Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, or DUSEL  is a major project under consideration by the National Science Foundation. DUSEL will be a series of large laboratories, caverns, and cleanrooms  serving the field of underground science. The main impetus for DUSEL is the study of extremely rare nuclear physics processes, like neutrino scattering and dark matter interactions which can only be studied in the absence of cosmic rays.

(photo: DUSEL)

The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) is a balloon-borne instrument flying in the stratosphere  over Antarctica to measure the energy and composition of cosmic rays. ATIC was launched from McMurdo Station for the first time in December 2000 and has since completed three successful flights out of four.

The balloon awaits release  from the launch vehicle / T. Gregory Guzik / Nature. 

In 2008 the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope (GLAST) was launched into space in order to look for signs of new laws of physics and what composes the mysterious dark matter. This mision should complement the data coming from the Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics (PAMELA) which was launched in 2006.

By the end of 2010, despite all the efforts, the mystery of the dark matter in the universe remains unsolved.

(Photo: NASA)

Alexandra Mir
The Dream and the Promise, 2009

‘Infinite space within an infinite nothingness. Undefinable spirit within unlimited thought. Icons and insatiable quests. Human curiosity has a need for a context within which to exist. Religion was science as science is now religion. The justification of our lust and thrust for the infinite, away from our sensory paradise, comparable to the search for the deepest recesses of our minds, are both ways of seeking the answers to creation, purpose and demise. Religion, as a system of control, has come close to its great rival throughout history – the laws of physics that govern our universe. ‘When will miracles cease?’ – The modes of technology that we produce are ingenious to the children of earth but woefully inadequate adaptations of our unlimited imagination. ‘Why are we here?’ – Spiritual answers are equally unsatisfactory compared to the power of such simple questions. The answer may lie in convergence. Technology may have to wait for the power of the human brain to fully develop its (super)natural abilities. Will the technologies that are then produced be miraculous in that they may not require material substance to work but a faith, a belief in laws of physics so subtle than matter itself cannot withstand their logic? Will they be based in technology so discreet that it will be indistinguishable from the very fabric of the universe and all that is created within it? When we look at science and religion, are we looking at the same technology at different levels of evolution? Is humankind always to be polarised and thus paralysed?’ - Mark Baker -

The Large Hedron Collider

Photo: Maximilien Brice, CERN

If you were to dig a hole 300 feet straight down from the center of the charming French village of Crozet, you’d pop into a setting that calls to mind the subterranean lair of one of those James Bond villains. A garishly lit tunnel ten feet in diameter curves away into the distance, interrupted every few miles by lofty chambers crammed with heavy steel structures, cables, pipes, wires, magnets, tubes, shafts, catwalks, and enigmatic gizmos.

This technological netherworld is one very big scientific instrument, specifically, a particle accelerator-an atomic peashooter more powerful than any ever built. It’s called the Large Hadron Collider, and its purpose is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe is made of; in other words, to get to the very bottom of things.

There’s one puzzle piece in particular that physicists hope to pick out of the debris from the LHC’s high-energy collisions. Some call it the God particle.

The preferred name for the God particle among physicists is the Higgs boson, or the Higgs particle, or simply the Higgs, in honor of the University of Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed its existence more than 40 years ago. Most physicists believe that there must be a Higgs field that pervades all space; the Higgs particle would be the carrier of the field and would interact with other particles, sort of the way a Jedi knight in Star Wars is the carrier of the “force.” The Higgs is a crucial part of the standard model of particle physics—but no one’s ever found it. - Joel Achenbach -

Damián Ortega
Controller of the Universe, 2007

Damián Ortega’s Controller of the Universe, a series of found hand tools suspended in mid air, is a site of danger and otherworldliness. As if in mid explosion emanating from a center, it appears as though a force of nature has frozen them in time and space.

Cosmic Things, 2002