SAiA: Collaborations between scientists and
artists are an interesting possibility in sciencebased arts. What was this experience like for
you as an artist, and what do you think you
ultimately gained?
SM: It’s difficult to communicate in words
(perhaps I can do this through my art) the
stimulation and pleasure of working with scientists. At Rockefeller, Rod was extremely generous in granting me access to his notebooks
and research imagery. I also got to ask countless questions about how ions move through
the body. For the record, they cross cell membranes at a hundred thousand to a million per
second. When you learn facts like that, your
mind is blown. This makes me want to know
more about how this can be true. Fortunately,
in 2002, I caught Rod before he won the Nobel so gaining access, as a non science person,
was available to me. He would make studio
visits where he could look at my response to his
research. As an artist, I was getting my education on the front lines of science and I was
interested in introducing into my art ideas and
images from science before they made it into
text books. So my concept was the viewer could
glean, from my paintings, ideas that were only
available in scientific journals but not to the
general public.
In January 2012, the physicist, Sebastian
White, arranged for me to spend a week at
CERN. While the scientists had not yet determined with statistical certainty the presence
of the Higgs, they knew where they should be
looking when the LHC was to be put back on
line. During that week, 30 stories underground,
I got to visit three out of four experiments
on the LHC—ATLAS, CMS, and ALICE. In
addition I spent time speaking with scientists
at the anti-matter experiment and with their
cosmic ray detectors. One lunch with Sebastian
included the leading theoretical physicists, John
Ellis and my host Luis Alvarez-Gaumé. During
this lunch I got to ask any question imaginable about the Higgs which was answered with
patience and clarity. At one point, I spent two
hours with Luis in front of his notebooks in his
office. That week at CERN was the most exciting imaginable . I gave a lecture to the Theory
Group and had my ideas about art and science
challenged by their questions to me. Later, in
one on one interviews with other members of
the Theory Group more information was collected on understanding about ways to present
particle physics. I looked at the PowerPoint
presentations from John Ellis and downloaded
them to my thumb drive and learned about how
this science gets presented in his lectures and
how I might poach that information for my
own aesthetic purpose.
Of course, what I gained was a vastly richer
understanding of particle physics and it’s importance to our position in the universe. I now
know that we live in the Higgs Field. This gives
me the exciting challenge to present this investigation to a larger audience that would never
have access to these concepts about our subatomic life.
Visit Miller's website at stevemiller.com.
The Atlas detector at CERN with a chalk board from an office of the Theory
Group. Image courtesy of Stever Miller.
SciArt in America December 2013
Want to hear more?
Continue the
conversation with
Steve Miller on
Twitter,
@stevemillerart,
on December 12th,
3pm for a Q&A
hour, hosted in conjunction with
@CPNAS.
#NAStalksArt
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