On some unnamable level, diverse branches of scientific understanding seem to merge toward common hidden answers.
Slideshow:
Material forms require an array of forces, weights, densities, and other qualities – qualities which are inherent to the object as a whole, and a similar array of forces, weights, and densities within each particle that comprises it. All material objects are made of just one thing: atoms. If you could separate the atoms in one object, and put them back together again with extreme precision, you could make another object. Nanotubes and Buckyballs (named after Buckminster Fuller) are atomic-scale, chicken-wire-like mesh cages, whose remarkable properties allow intriguing fundamental science and new technological applications. Found in the soot of burnt carbonaceous material they, like diamond, coal, and graphite, are formed by natural processes. Some structures are made from strings and struts, (like a suspension bridge, or the bones and tendons of living creatures) where every strut is separate, and every cable is pulled taut in such a manner that the structure doesn’t collapse. The tensional integrity of an object or system derived from the balance of tension members, as opposed to compression struts, is its tensegrity, aka: floating cohesion. Squeezed light (photons whose vibrations are constrained relative to normal light) can be manufactured in the laboratory. When light bombards a molecule, a photon may be absorbed, in which case the extra energy causes the molecule’s bonds to vibrate more vigorously. Some of that extra vibrational energy dissipates into the molecule’s surroundings as heat. If the energy is not completely dissipated, the vibrations may align to create and emit a new photon with lower energy and a (usually) longer wavelength; that is, they fluoresce. If you draw a random squiggly line on paper and, at the intersections clarify which part goes over and which goes under, there is, imaginably, a surface contained within your squiggle. A thin wire bent into a twisted but closed curve and dipped into soapy water reveals such a surface. String theorists posit that the fundamental elements of matter aren’t points, but strings, or even surfaces.
Ann Erpino Fine Art 