Within the domain of art, mental images of the infinitely small, invisible atomic world are conceptualised and internalised by artists—then made manifest in the classical physical world. A physical experience that is materialised—transmitting a sensation for the observer to enter.  For early twentieth century physicists, imaging of the atomic world was a complex endeavour that was subject to their preconceptions and archetypes. Once mental images had been created by the physicists as diagrams, they required substantiation by mathematicians—­­then to be proven by engineers. The distinction between the two fields, art and science, is challenging to reconcile in terms of their intentionality.

From the turn of the twentieth century artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Umberto Boccioni, Hilma af Klint and Roberto Matta had diverse interests that were not just restricted to visualising the atomic world. Their growing awareeness of the complexity of the infinitely small, in part, led to abstract art when artists such as these struggled to conceive non-figurative expressions of the atomic world.

My initial ‘nano-art’ research project was Midas 2002-2007 followed by Nanoessence 2008-2010. These projects examined spatial boundaries, dimensions, and life at a sub-cellular level, within the human context. The humanist discourse concerning life is challenged by nanotechnological research that brings into question concepts of what constitutes aliveness. The Midas and Nanoessence installations are based on physical biological material experiments from data gathered as part of a residency at SymbioticA, (Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western Australia) and the Nanochemistry Research Institute, (NRI) Curtin University of Technology.

In the nanoart project Midas I used cultured skin cells as a visual metaphor for exploring how much of us becomes part of the world around us when we touch. In the installation semi-autonomous self-organizing nanobots affect the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) imaging of the skin cell. The Midas project references the fabled Midas, King of Phrygia to whom Dionysus gave the power of turning all that he touched into gold. The nanobots visually eat the RGB coloured pixels, transmuting them to gold. The Midas project expresses what is transferred when skin touches gold. The installation consisted of a data projection and audio work of the sound of atoms vibrating when skin meets gold.

A genetic algorithm of semi-autonomous self-organizing nanobots affects the cell image. These nanobots are triggered and released by the viewer touching the skin cell replica. The algorithm developed by artist Kevin Raxworthy creates nanobots with their instructions contained in their genes. The nanobots then grow, feed, breed and die based on those instructions and the environment in which they exist. The nanobots gain their energy from eating the red, green and blue colours of the skin cell images, replacing them with the colour gold.

Image of a scanned skin cell using an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) in contact mode with a gold-coated cantilever.
(© Paul Thomas)

Image of the 9-karat-gold–coated metal cast skin cell interface being touched at the Sk-interfaces exhibition, FACT
Liverpool, 2008. (© Paul Thomas)

Still from the Midas installation at the Sk-interfaces exhibition, FACT, Liverpool, 2008. (© Paul Thomas)

The proposal that nanotechnology reshapes nature atom-by-atom stimulates interesting debates as to what may be thought to constitute life, since at an atomic level, the space of the body can be seen as having no boundaries. Midas posed more questions which led me to the Nanoessence (2008) artwork that constructs a physical experience of where life exists at an atomic level. The artwork utilised cultured HaCat skin cells in vitro that were then scanned with an AFM which led to the cells being contaminated to create comparative visual expression of life and death at a nano level. In being immortal, human HaCaT skin cells demonstrate the potential for endless cloning of a single cell. For the Nanoessence project, HaCaT cells cultured with the assistance of SymbioticA were scanned with an AFM (in tapping and force spectroscopy mode) to determine their comparative topographies and atomic vibration. The AFM uses a small, cantilever probe with a pyramidal tip, measuring approximately 10nm. In tapping mode, the probe makes intermittent contact as it is lowered to almost touch the surface of the skin cell. The probe, oscillating in response to a resonance frequency, scans a minuscule area of the skin specimen. In collaboration with Raxworthy twelve image scans of the HaCat cell were layered in Ubiquity software creating a visual envelope between life and death. The images obtained are recorded via a laser beam deflected from the cantilever tip onto a photodiode. The AFM thus constructs a ‘machinic’ understanding of material nanoparticles using touch – in contrast to traditional microscopes, which privilege sight. Indeed, the gathering of scientific data through touch suggests a fundamental challenge to dominant ocular-centric understandings of the world.

Nanoessence is an interactive audio-visual installation where the viewer can interface with the visual and sonic cellular atomic landscape presentation through his/her own breath. Moving through the work their breath stimulates the growing of a cellular automaton. When the breath is ceased, the automaton dies. The work is built on the concept that life must be transmitted, it can’t be grown. In a way, the act of breathing gives the viewer control over life and death. The project attempts to maintain a high quality of authentic research to engage viewers in a purely sensorial, qualitative visual experience mediated by quantitative data.

The auditory component of the Nanoessence installation results from data recorded by the AFM in ‘force spectroscopy’ mode. Vibrations from the HaCaT cell atoms are scanned, initially in vitro and then following injection of ether into the serum. The resulting data is then converted into sound files to create sonic vibrations occurring at a nano level and presented to audiences as a ‘haptic topographic sensation’. Sound thus correlates with the changing topography of the landscape as it evolves in response to visitors’ breathing. The sophisticated artistic environment aims at stimulating critical debate about the implications of nanotechnology in controlling our understanding of life.

The mica substrate confluent with HaCat cells is placed on the Petri dish being assembled for the AFM before the pink serum is placed over the cells. The HaCat cells are then placed under AFM in-vitro to be scanned. (© Paul Thomas)

Paul Thomas collaborating with Kevin Raxworthy, screen capture of twelve HaCat skin cells layered exported into Unity to form an interactive visualisation of envelope between life and death. (© Paul Thomas)

Art in the Age of Nanotechnology, Nanoessence Installation, 2009, John Curtin gallery 2009, image courtesy of the Artists (© Paul Thomas)

Art in the Age of Nanotechnology, Nanoessence Installation, 2009, John Curtin gallery 2009, image courtesy of the Artists (© Paul Thomas)

In 2010 after Nanoessence, I moved to the University of New South Wales, Sydney and became interested in attempting to visualise the submolecular world of quantum phenomena such as the superposition of an electron being developed in Professor Andrea Morello’s lab at the UNSW. The superposition is used to create processing power in the development of quantum computing enabling an electron to be in multiple states at the same time.

Quantum is ubiquitous in our culture appearing, constantly in movies, books, and advertisements and in the general discourse. Paradoxically, quantum data is information or knowledge we have of the subatomic world, of the infinitesimal invisible, intangible, inaudible, inexplicable, and unmeasurable. What happens when an artist utilises and transforms sub-atomic data into something visible, tangible, audible and finite? This transition brings us into the classical world of artists attempting to express the otherwise inexpressible. In the case of quantum art, artists are fundamentally exploring a concept that is at the core of being. What happens when expressing quantum phenomena? Is it transformed into a thing with aesthetic and sensory qualities? It is no longer a world out of reach. It becomes a visual expression, a sensation that can challenge the observer into reshaping, reconfiguring, or expanding their view of the world.

In the artwork Quantum Consciousness, a spare electron is created from joining silicon and phosphorus atoms together. This spare phosphorus electron is used as a qubit. The fundamental unit of quantum information in quantum computing. The interesting element phosphorus is also a chemical found in our brain. To me, this was a way of rethinking human potential for utilising quantum in our own brains. The artwork Quantum Consciousness uses the data from forcing the Qubit to a superposition between north and south, which simulates the firing of a classical bit, which in turn is analogous to thought. In this project an audio recording of me reading to the electron excerpts of Feynman’s 1982 paper that predicted the development of the quantum computer had to be based on quantum phenomena. My voice was converted to a microwave signal that would stimulate, affect and excite an electron to spin. This project delivers an aesthetic and immersive experience that places the viewer inside the virtual superposition of a sub-atomic particle (i.e., its field of probability). This audio-visual experience establishes a metaphor and an indexical tangential link between machine thinking and human thought. I have used photographs I took randomly to reflect glimpses of the world that become in the artwork instances of a superposition firing inside a sphere and positioned by the quantum computer data to appear somewhere between north and south based on the effect of my reading to an electron.

Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology Lab, UNSW. Technology used for the creating a working quantum computer. Photograph (© Paul Thomas)

Left Diagram showing dark grey and light grey lines. The light grey line shows the wiggles in the experiment that are consequences of the voice effecting the path of the superposition of an electron. Right, Paul Thomas collaborating with Kevin Raxworthy, visualising the probability of the spin in the artwork Quantum Consciousness. (© Paul Thomas)

Screen Capture Quantum Consciousness, projected in a dome environment. (© Paul Thomas)

Paul Thomas, Act of Happening, Quantum Studio Act 2, Acrylic on board. 600 x 800, 2018(© Paul Thomas)

In the ‘Quantum Chaos Series,’ digital videos and paintings were an essential part of my processes in attempting to explore the potential of visualising quantum phenomena. The paintings utilise four different laser-cut squeegees, one with teeth 3 mm, 6 mm, 9 mm, and 12 mm apart routed on the edge of each 120 x 900 x 15 mm length of plywood. The squeegees enable the recreation of an analogue reference to the digital grid exploiting the imperfections and irregularities of the painted surface. Each painting is a confluent overlay of gestured brush marks, which are then squeegeed to produce multiple layers. Each layer is then partially erased to expose spaces and qualities that are tangentially linked to revealing liminal spaces between worlds. The artwork transcends the scientist’s diagrams and analogies to reflect an internalised view, a sensation happening faster than thought at infinite speed.

An electron is seen as being analogous to the movement of a spinning top. When a spinning top goes out of its spin cycle, it falls into chaos in the same way an electron in a quantum position is governed by its spin. The series draws from the analogy of the axis of a spinning top that creates a cloud of points that disappear and reappear based on the probability data developed by PhD candidates Serwan Asaad and Vincent Mourik. In the digital artwork, a sorting algorithm developed in collaboration with artist Jan Andruszkiewicz in 2019, utilises speculative quantum data to transform a photographic image. In the artwork, data affects the materiality of photographic images of felt fibres, referencing Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of smooth and striated space.

Quantum Chaos, Photoshop constructed from screen capture images showing the progress of the initial image of felt fibres being processed by speculative quantum chaos algorithm. (© Paul Thomas)

Paul Thomas, Quantum Chaos Series No18, 1200 x 900mm, acrylic on plywood, 2020. (© Paul Thomas)

My artwork endeavours to capture glimpses of a possible realities that leads me to more questions than answers.

……………………………………….

http://visiblespace.com/blog/

All images copyright and courtesy of Paul Thomas

Art, Computing, Creativity, Science