Календар

"10000 Feathers"
"Mucilaginous omniverse"

Авторы: Эвелина Домнитч и Дмитрий Гелфанд

Ten Thousand Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid
Evelina Domnitch Dmitry Gelfand

A vacuum or semi-vacuum encased within a gravity and temperature sensitive elastic skin – the scenario of an early universe, a soap bubble, and later, that of a biological membrane.  By researching the behavior of soap films, a vast variety of optical, mathematical, thermodynamic and electrochemical discoveries have been made since the time of the Renaissance. One of the earliest means of analogue computing was the soap film calculator (19th century), which tackled geometric problems of minimal surface area. Soap film soft drives are currently being used for blackhole and superstring modeling.
 
In 10000 Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid, Domnitch and Gelfand use laser light to scan the surfaces of nucleating and dissipating soap bubble clusters. Unlike ordinary light, the laser’s focused beam is capable of crawling through the micro and nano structures within a bubble’s skin. When aimed at specific angles, this penetrating light generates a large-scale projection of molecular interactions as well as mind-boggling phenomena of non-linear optics. Bubble behaviors viewed in such proximity evoke the dynamics of living cells (the lipid membranes of which, are direct chemical descendants of soap films). 

At the Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow, researchers Y. Stoilov and A. Startsev have recently discovered that a laser beam traversing a soap film can unexpectedly branch out into micron-thin channels (spatial polariton solitons) that neither diverge from their paths nor interfere with one another upon intersection.  These optical tracks, which serve as light-confining waveguide antennae, are molded and elongated by the laser emission. Presumably, the laser dielectrophoretically maximizes the membrane’s refractive index to the point of internally focusing the light. The system behaves like “a powerful optical computer with a gigantic parallel processor, consisting of billions of laser-guiding cells” (Stoilov; Phys.-Usp 47, 2004). 

In contrast to former soap film explorations by scientists, mathematicians, and artists (the likes of which have included Newton, Chardin, Plateau and Rayleigh to name a few), here, a warped, ‘impossible’ space-time is invented: the laser’s multi-angular paths through numerous bubble surfaces project a dense layering of diverse scales, speeds and vanishing points. The title of the work stems from the Chinese expression, ‘the ten thousand things’, signifying the varifold of cosmic phenomena. Though it may become as thin as a single molecule, all ‘the ten thousand things’ are refracted through the sensitive skin of a soap bubble.
 

MUCILAGINOUS OMNIVERSE

Performance with live video feed
Length: 35 minutes
software by: Bas van Koolwijk and TeZ

Above the surface of upwardly sonicated silicone oil, falling droplets of the same
liquid are suspended by a thin membrane of air, acoustically regenerated underneath
each droplet. Without coalescing for extended periods, these palpitating
spheroids bounce on the air-oil interface. The repeated impact of a bouncing droplet
incites a standing capillary wave that interlocks with the waves of neighboring
droplets. This close-range attractive force can result in the orbital motion of droplet
pairs and clusters. During more stable modes of excitation, self-organizing geometric
rafts emerge in accordance with the closest packing of spheres: the distance
between droplets decreases with increasing frequency, leading to dense lattice formation.
Though seemingly among the most intuitive morphological principles in nature, it
has taken 400 years for a mathematical solution (albeit contestable) to Kepler’s conjecture
about the “tightest possible” lattice of equally sized spheres. Having
adopted an atomistic approach to snowflake symmetry, Kepler imagined microscopic
spheres assembling hexagonally and cubically into a crystal (De Nive Sexangula,
1611). His musings lay dormant until the advents of crystallography, atomic
physics, metamathematics and molecular synthesis. The two sphere-packing structures
asserted by Kepler are quite common throughout the Periodic Table of Elements
and are manifested macroscopically amidst a multiplicity of non-living as
well as living matter.
Like atoms, the soft spheres of suspended silicon oil are associated with a wave
state (a bounce-induced capillary wave) and can infinitesimally change their shape,
especially when squeezed together at the higher range of sonication frequencies.
The emergence of a dense lattice causes individual droplets to don the facetted
form of a fly’s eye as their surface area is forced into the narrow crevices between
the antinodes. Acoustic vibrations transform the medium from a liquid into a noncoalescent
quasi-solid, capable of bouncing, spinning, unfolding into polyhedra
and dividing into cellular structures akin to a foam or a honeycomb.
In the opposite case, during states of maximum sphericity, a floating liquid lens
procures highly unorthodox optical behavior. Usually, when light reaches an interface,
some of it will be reflected and the rest transmitted. However, if the light is
inside of a droplet and is traveling towards the air-liquid interface, there is an angle
at which the light can no longer be transmitted, resulting in total internal reflection.
The trapped beam of light is compelled to bounce around the sphere’s inner
edge, making many millions of circulations and self-interferences before being absorbed.
Since only a fixed quantum number of wavelengths can fit around the
sphere’s circumference, discrete resonances arise, known as whispering gallery
modes. Under such conditions, a levitated droplet is transformed into a powerful
laser cavity.
Through meticulous force field tailoring, the nebulous frontier between macroscopic
and quantum phenomena can be pierced by the naked eye. Ten million
times larger than an atom, a non-coalescing oil droplet is the largest object to
manifest the self-interferential signature of wave-particle duality. When the wave
packet emitted by the droplet interferes with its own reflections, the droplet begins
to drift or “walk” along the wave. “We observe single-particle diffraction and interference
with a classical system. This phenomenon was thought to be reserved to
the quantum scale.” [Physical Review Letters, Y. Couder, E. Fort]
The sensorial demands of processing quantum behavior incite adaptive resonances,
comprising a multidimensional perceptual navigator. Though brains have been
compared to clocks, telegraphs, computers and holograms, they are "not like any
artificial machine. If anything, they are like natural self-organizing processes such
as stars and hurricanes." [Mesoscopic Brain Dynamics, W. Freeman] Occurring on
many different scales of time and space, cascades of standing and traveling waves
outline the adaptively resonating lattice of intercellular communication. These
resonances can be finely tuned through a mesoscopic self-observation system like
Mucilaginous Omniverse, which translates quantum harmonic pattern, phase and
amplitude recognition across the cerebrospinal sea of neuromodulators.

За пiдтримки Samsung.