ALONG WITH FOG, WATER, FIRE AND SAND

Ned Kahn crosses between art, architecture and science to build installations that exploit and help explain the turbulence of nature, reports Evgeny Morozov in this third and final dispatch from the Louisville Idea Festival...

Ned Kahn had a hard time deciding what to do after graduating college in the early 1980s. He was torn between science and arts. He went for science and joined the Explotarorium in San Francisco, a facility promoting ways to combine scientific knowledge and educational aims with technological expertise, where he was an apprentice to Frank Oppenheimer, brother of the famous physicist. He began exploring his own ideas of using artistic installations and architectural features to improve our understanding of nature.

Talking at the Idea Festival on Saturday, he says he is fascinated with turbulence patterns, their characteristics and formation. Chaos physics has been another strong influence: he spent a lot of time with scientists in this field in the 1990s. It’s next to impossible to describe his projects with words, but his online portfolio has some terrific videos, and it starts by grouping his works into four parts, based on the substance: fog, water, fire/light, wind, sand.

Here's a description of “Encircled Stream--Founders Court, Seattle Center, Seattle, Washington. 1995"

As water spirals into the basin, a turbulent vortex is created. After a few minutes, the water shuts off and the vortex becomes calmer and as smooth as glass. Waves spiraling out of the center of the whirlpool create the illusion that the vortex has begun to spin in the opposite direction. The process is quite complex and different each time. The fountain is encircled by a series of spiral-shaped granite benches that invite people to sit and observe. The spiral motif is reflected in paving patterns which swirl out from the fountain and flow throughout the plaza.

Or try “Technorama Facade--Technorama, The Swiss Science Center, Winterthur, Switzerland. 2002"

In 2002, Ned Kahn worked with the staff of Technorama, the major science center in Switzerland, and their architects, Durig and Rami, to create a facade for the building which is composed of thousands of aluminum panels that move in the air currents and reveal the complex patterns of turbulence in the wind. The facade is visible from the large urban plaza in front of the museum.

Kahn’s projects may not be scientifically significant, but they do contribute to our intuitive understanding of how complex natural patterns emerge out of seemingly unrelated processes. By now, probably everyone is familiar with the so-called “butterfly effect”, which says that even small variations in the initial condition of a system may produce large variations in its long-term behaviour (the popular-culture metaphor being that a butterfly in Brazil may cause a tornado in Texas; those with an interest in intelligence/new media applications of this idea, see this excellent CIA paper on the topic).

At least, on the level of popular science, Kahn’s work does the magic trick of explaining how complex some of nature systems are and how many ways there exist to study them. By following Kahn’s work, one can actually see a tornado he sets in motion; one of his pieces of art entitled “Invisible Whirlwinds” was created using fans, curved walls, and the existing ventilation system in the gallery. However, the movements of viewers also altered the air currents, thus modifying the shape of the vortex. Whether it does really happen or not in nature is not that important--after all, it’s art not science; what is important is to recognize the great interdependence that exists not only between all forces of nature, but also between man-made phenomena, like trade or technology.

But there are also other applications to Kahn’s work which many in both the developed and the developing world may find interesting given the rising fascination with sustainable housing. He has a project in Singapore for using rain-powered vortexes as fresh-water gathering systems.

There is more to Kahn’s work than just practical focus on sustainability. It has a strong spiritual component. He has been a Buddhist most of his working life and this does seem to have a visible impact on the overall contemplative philosophy of his works, no matter how complex.

Kahn’s approach to project work is also quite interesting. His design process builds heavily on trial and error (or what he prefers to call “error-error”). He trolls through junk yards, finds interesting things, and experiments with them. Some of them evolve with an idea in mind, but many just appear spontaneously. Many projects fail at an early stage.

Talking about his equipment and source materials, Kahn recalls how he was once ordering so much weird industrial stuff from 3M that their salesman got curious and asked what Kahn actually does with all of this. When Kahn sent in a few videos of his works, 3M were thrilled. They still send him huge boxes of surplus materials.