Creative Turbulence Art Exhibition

Creative Turbulence is an art exhibition that brings together art and science through a collaborative creative process in the form of four unique works of art. By pairing artists with scientists, we are challenging traditional notions of scientific perception, expanding the artists’ access to science, and engaging viewers in a new way of understanding science. The exhibition methodology is based on the underlying nature of experimentation shared by both scientists and artists. The scientific component of Creative Turbulence is based in physics–-working within the fields of fluid dynamics, turbulence, and complex systems. The artistic component of Creative Turbulence is based on existing artistic research and medium specific processes that relate to physics, through the process of making the work or as represented directly in the artistic output itself.

Art Exhibition
Viewing Hours:
Saturday, June 9th, 2:00pm to 5:00 pm
Monday, June 11th, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Tuesday, June 12th, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Wednesday, June 13th, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
Thursday, June 14th, 10:00 am to 9:00 pm
Friday, June 15th, 10:00 am to 9:00 pm
Saturday, June 16th, 12:00 pm to 4:00pm

A variety of artworks will be on display, including:

“Atmospheric Memory” (from artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer in collaboration with NYU Tandon School of Engineering researcher Enrico Fonda and Georgia Tech’s Devesh Ranjan) was inspired by Charles Babbage’s theory that spoken words have an everlasting impact on the universe. Lozano-Hemmer uses vegetable glycerin and glycol to capture the 3D form of air turbulence as it exists the mouth of a volunteer, then created a permanent 3D version of the breath. Lozano-Hemmer displayed another piece in the series at Art Basel in Miami in 2016.

“Collective Motion” (from artist David McLeod in collaboration with NYU Tandon Professor of Mechanical Engineering Maurizio Porfiri) uses state-of-the-art animation software to visualize the behavior of interactive agents that organize themselves in a collective motion. The concept is related to flocking (as birds do) and schooling (as fish do) – and more broadly to non-equilibrium systems undergoing a phase transition. The structured behavior of these active particles bridges the gap between the motion of living things and the motion of inactive matter, such as in classical fluid dynamics.

“Immutable Swell” (from artist and NYU Tandon Integrated Digital Media Lecturer Dana Karwas) is a sculptural representation of an ocean wave as it breaks onto land. She created the artwork by extracting over 500,000 data points from a custom buoy sensor placed in the waters of Cape Cod. This data was combined with her own personal experience of swimming in the ocean to emerge as a complex 3D digital inscription of an ocean wave. By using software and motion analysis to observe the wave from a digital distance, Karwas was able to distill invisible structures in the wave. “Immutable Swell” represents an opportunity for viewers to make a connection to the powerful turbulence and mysterious patterns found in the ocean.

“Nimbus Atlas II” (from artist Berndnaut Smilde) consists of a series of high-definition videos depicting human-made clouds emerging and decomposing in a void. The footage was captured with a high-speed camera, resulting in a slow-motion visualization of how clouds evolve, change shape, and reflect light. (His “indoor clouds” were recognized by Time Magazine as among the “Top Ten Inventions of 2012.”)

Also available for viewing is the work of physicist Daniel P. Lathrop, who pioneered visualization techniques that make it possible to observe the mysteries of quantum fluids – which exhibit quantum mechanical effects at the macroscopic level – with the naked eye. Lathrop collaborated with physicist and NYU Tandon Dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan and used superfluid helium, which flows without friction and exists only near absolute zero.

“The strong visual component of many of the investigations being done in fluid dynamics makes it easy to showcase the results to a lay audience in a compelling and immediate way,” said Fonda, who organized the exhibit and roundtable. “Fluids are a part of everyone’s daily life – from stirring coffee, taking a shower, and applying perfume to flying or driving in various conditions – so everyone has at least an intuitive feel for how fluids behave. I think people find it easier to relate to this work than to other topics in physics, which despite being fascinating are more abstract and seemingly less applicable to their lives.”

The connection between art and turbulence came to public attention in 2004, when NASA released images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys that looked remarkably like the luminescent swirls depicted in Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting “Starry Night.” A multinational team of physicists subsequently explored the relationship between the turbulence
van Gogh depicted and the natural phenomenon of fluid turbulence and found a shockingly precise – and inexplicable – mathematical correlation that continues to confound scientists and art historians today.