Art Meets Aerogel
Ron Baalke
Art Meets Aerogel
Contact: Colleen Sharkey (818) 354-0372
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
July 14, 2003
Louvre...the Sistine Chapel...JPL? There is no doubt that the heavens and
the exploration of space have inspired beautiful art. However, a NASA center
that is associated with science and engineering is not often compared to the
likes of the world's greatest museums in terms of artistic inspiration.
Science and art melded, however, on a tour of JPL when one industrial artist
with a keen eye noticed the creative potential of the truly space-age
material, aerogel. Ordinarily a "no-no" for visitors to touch, April Tsui
has more than handled the ghostly material, she's made it into art.
The so-called "solid blue smoke" earned a record in the 2003 Guinness Book
as the lightest solid in the world and feels like incredibly light
Styrofoam. One form of this extraordinary substance is 99.8 percent air and
0.2 percent silica dioxide (by volume). Aerogel is currently aboard the
Stardust spacecraft, where it will collect and return samples of
interstellar dust grains and particles of comets to Earth. It is also
heading toward the red planet keeping the electronics warm and cozy in the
Mars Exploration Rovers, scheduled to land in January 2004.
While members of the space community see aerogel as an ideal insulator and
sample return device, Tsui, a student at the Art Center College of Design in
Pasadena, sees it as a fascinating medium for art.
"I had heard of aerogel before but it wasn't until I saw it in person that I
was compelled to work with it," she said. "I proposed the idea [of using
aerogel for art] to Dr. Steven Jones, one of two aerogel makers at JPL. He
was very open to trying things."
Jones, accustomed to being approached by industry with designs on aerogel as
part of his technology transfer work, wasn't shocked to hear that Tsui had
her eye on the ghostly matter too. "It's so unique and different from
anything we encounter in our daily lives," Jones said. "It is of interest to
people in general but even more so for an artist because it becomes a medium
for what they want to express."
Using leftover scraps provided by Jones, Tsui has manipulated aerogel in
ways that were never dreamt of by the space community. She has embedded
various objects into it - like pennies and chicken wire - and even used
lasers on it to carve out shapes. The brain she carved from a piece of
aerogel made the April 2003 cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience magazine.
Her work has evolved into a relationship with the California Science Center
near the University of Southern California. On a walk through their air and
space gallery, Tsui noticed the absence of aerogel. Her tenacious
personality, that is so evident just upon meeting her, compelled her to
approach museum curators to gauge their interest in collaborating with her.
Soon, she'll be working with their fabrication department and assisting the
Stardust mission outreach office to illustrate the properties of aerogel in
a way that engages the public.
Clearly unafraid of tackling new challenges, Tsui came into design school
with only limited graphic design experience but quickly learned how to use
complicated machinery to create art. In fact, she believes that her
inexperience was beneficial to the learning process by making her more
imaginative and inventive when fashioning her pieces.
"When I'm excited, it's really hard to stop me and my strengths come from
experimenting," she said. "If I weren't experimental, I wouldn't have ever
approached aerogel."
Tsui describes most of her work as "on the wacky side," and explains that
she likes to use materials and machining techniques in an unusual way to
find her artistic voice.
Her JPL mentor, Jones jokingly calls Tsui's work with aerogel "bootlegging,"
since using it for art was never the motivation for making aerogel. He does
truly feel, however, that any legitimate method of advancing aerogel is
worth trying. In this overlap between science and art, audiences will have
the benefit of both appreciating aerogel's captivating look and learning
about its amazing capabilities. It seems an unconventional artist met just
the right unconventional material.