Scott Mallory
Time Reversal, 2017
3D animation, 4 minutes (alternate versions in VR)

T-Symmetry, 2017
3D animation, 4 minutes (alternate versions in VR)

Much of Mallory’s art practice is informed by physics. Working with metaphor, he sought to push the scientific ideas beyond mere representation or illustration to reflect what he describes as their mystical qualities. The physics concept of Antimatter introduced ideas of resolution, sampling, decay and time reversal. Phenomena happening in forward time can be understood as “matter” and their opposite as “antimatter”; in this way matter and Antimatter operate by different rules. “We have equations and words that start to describe time reversal violations and how the rules change in relation to it. How does a picture of that shape the mind? Can that shape continue to evolve in the mind and create even deeper intuitive understanding of time reversal violations? Can that deeper intuitive grasp then be asserted in the opposite direction and be translated back through the other ‘languages’ of words and then equations to clarify its nature even more?”

SCIENTIST Mike Bowry / Research Area: GRIFFIN

Interaction Log

Studio Process

David Spriggs
Antimatter, 2017
Silkscreen images on layered tempered glass, 50 x 50 x 6 inches

Spriggs has a longstanding interest in the sciences and often works with metaphors to symbolize larger concepts. In Antimatter he was drawn into the idea of opposites working together to become one thing. This is evident in the moving wave-like moiré pattern that served as inspiration. The interference phenomenon occurs when two waves meet while travelling along the same medium, such as when two pebbles are dropped side by side creating waves that interact on the surface of water. On moving around the artwork these waves of interference change with the viewers shifting perspective. Without the viewer’s movement, the artwork remains static. “Creativity requires much effort and deliberation to invent something new that hasn’t existed before, even if it is just a simple idea or vision… Finding creativity is like feeling in the dark and hoping to discover something interesting along the way.”

SCIENTIST Luca Egoriti / Research Area: ISOL Targets

Luca Egoriti drawings

Kate Metten
Triptych Dedicated to the Covariant Formalism for Quantum Field Theory, 2017
1. Zirconium Torus, Ceramic, 14 x 17 x 5 inches
2. Double Walled Composite Rocking Horse, Oil on ceramic, 14 x 17 x 10 inches
3. Altered Black Earth Torus, Oil on ceramic, 14 x 17 x 5 inches

Metten’s work explores the intersections between painting and ceramics using both 2D surfaces and 3D shapes to explore the movement of a particle and Feynman Diagrams. She is interested in the shared connection of a cyclical momentum that is required to complete both the accelerator physics research and her wheel thrown ceramic sculpture. These works each consist of a double-walled wheel thrown toroid, one in its original state, another that is altered into a symmetrical rocking hippocrepiform and a third altered toroid that is painted with oil. This sculptural form is capable of oscillating back and forth; the potential for the sculpture’s movement is a key aspect to the work because it is physics in motion. “The dialogue between artist and physicist was eye opening since our different backgrounds meant that we have different vocabularies and ways of describing similar experiences.”

SCIENTIST Carla Barquest / Research Area: Accelerator Physics

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Evann Siebens
time reversal symmetry, 2017
16mm film loop – Colour + B&W, 8 minutes
Piano Sonata in A flat major by Beethoven, performed by Angela Hewitt
Featuring Pina Bausch the dog
Camera assistance by Sunshine Frère

In time reversal symmetry Siebens uses dance, movement and media to visually exemplify how neutrinos ‘oscillate’ between flavours when they travel. The switch between 16mm colour and 16mm B&W film represents the oscillating dance between matter and Antimatter. Additionally she has played with the concepts of charge-parity symmetry and time-translation symmetry, as seen by mirroring and asymmetry. Artists working with the body and media are referenced, such as Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown and Bruce Nauman; particularly his 1966 film Manipulating the T-Bar. She was also interested in the multiple meanings behind the term ‘time-reversal’ and what that means for the aging technology of 16mm film, as well as the aging female body. “How has matter come to dominate our universe? Is it a matter of an extra dance step for neutrinos? Perhaps the anti-neutrinos will learn new choreography and change the course of time.”

SCIENTIST Mark Scott / Research Area: T2K

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Alana McFarlane
Elizabeth Was Not Sitting In The Room, 2017
Headphones, mp3 player, 3:42 minutes
Text/Image on pvc board, 24 x 30 inches

There is a deep relationship between play and understanding. Working with the first artist in her relay, McFarlane sampled a recording of MacKenzie’s voice reading aloud the Dirac equation used in her works on paper. McFarlane digitally fed the recording into a feedback loop using the reverberation of the physical space of the beam line located at TRIUMF. Grappling with equations, pronunciations, scientific and artist processes and applications (muon spin rotation/relaxation/resonance), the equation becomes abstracted into a composition of oscillating frequencies. Rather than big events, like lockdown alarms for the cyclotron and other seeming spectacles, one might just listen for what is there. Inside a network of inquisitive minds – the contrast of artist mind and scientist mind, their likenesses and differences – influence and reverberation move across and between each other. “Oscillations between a sponge-like nature and that with electrically-charged boundaries proves to be an incredible chamber in which to create.”

SCIENTIST Jess Brewer / Research Area: μSR / G2 Collaboration

Laura Piasta
The hyper-surface of the present blocks past and future light, 2017
Copper and cotton, 14 x 14 x 3.5 inches

TRIUMF Canada’s particle accelerator centre provided the material inspiration for this work where specific materials are employed to conduct research and observe the unobservable. The real and symbolic relationship to the seen and the unseen afforded by sight and light led to the sleeping eye mask. Worn to keep the light out of your eyes while sleeping in bright situations, this object acts as a doorway or curtain to the entrance of sleep and waking states, the conscious and unconscious. Copper has long been used in scientific experimentation for it’s high thermal and electrical conductivity as well as its chemical make up and its material activation are used in this sculpture for these specific reasons. The copper eye mask sits upon a round purple pillow, alluding to graphics sourced from a textbook on particle physics and allowing the visual experience of the weight of the copper eye mask to be revealed. “A copper mask elevates electrical signals to be received by perceptual dream nodes, floating between oscillating muons and perceptions of anti-dream particles.”

SCIENTIST Carla Barquest / Research Area: Accelerator Physics

Interaction Log

Chris Jones
Night (or, looking due North from 48.7959985 -123.4129995; one minute at sunset 19.26 PDT Sept 14, 2017 and one minute at sunrise 06:52 PDT Sept 15, 2017), 2017
Colour transparency film on LED panel, 8 x 9.5 x 40.5 inches

This image is a meditation on ways of knowing that might be common to art and physics. In physics, it is not possible for a researcher to know if an Antimatter particle has been trapped and contained until it is released and disappears with a burst of energy. Photography endures a similar quandary. As a technical process, it records light, but not its absence. This image is a double exposure made on either side of night, with light directionally balanced – half from due East, and half from due West. Within the image is an entire night – we trust. We know it was there, but we also know that we cannot know this darkness in the photograph, as darkness itself. For night, this is an anti-photograph. “We know, but what we know is that we do not know.”

SCIENTIST Carla Barquest / Research Area: Accelerator Physics

Marina Roy
Dirty Clouds, 2017
Shellac, oil and acrylic paint on wood panel, dimensions variable

Roy is interested in reorganizing scientific ideas to aesthetically think through how material continues to disperse and flow. She does this through the matter of paint, mixing oil based into water-based materials to symbolize a world understood according to material particles and waves of energy; the materials we see are the leftovers of billions of years of annihilation. Driven by unconscious and free association she makes the analogy between Antimatter and alchemy, bringing centuries old human history into what is now considered a more exact science, which does its best to do away with esoteric mysteries. Thinking about how the origins of the universe continues from an infinitely dense singularity to its explosion where no light could penetrate, how do these origins continue to expand at the edges of the universe?

SCIENTIST Carla Babcock / Research Area: TITAN

Interaction Log

Studio Process

Mimi Gellman
Invisible Landscapes, 2017
Six conte drawings on Japanese Obonai paper, 25 x 19 inches

Gellman’s conversations with her physicist ranged from the big bang to matter and Antimatter to aesthetics and spirituality. Along the way they shared an interest in lateral thinking, unknowing and an appreciation for ambiguity. The quantum physicist David Bohm once remarked that, “the implicate domain could equally be called Idealism, Spirit, or Consciousness. The separation of the two, of matter and spirit, is an abstraction. The ground is always one.” The drawings that evolved are blueprints of archetypal images from the collective unconscious. These diagrams gather dialogic memories and scientific data with Ojibwe patterns and symbols of Ojibwe entities to form new narratives. They reflect a coming together of seemingly disparate worldviews that in effect are mere manifestations of different dialects. “The interior dimension explored in subatomic physics and the implicit interiority of contemporary art are no longer only about the representation of the exterior world but rather about exploring the architecture of consciousness.”

SCIENTIST Brian Kootte / Research Area: TITAN

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Rebecca Ramsey
Passing Through Fields, 2017
Animation (stop-motion with chalk, blackboard & charcoal dust) wood, pvc, mylar, aluminum tape, mirror, glass, dimensions variable

Artists and physicists work with materials to explore ideas. As a result it is important to maintain a sense of creativity and playfulness with materials in both the studio and laboratory. This interdisciplinary approach provided an opportunity to locate poetics in the topic of Antimatter. Ramsey created an animation on a chalkboard, which mimicked some of the particle movements witnessed in the cloud chamber at TRIUMF. Other forms of inspiration came from conversations about time travel and the directionality of time. “The combination of working with unfamiliar materials and an unfamiliar topic was a great challenge and a reminder that it’s important not to limit the materials or concepts one explores. In hindsight, that feeling of being lost was imperative to creating something new.”

SCIENTIST Jess Brewer / Research Area: μSR / G2 Collaboration

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Garvin Chinnia
Scatter(brained), 2017
Oil painting and mixed media, dimensions variable

Chinnia’s work is the result of playing with raw materials consisting of notes, drawings and other records of his interactions with his physicist. Scatter(brained) is a response to their collaborative relationship and the unexpected avenues of their conversations that included a love of exploration, science fiction as well as a shared interest in stars and space travel. Having assisted his physicist (in a minor way) on an experiment, seeing the mundane items used and the amount of troubleshooting involved demystified and humanized the process. “The places where people ask after the mysteries of the universe are accessible and ultimately human spaces. This means two humans with vastly different experiences and credentials, exploring and creative, can sit on a green grassy hill in summer, outside of a particle accelerator, talking about the beautiful malamute mutt a local brings around.”

SCIENTIST Carla Babcock / Research Area: TITAN

Interaction Log