Exhibit Sales &
Rentals
Planetary Landscapes: Sculpting
the Solar System
The Exhibit Works
Aeolian Landscape
Viewers alter the force of blowing air inside a chamber of soft
sand to create a terrain suggestive of the sand dunes or the blowing
ice formations on Mars, mimicking an ever-changing landscape of
windswept hills, dunes, and avalanches.
Braided Stream
Viewers control the flow of air bubbling up through fine powder
contained between two glass plates, causing stream channels to form
along the paths of least resistance. These drainage networks create
elaborate patterns in the powder, just as water has carved channels
on Mars and Earth, or as volcanic activity formed lava tubes on the
Moon.
Caldera
Like boiling magma chambers inside the volcanoes that have
reshaped the surfaces of the planets, thrusting jets of air bubble
up through fine sand encased between two sheets of glass. Calderas
form and collapse as viewers alter the force of the air flowing
through the sand. With a high flow of air the entire mass of sand
resembles a water-like fluid even though no liquid is present.
Jovian Landscape
Viewers spin a shallow disk of fluid forming intricate patterns
of turbulence. The fluid collides with itself, forming an elaborate
swirling squall that evokes atmospheric storms such as Jupiter’s
Great Red spot or cyclones on Earth.
Icy Bodies
Shards of dry ice skim across the surface of a basin of tepid
water. Striking the water the ice instantly vaporizes from its solid
state into a gas. As the dry ice vaporizes tiny gas jets spin and
tumble the ice shards across the surface of the water. Visitors
engage in a visual feast of spinning, colliding, streaming wisps of
vapor. When they propel themselves across the basin the shards and
their wispy trails are similar in appearance to the tails of comets.
Dust Devil
A vortex encased in a cylinder sweeps up fine particles of sand
to form a swirling dust devil. Viewers activate the vortex and watch
it shift and move. As particles drift in and out of the vortex the
image suggests the dust devils of the Martian atmosphere. The
sculpture offers an opportunity to observe the correlation between
size and time in the life of a vortex: a dust devil may last ten
minutes, a tornado an hour, and a hurricane a week, while Jupiter’s
great Red Spot has been swirling for over 300 years.
Rift Zone
Air bubbling up through sand creates a small-scale geothermal
landscape. The sand forms patterns analogous to the three kinds of
rift zones that occur on various planets and moons: solitary
volcanoes, fracture zones, and ring-shaped fissures. By changing the
air pressure viewers can alter the rift zone patterns.
Sea of Clouds
Viewers run their hands through undulating fog contained in a
large shallow cauldron. The fog comes alive with waves and complex
convection patterns as viewers alter its currents. The work suggests
the movement of fog into geological depressions, and the ways in
which water vapor responds to changes in the surface temperature of
the land, evoking the cloud tops of Jupiter and Venus, and the fog
that forms in the valleys of Mars and Earth.
Static Landscape
Recalling the static forces that helped form the Solar System in
its earliest stages, thousands of tiny steel balls cascade across
the surface of a large shallow disk, generating electrical charges.
Static forces organize the balls into dazzling waves and other
intricate patterns that resemble the lightning in Jupiter’s
atmosphere, or the solar winds that charge the soil of the Moon and
other bodies not protected by a magnetic field. Viewers cause the
patterns to form and change by tilting the disk and running their
hands over its surface.
Tectonic Basin
Viewers submerge their hands in a large basin of vibrating
garnet sand that forms rhythmic waves on its surface. The patterns
that emerge suggest the ceaseless, large-scale tectonic movement
that is gradually reshaping the Earth’s continents and Jupiter’s
moon Ganymede.
Turbulent Orb
A large, spherical vessel filled with a deep blue fluid vividly
reveals the movements of the currents inside. As viewers rotate the
vessel, the fluid displays intricate flow patterns suggesting the
immense sweep of the atmospheres of the gas giant planets such as
Jupiter. Swirls of fluid that move like hurricanes appear and
disappear. When left undisturbed the fluid continues to flow for
hours. |
