Alan Rorie is a neuroscientist by training. These days, however, you’re more likely to find him using an MIG (metal-inert gas) [...]]]> Almost Science, Always Art

BY LESLIE W. CHINN

Alan Rorie is a neuroscientist by training. These days, however, you’re more likely to find him using an MIG (metal-inert gas) welder to send sparks skimming over a cool slab of metal than peering at glowing monkey neurons through a microscope.

From Neurons to the Neuron Chamber

Not too many years ago, Rorie was a graduate student at Stanford University, investigating the amalgamation of different types of information in the cortexes of macaques during the decision-making process.

Now, Rorie amalgamates metals (and sometimes other materials) into works of art in a process that he calls “almost scientific.” This is also the name of the science and art collaborative that Rorie founded, as well as the name of his website, www.almostscientific.com. The goal of Almost Scientific, the collaborative, is to “educate scientists about art and artists about science” through the creation of art pieces that tend to be quite large, with moving parts.

Rorie always has been intrigued by moving parts— as a child, he says he was “really interested in taking stereos and blenders apart and putting them back together.”  He also loved to read and write stories, which eventually led him to study the humanities in college. But, Rorie began to feel that the true source of being able to understand and appreciate the humanities was rooted biologically, in the brain. “What makes a great painting or symphony really has to do with how you perceive it,” says Rorie, “so I became very interested in the neuroscience of perception.”

By the time Rorie discovered that neuroscience wasn’t yet able to explain how the brain experiences art, he had nonetheless become intrigued. “I was already hooked on just understanding the brain and how it works,” he remembers. To this end, Rorie did a stint at the National Institute of Mental Health, then moved to California for graduate school.

Slowly, however, Rorie began to see that his future was not at the bench. It took a while for him to decide that he wanted to focus on, as he puts it, “art and creative pursuits.” Arriving at this conclusion wasn’t easy, particularly because everyone, including himself, thought of Rorie as a scientist.

The Process of Creation

In his studio in West Oakland, Calif., Rorie creates works with fantastical names: the Raygun Gothic Rocketship, the Triaparator and the Neuron Chamber. This last work is an “electro-kinetic sculpture” that demonstrates what neurons are and what they do. And, yes, it uses electricity: 9,000 volts make for an impressive action potential as they arc, a blinding blue light, down axons made of metal.

Rorie not only is interested in teaching nonscientists about neurons— he also would  like them to understand the mechanical workings of the Neuron Chamber. “In the sense [that] I can teach either the scientific content of my sculpture or the physical mechanics of it,” he says, “I am happy to do that.”

Rorie appears to derive a great deal of satisfaction from the design and construction of his work. Because many of his pieces are large and have moving parts, he makes use of engineering techniques— for example, CAD (computer-aided design) programs during the planning process— as well as tools intended for more industrial purposes, such as the MIG welder.

“A lot of the really large-scale pieces that I work on require a tremendous amount of engineering,” says Rorie, “and that is a huge part of the challenge and the fun and the beauty of these pieces.” He seems to revel in the process of creation, or as he puts it, “figuring out how to take something crazy and make it real.” This also is part of the message of Rorie’s works— to inspire people with the way he has taken a material as strong and rigid as metal and molded it to represent something as delicate as a human neuron.

As in science experiments, meticulous planning in art only goes so far. Nothing ever comes out the way you planned it, Rorie says, so you always have to be ready to adapt to the reality of the work. “At a certain point, you stop telling the work what it’s going to be,” he explains, “and it starts telling you what it is.” But, unlike many scientists, for whom the ultimate thrill is seeing their work published, the excitement is over for Rorie once a piece is done. “It’s more the process that’s important to me— it’s more the thrill of doing than the thrill the final product brings.”

Action, Reaction

Science and art may seem to exist in separate spheres, but Rorie believes that ultimately, they’re both about communication. It’s the direction in which the two are communicating  that’s different, much like a reaction that can run in two different directions. The way Rorie sees it, scientists generate conceptual abstractions to explain physical phenomena, whereas artists generate physical embodiments of their abstract ideas, thoughts or knowledge. The Neuron Chamber was an experiment in this concept for Rorie: He wanted to take his knowledge of neuroscience and communicate it via a sculpture of “high-voltage, robotic neurons in an alien observation tank.”

So, was the experiment successful? Paul Doherty, founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, thinks so. He watched people interact with Rorie’s Neuron Chamber while it was installed at the museum. “As the visitors figured out what was happening, they could predict aloud what the spark would do next, then laugh if they were correct, or moan if they were not,” Doherty recalls. “[They] had been drawn into the world of sparks and neuron modeling.”

Rorie often creates pieces that move, light up, or spew sparks or steam. He does this not only because he enjoys the engineering challenge but also because it makes the art more “alive.” Kinetic art has “action and reaction to the world around it,” Rorie says. “It gets touched and moved; it wears down.” In a way, the moveable aspect of Rorie’s art is a continuation of the bidirectional communication experiment. Moving parts encourage people to interact with the art, which means that Rorie’s pieces sometimes wear out or break. He doesn’t mind— in fact, he likes to fix them because it gives him something to do at gallery shows.

“The Path Is That Simple”

For bench scientists who yearn for the freedom of arc welding, Rorie has this advice: find something you love and do it, and soon you’ll get to be it. He expands upon this in two parts. The first is that there isn’t necessarily a formal process for every step of one’s career. “You don’t need to apply,” he says. “If you want be a carpenter, you just go and be a carpenter. The path is that simple.”

The most difficult step may be overcoming one’s self-identification as a scientist, as it was for Rorie. So here’s the second part of his advice, which is more of a pep talk for those who don’t view proficiency with a confocal microscope as a skill that can be translated to another line of work: “Your education as a scientist is deeper and stronger than just the field in which you work.” Rorie notes that while he doesn’t do science anymore, he uses the skills that he learned as a graduate student every day.

Besides, says Rorie, as a scientist, “you are on the cutting edge of knowledge— so why can’t you do anything else that you imagine doing?”

]]> http://www.almostscientific.com/blog/2010/06/30/almost-science-always-art/feed/ 0 http://www.almostscientific.com/blog/2010/02/25/orginal-concept-drawings-of-the-neuron-chamber-by-backbone-metals/ http://www.almostscientific.com/blog/2010/02/25/orginal-concept-drawings-of-the-neuron-chamber-by-backbone-metals/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:21:29 +0000 Alan http://www.almostscientific.com/blog/?p=1686 Wow.  I found this when I was cleaning out my laptop hard drive.  This is one of the first concept drawings Ben (of Backbone Metals fame) did when he and I were first planning The Neuron Chamber.  It’s amazing how close we got to these original drawings while still creating something entirely different.

Wow.  I found this when I was cleaning out my laptop hard drive.  This is one of the first concept drawings Ben (of Backbone Metals fame) did when he and I were first planning The Neuron Chamber.  It’s amazing how close we got to these original drawings while still creating something entirely different.

I’d like to [...]]]> Thank you all for coming to the show last night at The Exploratorium.  I had a great and exhausting time.  It was fantastic to see so many friends out in the crowd, and I’m sorry I did not get to talk to any of you for as long as I would have liked.

I’d like to especially thank Almost Scientific team members David Shulman and Jo Slota for their help and support installing and running two high voltage sculptures in one night.  I’d also like to thank Melissa Alexander, Donna Wong and Eric Rosa and The Exploratoruim for everything.

I never got a chance to take any photos of video of the show so if anyone out there got any good media please pass it on to me!

For those who are first coming to the Almost Scientific site please check out our new Gallery where you can see some of our past projects.  You can allso follow us on Twitter if that’s you thing.

It’s not so much that everything in the future will be built around [...]]]> My pal Corbett over at Instinct Engineering just let me know that Almost Scientific and The Neuron Chamber were featured on the Solid Works design blog Solid Smack.  You can find the original post here, but here is the text of the post:

It’s not so much that everything in the future will be built around the idea that we’ll need a proper vessel to study the organs of extraterrestrial life, but you can imagine very quickly that it would need to look stinkin’ cool… and have lights and bolts and stuff.

For instance, it would almost certainly look like the Neuron Chamber by Alan Rorie. It’s Art. It’s Kinetic. It’s Almost Scientific and it’s a mash-up of 3D mechanical design, late nights spent welding and entertaining the minds and hearts of attendees of the Maker Faire and other events.

Alan gives ya some more insight to how he creates his art. Prepare your mind.

I usually have my SolidWorks models loaded up in the shop so I can pull whatever measurements I need on the fly. For me allot of the fun of of using SolidWorks is spending a lot of time building a nice model and then slowly seeing it come to life in the real world. I’m also love to see how you think and interact with the object changes, as the real world constraints (and mates) take over.

We are currently using SolidWorks to design many of the elements of the Raygun Gothic Rocket (the model).

Thanks Laughing Squid!

Burstein! wrote:

The Neuron Chamber by Alan [...]]]> Laughing Squid is always one of the first blogs I check out to see what is going on in the Bay Area and beyond, so it was supper cool to load it up this morning and see The Neuron Chamber right there at the top of the page.

Thanks Laughing Squid!

Burstein! wrote:

The Neuron Chamber by Alan Rorie is an electro-kinetic sculpture of a steel and glass frame that contains hand-forged steel and copper model neurons. Even better, the neurons within the chamber create and send beautiful electrical arcs down the interior of the sculpture. These arcs do more than merely look pretty, but they have changed the sculpture itself by oxidizing its innards, giving it a new layer of color and depth.

Overall we had a fantastic time.  I’d like to thank Dale and all the other organizers of Maker Faire for putting together such a fantastic event.

Thanks also to CTP and Nemo for pulling together another [...]]]> Here is a every so slightly more polished (and short) video of The Neuron Chamber experience at Maker Faire this year.

Overall we had a fantastic time.  I’d like to thank Dale and all the other organizers of Maker Faire for putting together such a fantastic event.

Thanks also to CTP and Nemo for pulling together another super Applied Kinetic Arts (AKA) show.  The Neuron Chamber was a smash hit at Maker Faire and the AKA show was an even huger hit.  I think in total we won 4 or 5 editors choices awards.  One even went to The Neuron Chamber.

Finally,  thanks to all the other makers who showed up with their great stuff, and thanks to all those visitors who came by, said nice things, and asked good questions.  You feed back left me creatively recharged and ready to make something even cooler.

I’m still recovering a bit from the event — last night I dreamed that one of the army of R2-D2 robots wandering the event attacked me, forced me into an elevator, rotated it 90 degrees and told me I could never escape.  Why R2?  Why?

Last year we were there with the Dihemispheric Chronaether Agitator and  had a great time!

We come in at 1:40 if you want to jump right to us. This was shot on opening night and I was absolutely exhausted, and I’m [...]]]> The Science Gallery produced several short video about the pieces at Lightwave. Here is one that features The Neuron Chamber at two of the other instillation.

We come in at 1:40 if you want to jump right to us. This was shot on opening night and I was absolutely exhausted, and I’m amazed I was able to talk at all.

It was really cool to have the piece up and running for a sold month and it was really interesting to see how how [...]]]> Well Lightwave is over and The Neuron Chamber is on its way back home.  The show was allot of fun, the piece ran very smoothly  and we made some great new friends.

It was really cool to have the piece up and running for a sold month and it was really interesting to see how how things changes as it aged.

One really striking change was the extreme amount of oxidation we observed.  After the first week we noticed that allot of rust had built up on the neuron sculptures really quickly.  We soon realized that the ozone generated by the high-voltage discharge was responsible for this rapid oxidation.

Not only did the ozone oxidize the steel to create a very fine, powdery, orange rust, but it also oxidized the copper to a beautiful blue-green color.

Here are two photos of what the neuron sculptures looked like at the start of the show.

Here you can see the amazing blue-green patina that developed on the copper tubes.  When we originally made the axons we tried to build up this exact same patina using cupric nitrite, but it never took.

Here you can see the fine powdery rust on one of the dendrites.  Also you can stat to see that the rust has fallen onto the bottom creating the projection of the dendrite.

The oxidation also built up on the inside of the chamber, under the glass, as well.

Intriguingly the oxidation was not even.  In the next few photos you can see how it built up allot in some spots but not others.

Man I [...]]]> The Science Gallery, where The Neuron Chamber is part of the Light wave festive, has just posted the first part of their in-house video shot on the opening night of the show. The Neuron Chamber is featured towards the end and this is a great chance to see some of the other installations.

Man I was exhausted when they shot this — it’s a miracle I was comprehensible.