Events

Neutrino Cloud (of Probabilities)

August 4, 2024 artist residency, Arts, research, science, STEAM, technology

R&D collaborations

The past three months have been intensely focused on the art and tech research and development for the neutrino [AR] installation. In May, while I was at my studio in Berlin, I took the opportunity to fly over to CERN to meet with my colleagues and do some research on neutrinos. Dr. Steven Goldfarb, has been my science mentor and collaborator since 2013 and we met to catch up. Roy MaDonald, coder on the project, joined me on this trip so we can work on ideas and a schedule to start building the AR installation inspired by neutrinos. We had several meetings with Dr. Umut Kose, whose work specializes in neutrinos for a crash course and to answer questions. Umut was a collaborator on the Fluidic Data installation in 2018 and he provided valuable information and ideas for this new collaboration. Roy and I continued working together in Berlin and by the end of the month had a design ready to build upon my return to Taos.

Dr. Steven Goldfarb (left) with Roy Macdonald (right)

Augmented Reality experiments

Below are some images from the final installation, Neutrino Cloud (of Probabilities), in various stages of development. The printing and mounting was done by Barry Norris studio in Taos with AR consulting and graphic design assistance by Alison Johnson. The final metal sculpture built by master machinist, John MacArthur, holds a photomultiplier tube, used in neutrino experiments to detect neutrinos. When the viewer scans a QR code and then points their phone at the disk at the base of the sculpture, a generative animation appears through their phone which creates a feeling of wonder and awe.

Video of AR experience

Also during this time period, we have been developing spin-off AR installations that have emerged from this research. These have been working in collaboration with STEMarts youth ambassadors to engage them in this sci-art project. We presented an Augmented Reality Sky Hunt at the Los Alamos ScienceFest at the same time that the neutrino installation was showing. Both of these AR platforms now allow us to create new AR experiences to communicate science concepts.

Synopsis

Below is the synopsis for the final installation which was presented at the Fuller Lodge Art Center, Los Alamos sci-art exhibit curated by Jacquelyn Connolly.

Neutrino Cloud (of Probabilities): A dynamic, interactive augmented reality experience

Artists: Agnes Chavez, FRA Guest Artist at Fermilab, concept and design, Roy Macdonald, creative consultant, John MacArthur, Metal sculpture , Dr. Umut Kose and Innes E. Bigaran, neutrino physicists, AR consultant/graphic design: Alison Johnson

This mixed reality (AR) experience is inspired by *neutrinos—tiny subatomic particles often referred to as “ghost particles.” Despite their minimal interaction with matter, neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe. Upon activation, you’ll witness generative visualizations inspired by  the behaviors and properties of these quantum particles. The sculpture features a *photomultiplier tube (PMT) bulb, a key component in *neutrino detectors for tracking these elusive particles.

What You Will See:

Upon activating the experience, participants will see visualizations inspired by neutrino particles and their quantum behaviors dynamically floating in, around, and above the sculpture. Initially, you will encounter a *probability cloud, symbolizing the neutrinos’ state of *superposition. Tapping the screen triggers a collapse of the *wave function, marking the moment a particle is detected or measured. Each ‘collapse’ produces a particle animation and places a red vibrating dot in the room, symbolizing the participation of each individual in the wave function collapse.

 How to Interact

  1. Set your phone to lock orientation via the auto-rotate or rotate lock icon. 
  2. Scan the QR code below.
  3. Point your mobile device toward the disk image at the base of the sculpture, holding it steady for a few seconds to activate tracking.
  4. Move your phone slowly to observe the images generating live in 3D space.
  5. Tap the screen to collapse the neutrino cloud into a red vibrating dot, representing the measured particle, to record your participation.

What’s next?

Now that we have created a platform for creating AR experiences, I plan to design several AR wall pieces that will be presented in conjunction with the sculpture. For this phase I will continue conversations with Fermilab physicists, Kirsty Duffy, Grace Cummings, Luis Mendoza and Innes E. Bigaran to inform the next series of works.

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(I=)UNIVERSE: An intercultural sci-art exploration of the universe

February 22, 2020 4 21st Century Resources, Arts, Festival, science, STEAM, STEM, technology

(I=)UNIVERSE is a STEMarts Lab production in collaboration with Santa Fe Institute’s InterPlanetary Festival, Milagro Middle School and multiple departments at Santa Fe Public Schools, including Art, Science, Technology, and Native American Student Services. Together they coordinated an intensive, hands-on workshop that included digital technology, particle physics, and Native-Western science connections. Experts in all of these fields served as contributing scientists, artists, and storytellers throughout the project. The project included a 2-week workshop with 70 students led by an interdisciplinary team: STEMarts founder/artist, Agnes chavez, Milagro art teachers, Megan Avina and Grace Mayer, Dr. Nicole Lloyd-Ronning, LANL astrophysicist, Shane Wood, QuarkNet staff/ particle physics instructor, Steve Tamayo, Lakota artist/cultural specialist, as well as virtual visits from Geneva with Dr. Steven Goldfarb, CERN physicist and from Austria with Tagtool founder/ artist, Markus Dorninger.

(I=)UNIVERSE culminates=s with the following student performances, Due to COVID the Santa Fe Institute’s InterPlanetary Festival was cancelled.

• Innovation EXPO: Full STEAM ahead! A re-imagined and innovative take on the traditional school science fair. Student live painting performance at the Santa Fe Convention Center. February 13, 2020, 5:30pm-7:30pm.

 

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STEMarts (x)change: Lisbon to New Mexico

January 12, 2020 15 21st Century Resources, Arts, Lisbon, science, STEAM, technology

POSTPONED DUE TO COVID

American Corner@University of Lisbon Faculty of Letters (FLUL). I will be working with Humanities students from the ‘Cultural Creative’ program to design a community outreach project based on a relevant social topic. The 2-month project will culminate with a sci-art projection installation at the American Corner space that will raise awareness to the social topic explored and outline next steps for implementing the community project. Learn more.

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SAP Lab: Artist residency and collaboration

January 12, 2020 39 Arts, Festival, Philosophy, science, STEAM, technology

 

Agnes will be starting an artist residency in 2022 at the SAP Lab in Lisbon, Portugal, collaborating with Catarina Pombo Nabais, philosopher and founder of the SAP Lab, ‘an innovative, experimental and interdisciplinary laboratory within the Center for the Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL). Their mission is for philosophy to deeply intertwine with science and art. It aims at integrating the work of scientists and artists with the conceptual analysis which philosophy is prepared to provide.’  Visit their website for more. Catarina will be facilitating research and discussions from diverse interdisciplinary and intercultural voices and they are working on several projects to explore at the intersection of ecology, art and philosophy.

 

 

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Art, astrophysics and particle accelerators: NM artists at NASA and CERN

May 28, 2018 43 Arts, STEAM, technology

 

Date and Time
Fri, June 8, 2018
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM MDT
Doors open at 5:30pm

Register now

Art, astrophysics and particle accelerators: artists working with NASA and CERN – a Santa Fe LASER talk on interplanetary art, science and technology with New Mexico artists Richard Lowenberg and Agnes Chavez.

Biocultura will present the third Leonardo Art, Science, Evening Rendezvous (LASER) Talk in Santa Fe in conjunction with the Santa Fe Institute Interplanetary Festival.

Santa Fe artist Richard Lowenberg’s talk is titled “Info/Eco (An Arts/Sciences Exploration of the Information Environment as Ecosystem)”. Richard’s presentation will include an overview of works created as part of a 1974-1984 series of NASA/Arts collaborations, including the first artist’s use of satellite communications, use of bio-sensors by dancers in environmental performances, and performers participating in astronaut gravitational simulation experiments. Richard will also present two current 1st-mile / SARC (Scientists/Artists Research Collaborations) projects: “The Energy & Information Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau: An Arts/Sciences Field Study” and “Eco-Value Scale”, an interactive public artwork and program to balance Earth’s economy.

Agnes Chavez will present her interdisciplinary work including a collaboration with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. She currently works as Artistic Director with CERN scientists and engineers at the Data Center designing a permanent installation that will visualize real time and statistical data from the Large Hadron Collider. Agnes’ colleague Johan S. Bonilla, PhD candidate at the Center for High Energy Physics, University of Oregon will join via Skype.

Richard Lowenberg is an artist, rural tele-community planner, environmental designer and eco-cultural activist. He has dedicated his creative life to investigations, understandings and artful realization of works presenting and collaboratively setting examples for ‘an ecology of the information environment’, with resulting opportunities for development of a culturally and ecologically rooted economy’. Richard’s ‘arts-sciences-society’ involvements include networking local-global communities and involvement in international arts/sciences initiatives over 50 years. Richard is founder of 1st-Mile Institute – SARC (Scientists/Artists Research Collaborations) which has collaborated with UNM, Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs, Santa Fe Institute, Leonardo, National Science Foundation’s SEAD initiative, The Internet Society, Cabine Voltaire (NL) and more.

Agnes Chavez is a new media artist, educator and co-founder of The PASEO festival in Taos New Mexico. She was an artist and Education Director for ISEA2012 and has been serving as an AmericorpsVISTA with Biocultura for the past three years developing the STEAMNM project in Northern New Mexico. She creates participatory experiences with a focus on particle physics, education and social practice. In 2009 she started the STEMarts LAB a project that applies the latest science research and technological innovations to arts and education through interdisciplinary collaborations.

Co-sponsored by Santa Fe Institute, with thanks to Currents New Media Festival.

For more information visit bioculturasantafe.com/events.

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Albuquerque Wonder Cabinet: Tamarind Institute

May 28, 2018 7 Arts, exhibits, STEAM, STEM, technology, Uncategorized

 

Precision and Imagination, a weekend-long Wonder Cabinet, pitched squarely along the borderlands between Art & Science.

PARTICLE PHYSICS AND NATIVE AMERICAN COSMOLOGIES
April 20-22, 2018

This session featured Taos-based artist Agnes Chavez, who is currently collaborating with CERN to create an installation to visualize data from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, with Greg Cajete, a Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo and the director of Native American Studies at The University of New Mexico, in a conversation about Chavez, her work, and its resonances with Native American cosmologies.

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Building Capacity for STEAM: Americorps Project expands into 2017

December 31, 2016 35 21st Century Resources, Arts, particle physics, science, STEAM, STEM, technology

Two years ago I joined Andrea Polli and the Social Media Workgroup (SMW) as an Americorps VISTA.  “Did you know that President Kennedy introduced the idea of VISTA to Congress in 1963? Or that many of the best-known anti-poverty programs, including Head Start and Credit Unions, were expanded by VISTA members? VISTA has been on the forefront of ending poverty in America for 50 years.” Check out the Americorps website to read more about this important program.

In 2014, SMW received its first Americorps/VISTA grant to launch the STEAM NM initiative: Building Capacity for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and the Arts) Education in New Mexico. Now renewed and expanded for its third year with VISTA, our STEAM NM core group includes SMW along with five partners: UNM STEM Collaborative, The School of Architecture + Planning and COSMIAC; the CNM Fuse Makerspace, and The PASEO/STEMarts in Taos. My role as the Taos VISTA is to innovate and network STEAM initiatives in Northern New Mexico. It has been an exciting year that has led to new local and global partnerships to expand youth opportunities in our communities. Read more about it on the Social Media Workgroup website and stay tuned for 2017 programming.

 

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Exploring Netlogo with Youth Coding Team

April 11, 2016 7 21st Century Resources, Arts, particle physics, STEAM

 

STEMarts LAB Projecting Particles coding team sponsored by ATLAS Experimet at CERN, in partnership with Tracy Gallighan at Taos High School. The team has designed and built a unique projection mapping station for the Invent Event. April 23 12-5m at Enos Garcia Elementary.

We are exploring Netlogo, ‘a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. NetLogo is particularly well suited for modeling complex systems developing over time. Modelers can give instructions to hundreds or thousands of “agents” all operating independently. This makes it possible to explore the connection between the micro-level behavior of individuals and the macro-level patterns that emerge from their interaction. ‘

I played with this code a little during my residency November 2016 at Santa Fe Art Institute. I am collecting real-time migration data of immigrants and refugees video mapping their movements on to structures inspired by power lines connecting across the landscape. The above images are from the prototype for a large scale “cube” installation. I am exploring  agent-based modeling for the data visualization.

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ATLAS at CERN + The Harwood Museum expand Physics and Art at Taos High School

March 16, 2016 21st Century Resources, Arts, exhibits, particle physics, STEAM, STEM

ATLAS at CERN partners  with Agnes Chavez, Quarknet and The Harwood Museum to bring a unique physics + art opportunity to Taos High School students. This event is sponsored by ATLAS Experiment, The Harwood Museum and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Special thanks to Carla Chavez, Biology teacher at Taos High School and Megan Avina Bowers, teacher at Taos Integrated School of the Arts (TISA). On March 18 and 19, students  participated in the International Masterclass to delve into particle physics as a kick off to the 3-day Teen-Led Projecting Particles workshop.  The week long event culminated with students coordinating and documenting a physics-inspired projection. They then presented on their experience as part of an Artist Talk at The Harwood Museum, which showed  the physics-inspired installation, Origination Point, by Agnes Chavez, Marcel Schwittlick and Robert Schirmer. In addition, lead students visited TISA to do a presentation to younger students sharing what they learned about art and physics.

What is the International Masterclass?

From the CERN website, ‘Each year in spring, research institutes and universities around the world invite students and their teachers for a day-long program to experience life at the forefront of basic research. These International Masterclasses (link is external) give students the opportunity to be particle physicists for a day by analysing real data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This year’s edition will attract more than 10,000 high-school students from 40 countries, celebrating the 10th edition of the initiative.  As part of this workshop, Taos was conferenced in with students from Medellin, Colombia, Santiago, Chile and Notre Dame, London to compare the results of their investigations.

The Visiting Guest Teachers

Michael Wadness, a high school physics teacher from Medford High School near Boston with a doctorate in science education, lead the exciting International Masterclass at Taos High School on March 18,19.

Sally Seidel is a professor of physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico and presently works on the ATLAS experiment in high energy physics. Sally came from Albuquerque on March 19 to do a presentation and lead a discussion with students on particle physics concepts and ATLAS.

About the Sci-Art integration

After a two day immersion with experts in particle physics, students began the exploration of projection art as a medium of expression and communication. The three-day workshop March 22-24 was led by three teens that participated in the workshop in December 2015. They lead a group of new students to explore a projection art iPad tool called Tagtool. Together they will storyboard, design and document a live projection on to a building inspired by the physics concepts. Special thanks to Markus Dorninger, collaborating partner and developer of the Tagtool app.

Learning by Teaching

During the workshop students presented a PowerPoint to share their experiences as part of an Artist Talk at The Harwood Museum  along with artist/facilitator, Agnes Chavez. Students visited Taos Integrated School of the Arts (TISA) and presented to over 70 students from different classrooms. They shared what they learned about particle physics and how it informed their art. These new additions to the Projecting Particles workshop deepened the students understanding of  the physics concepts and developed valuable leadership and communication skills.

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