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Quark
Park
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| By:
Ilene Dube |
08/09/2006 | |
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See related story:
Following
Follies
TIMEOFF/MARK
CZAJKOWSKI |
| Sculptor
Jonathan Shor (right) has been teamed up with
Princeton University Professor of computer science
Perry Cook, whose field is psychoacoustics. Prof.
Cook made headlines recently with his laptop orchestra
and has recorded with the vocal group Schola Discantus.
They have created a lithophone, or stone xylophone, an
instrument that dates back 4,000 years. It turns out the
two men are neighbors, although they had never before
talked about their work. "I still don't really know what
psychoacoustics is, but he sent me a link to his Web
site and I listened to snippets of the music he's
created," says Mr. Shor, who had a vision of a Dennis
the Menace-type kid dragging a stick along a picket
fence. He began making a series of stone columns, or
keys.
"Terry came to my studio and
began knocking on them after I'd made a few," says Mr.
Shor. "He'd knock with his hand or an old drill and say
'Beautiful!' I didn't hear anything but I went on his
assertion." Mr. Shor drilled holes in the granite, then
put in a wedge and a shim to split the stone. "The stone
was cooperative and split well. It has a crackling sound
when the crystals split, and also a pinging when hit
with a hammer."
Dr. Cook put
contact microphones on the stone and recorded the
internal sound of the stone cracking, then composed
music using the recording. The composition is 15-minutes
long with three movements, and is played on a loop.
Viewers can also pick up a rod and hit the stones to add
to the music.
"There are 17 posts
on the lithophone, a prime number, and this gets
engineers excited," says Mr. Shor. "It wasn't my design,
it just happened that way, and the whole composition is
based on the rhythm of 17." |
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TIMEOFF/MARK
CZAJKOWSKI |
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Landscape
architect Holly Grace Nelson (left in photo at left) is
working with Princeton University Professor of
geophysics George Philander on a weather garden. "Early
on, when we met in his office, he said much of science
has to do with math, and that scientists make equations
to explain things with perfect information, but weather
isn't like that," she says. "'Islands of order in a sea
of chaos' became the theme for this
garden."
In an e-mail, Prof.
Philander writes, "We are hoping that, in a small way,
the weather garden will influence the debates about
science... and intelligent design, for
example."
Bill Flemer, a landscaper
who is a descendant of the Princeton Nurseries family,
supplied the team with a stand of river birch trunks,
the bark peeling off in curls as if it has received a
bad sunburn. Forming a circle and interspersed with
beech trunks, there is an oculus at the top, with a
stained-glass sun. Ultimately the piece will have fog
misting over it and wind from a windmill that uses the
duct ventilating Mediterra restaurant, just behind the
garden.
Ms. Nelson says she was
inspired by Richard Serra's 72-foot-tall steel "Vortex."
Putting it together challenged the original concept, and
steel bands had to be cinched over it like a girdle to
keep it from forming a teepee, she recounts. "The lesson
of the birch tree is, you shoot for something and
incorporate the unanticipated and serendipitous, not
unlike trying to predict the
weather."
"What is science?" asks
Prof. Philander, in a written statement. "Politicians
pontificate about this question. Judges rule on it.
Scientists ignore it. (Most are as interested in the
history and philosophy of science as birds are in
ornithology.) Scientists ask questions — selectively. Of
the many questions we have to address to make sense of
this perplexing world, scientists carefully choose a
few, and answer them in a highly idealized context,
creating pools of order and understanding in a seemingly
chaotic world." |
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TIMEOFF/MARK
CZAJKOWSKI |
| Princeton
Professor of civil and environmental engineering
George Scherer, who is teamed up with sculptor
Kate Graves (right), devises coatings for stone
that neutralizes the negative effects of salt crystals
that push stone from inside out and cause stone to
flake, says Ms. Graves.
With
Natural Edge garden designers, she has created an
arbor under which she will put a stone table she is
making. On the surface of the table she is planning a
gameboard for oware, the national game of Ghana that is
similar to mancala. The board game uses rocks and
recessed pockets.
The table's legs
will be sitting in saline solution underground. "We hope
that the capillary action of the stone will wick up the
solution," she says. "We hope the stone with the coating
will remain stable, and the stone leg without coating
will delaminate."
The process of
degeneration takes time, so those waiting can play a
game or two of oware. Although the table has been
engineered to deconstruct, Ms. Graves says she hopes the
idea "will have legs."
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TIMEOFF/MARK
CZAJKOWSKI |
| Landscape
architect Alan Goodheart (right in photo at
right) and Princeton University professor of geosciences
Lincoln Hollister have known each other for 46
years; they met in a mineralogy class at Harvard and
several years later found themselves neighbors in
Princeton.
With what he describes
as a giant piece of jewelry with metaphoric rock, Prof.
Hollister says of their project, "We are trying to
represent how continents are
made."
"It's not just metamorphic,
it's metaphoric," says Mr. Goodheart. "It helps us
understand light. It will be viewed from both sides so
light will go through at different times of the day and
will sparkle as people drive by... (It's as if) we dug
up a huge section from underground and brought it into
the light so people can see what we're walking
on.
"You know it's sexy before you
see it," he says. "It's subduction and orogeny. That's
what we want to do with Quark Park: make science sexy.
It's important to our understanding of the world, and
our learning to live comfortably with
change." |
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| ©PACKETONLINE News
Classifieds Entertainment Business - Princeton and Central New
Jersey 2006 |
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