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Where art and
atoms collide
By Aditi
Vasan
Photo by Meaghan
Byrne
(Expand
Photo) Quark Park, the brainchild of architect Kevin
Wilkes '83, integrates science, art and recreation. Currently
located behind Palmer Square, the display will be taken down
after Thanksgiving.
Hidden on a small grass
lot behind Palmer Square lies a place where art, science and
recreation converge.
Quark Park, a
temporary display named for the subatomic particle, was conceived,
designed and organized by architect Kevin Wilkes '83, landscape
architect Alan Goodheart and local landscaper Peter
Sonderman.
The park — on Paul
Robeson Place, between Chambers and Witherspoon Streets — is
designed to be a place where "people can forget about who they are,
who they're supposed to be," Sonderman
said.
Each of the more than 20
creations in the park was built through collaboration between a
scientist, an architect and a landscape artist attempting to present
a scientific idea in a way that would make it more interesting and
more accessible to the general
public.
One such installation is
"Sensation," a series of glowing translucent fibers in bright
primary colors traveling from three spheres to a series of thin
disks that resemble oversized buttons. The sculpture, designed by
President Tilghman, electrical engineering professor James Sturm,
and Nancy Cohen, an artist from Jersey City, is meant to represent
the way smells are received by the
nose.
"Cosmology and Cosmetology" is
a creation located by the park entrance. More sociological and less
purely scientific than the other installations, "Cosmology" consists
of a series of magazine racks displaying issues of Cosmopolitan and
Elle opposite a shelf filled with science
books.
Sonderman said that
"Cosmology" is meant to mock the increasingly consumer driven
culture in modern day America, where "some people consider
cosmetology to be just as much of a science as
cosmology."
"Cosmology" also exposes
people to the "vacuous nature of this culture" and gives them a
setting in which to discuss it, Sonderman
added.
The gates to the park are
sculptures themselves, consisting of scrap pieces of paper with
messages in magic marker woven into a fabric of wire
gauze.
Sonderman said the idea for
the park originally came from an Oped that appeared in The New York
Times last December. The column, by Nicholas Kristof, was titled
"The Hubris of the Humanities" and argued that politicians and
intellectuals in America have focused too much of their energy on
history, literature and the arts. Kristof maintained it was
essential to improve public awareness of science-related issues and
to shift the focus toward math and the
sciences.
"Increasingly, we face
public policy issues — avian flu, stem cells — that
require some knowledge of scientific methods, yet the present
Congress contains 218 lawyers, 12 doctors, and 3 biologists,"
Kristof wrote. "In terms of the skills we need for the 21st century,
we're Shakespeare-quoting
Philistines."
After Thanksgiving, the
owners of the property plan to tear down the park and build
condominiums on the lot. Wilkes, Goodheart and Sonderman, who
previously collaborated on a similar landscaping project called
"Writer's Block," already have plans for their next project. They
hope to work with Pulitzer Prizewinning creative writing professor
Paul Muldoon on a project based on poetry, and are considering a
possible location in an alley off Nassau
Street.
Despite the ephemeral nature
of his current project, Sonderman remains optimistic about raising
public awareness of complex scientific issues and creating
thought-provoking public art projects in the
future.
"If we can harness the
creativity of all the great minds at the University and in the town
of Princeton, we can really make things happen," Sonderman
said.
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