Synchrotron helps artist see the light
The evolution of light and technology has been illuminated by an artist using a simple light bulb and the Australian Synchrotron.
Melbourne-based multimedia artist Chris Henschke has also connected the facility to its outside environment by ensuring it resonates with the sound of a cicada.
Henschke, from RMIT University, says during his time at the Australian Synchrotron he wanted to expand on a desire to show artistically how science has grown.
"I wanted to use the synchrotron to illuminate an old light bulb and look at it as many different ways as I can," he says.
Henschke describes the tungsten filament light bulb as the great-grandfather of the synchrotron.
"Ironically it is about to become obsolete [under government plans to phase out domestic use], but one day the synchrotron will also become obsolete," he says.
"I am trying to put the new technology into its historical and technological context."
Henschke is still working on pieces for exhibit, but has a series of images produced by exposing the light bulb to different sources of light such as the optical, infra-red and protein crystallography beamlines.
Two-way creativity
He says the residency allowed for a two-way creative process.
One work is the product of a scientist’s suggestion that he expose the light bulb to the protein crystallography beamline.
The resulting image Henschke says is symbolic of his work at the synchrotron.
"I’m at this point where I can almost see into this whole other world, but not quite," he says.
In tune with the synchrotron
One of his creations is permanently embedded in the synchrotron.
Henschke says when he discovered the existence of the so-called synchrotron tune he wanted to hear it.
The synchrotron tune is the balance of frequencies around 13 megahertz needed to make the synchrotron beam work.
With the help of Dr Andreas Wilde, at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, in Dresden, Henshcke made the synchrotron tune audible to the human ear.
"I then thought I could put my own tune into their tune," Henschke says.
He initially planned to insert an audio file of all the synchrotron-based scientists shouting the word "synchrotron" and then toyed with the idea of inserting a guitar riff from one of his own songs into the instrument.
Sounds of the cicada
But the night before the experiment was due to happen Henschke heard a cicada in the facility’s car park and knew he had found his sound.
"The cicada’s deafening high-pitched tune was not only geoacoustically appropriate, it also gave me a perfect synaesthetic picture of the energy beam whirling around the synchrotron ring," Henschke says.
After having the tune encoded in Germany he gave it to the accelerator physicists to inject into the machine.
Henschke says the first attempt shut the synchrotron down.
But on the second attempt the sound file was lifted from a base frequency of 5 kilohertz to 1 megahertz to make the "vibration" fast enough to modulate the amplitude of the beam.
"Even though nothing was directly perceivable, just to know that the heart of the huge facility around me was pulsating with the sound of the cicada that lived next to it somehow connected the synchrotron back to the world around it," Henshke says in his blog on the experience.
"The experiment revealed a relationship between sound and light and energy and matter, the cicada singing in the sunlight and the light in the synchrotron singing with the cicada’s tune."
The works were completed as part of a three-month residency sponsored by Arts Victoria and the Australian Network for Art and Technology.
Henshke will outline his experiences at the Adelaide Festival later this week. His work can be viewed at www.topologies.com.au.
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Source : abc.net