Nano exhibit features grad’s work

A pair of sunglasses, a handheld drawing tool, and a set of plastic tongs are the equipment necessary to draw and grow three-dimensional crystals in Steven Schkolne’s installation at Nano, an exhibit currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show is a roundup of pieces that play with the concepts of nanotechnology and nanoscience, emerging fields of study that focus on the atom and the molecule.

Much like a computer mouse that controls an onscreen cursor, the tools in Schkolne’s piece, titled The Crystal Method, allow the user to draw geometric shapes without a computer monitor.

“My piece lets you create structures that behave in the way they behave at the nano scale,” Schkolne says. “It’s a 3-D interactive installation. You sit in front of a screen while wearing a pair of sunglasses, and crystal shapes appear to come out of the screen. There are tongs to grab the crystals and the crystals appear to grow.”

Although he defended his computer science PhD thesis last October, an interest in art and abstract animation led him to classes at Art Center College of Design. Since then, he has created several other projects that touch on the concept of virtual reality and drawing in space.

“I wanted to do something that tied in with the theme of the show that wasn’t a lesson,” Schkolne says. While at Caltech, his advisor was Peter Schröder, professor of computer science and applied and computational mathematics, who is renowned for his pioneering work in digital geometry processing.

The exhibition, housed at LACMA’s Boone Children’s Gallery, features nine installations created by LACMALab and artists and grad students from UCLA. The Inner Cell is a walk-in installation where visitors can imagine that they’ve shrunk to the size of carbon-60 molecules; the Nanomandala projects the image of a geometric design—created by Tibetan monks—onto a circular sandbox to represent different views of the universe; and Quantum Tunnel uses cameras and microphones to simulate the journey of electrons through a barrier.

Images of Schkolne’s piece may be viewed at http://thecrystalmethod2003.com. Nano is free to the public and will run through September 6.
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