Carbon NanoTubes

An abstract pattern on a black background

Artist: Pasha Ian Clothier

Carbon nanotubes is a 3mins 36secs moving image work that opens and closes with indigenous audio. Source data in the form of science experiments and creative audio, are mixed together to form a soundtrack which is then visualised algorithmically.

Woven energies form raranga hihiri, in which the energies of comets, asteroids, fire and carbon nanotube experiments are interwoven. Fire is one of the oldest forms of energy known. The oxygen it needs to burn originates in the intense energies of imploding stars, generated in the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen chain reaction. The other place these three are found is dna – where it forms the backbone of the molecule. Carbon also tours the universe in comets and asteroids. There is of course no causal link between the centre of collapsing stars and our dna. Consequently, carbon is not a deterministic singularity, but maps as a diversity across universal, cultural and individual infrastructures.

Credits: Darren Robert Terama Ward (putorino tane); Dynamicell (fire); Ayen Deng (Nanotechnology Institute University of Texas at Dallas – carbon nanotube experimental data image); NASA and ESA (comet and asteroid shower images)