Imagine getting close enough to a tornado to touch it. It might sound like a death-defying stunt but, thanks to Ned Kahn, it isn鈥檛 as dangerous as it sounds. For the past 16 years, Kahn has been creating interactive sculptures inspired by everything from wind and waves to comets, black holes and galaxies. The best-known of his works, Tornado, allows you to play with a tiny twister. Created using simple materials such as water, sand and air, Kahn鈥檚 artworks are not just celebrations of nature-they are inspired by fluid dynamics and other aspects of science. Many already adorn airports and company headquarters as well as museums, and right now Kahn is working on 20 new commissions. Jeff Greenwald went to Kahn鈥檚 studio in Sebastopol, north of San Francisco, for a lesson on turning science into art.
How accurately do your artworks model the physical processes that inspire them?
I walk a fuzzy line between creating artworks that are suggestive of phenomena in nature and avoiding the whole trap of modelling. One example is a sculpture I鈥檓 building for the new Chabot Observatory [in California], called Black Hole. The effect is suggestive of how, when black holes form, they clear out areas of space as they suck in all the gas and other material around them. A lot of people see this piece and say: 鈥淥h, this is a model of a black hole.鈥� But you can鈥檛 really model these things. They鈥檙e on such huge scales, and they involve such alien materials. So I intend these sculptures more as conversation pieces: things that evoke thoughts and questions.
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Your work is often referred to as the 鈥渁rt of chaos鈥�. Do you agree with that label?
I prefer the term 鈥渢urbulence鈥�. Turbulence is something nature does-it鈥檚 a whole way of flowing that frequently recurs in nature. What draws me to turbulence is that, in many cases, it鈥檚 beautiful. That beauty is an often subtle balance between order and disorder. You have a very complicated pattern, yet there鈥檚 something your mind and eyes pick up on. People are fascinated with the weather, and I think part of the reason is that it鈥檚 out of our control. There鈥檚 an underlying order, but it鈥檚 a complex order that doesn鈥檛 lend itself to control or accurate prediction. When I build a sculpture, a big part of the process is getting the thing so it鈥檚 in that balance between order and beauty and unpredictability.
Do your sculptures fall more into the category of science or art?
They鈥檙e definitely not scientific experiments, because they鈥檙e often much more uncontrolled and complicated. In scientific experiments you strive to simplify all the extraneous forces, whereas I sometimes deliberately introduce such forces to make something more interesting. On the other hand, they鈥檙e not really artworks in the traditional sense. Most sculptures are a celebration of the skill of the artist. You look at any art magazine, and the table of contents is all names. You look in a science magazine, and the table of contents is all phenomena. In the art world, it鈥檚 all about the artist鈥檚 cleverness or their mastery of certain media. In the things that I make, even though I鈥檝e created the physical structure, it鈥檚 really not me that鈥檚 doing the sculpting. It鈥檚 something other than me, something beyond me, something larger than me.
Who has had the biggest influence on your work? An artist or scientist?
It was Frank Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project physicist who went on to found San Francisco鈥檚 Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum where for 15 years I was artist-in-residence. I had Frank鈥檚 ear for hours each day. It was wonderful-I finally had someone I could ask all these questions that had been puzzling me for years.
Like: 鈥淲hat鈥檚 actually flowing through a wire when you turn on the light?鈥� Frank loved questions like that. He would take me through every electricity exhibit in the museum, explaining each one until he was sure I had it right. Then he鈥檇 end this long explanation with: 鈥淏asically, we don鈥檛 know what goes through a wire.鈥�
It was an awakening. It made me realise that what we do know is based on very small windows. Not many things in nature lend themselves to mathematical analysis. The whole idea of the limits of what鈥檚 knowable have been woven through everything I鈥檝e done.
So your sculptures are not experiments-yet they do ask scientific questions?
Yes, but a difference between what scientists do and what I do is that their questions are much more specific. They鈥檙e looking for an answer they can quantify or reproduce. Whereas I鈥檓 setting up a system that allows the natural phenomenon or process to sculpt itself, in a way. So it鈥檚 like asking a question. What happens if I combine air and sand? Fog and air? Water and air? What will result? But I鈥檓 not asking for a numerical answer, I鈥檓 asking for a visual answer.
Slice of Wind is a sculpture of yours mounted outside the Engineering School at the University of Colorado at Boulder. How did you put that together?
It鈥檚 a 10-foot-square panel covered with very thin stainless steel discs, loosely mounted on pins so that they can pivot in all directions. All these pins are mounted on a flexible PVC backing plate, which can be shaken by a bar mounted on a spring. When the piece is working normally, it reveals all the patterns and textures of the wind. Even on that small scale, there鈥檚 incredible detail: patterns of turbulence, waves and vortices. And it鈥檚 on a scale that hasn鈥檛 been explored extensively in scientific research. There鈥檚 been a lot of interest over the years in small-scale turbulent flows around objects like aeroplane wings and cars. There鈥檚 also been a lot of interest in large weather systems, much of it from satellite imagery. But this middle ground-the scale of wind in architecture, the scale of the wind in which we live our lives-hasn鈥檛 been visualised that much. I see this piece as a window into that scale.
What purpose does shaking the bar serve?
You can use it to resonate the backing plate, and when you do, you create very complicated resonance patterns that overpower the wind. As soon as you stop, the wind takes over again. I see the piece as a metaphor for something the engineering students will be facing their whole careers. They鈥檒l be designing artificial systems that lend themselves to geometry and analysis, yet will also have to interact with the wind, earthquakes and natural systems that are much more complicated.
(Kahn asks me to lie on the floor of his studio. I look upward, into the bottom of a suspended plastic dish over a metre across. Within the bowl, water swirls in a hypnotic and tumultuous vortex.)
This is called Wind Over Lake. I built it for the Alameda County office building in Oakland, California. It鈥檚 a big clear bowl, shaped like a wok, in which there are five gallons of water. A propeller, above, circulates the air, drawing it up from the centre and distributing it to the sides and back down. The sculpture is set into the ceiling, like a skylight. So you essentially get the underwater view of a water spout, something few people have seen and lived to tell about it. The piece is completely sealed-there鈥檚 just water and air in there. So these two systems become coupled together, just like the atmosphere and the ocean. They start influencing each other. The wind ripples the water, and the waves affect the air, which in turn intensifies the waves. It鈥檚 continually changing.
And you built three similar exhibits for the lobby of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration?
That鈥檚 right. All three deal with boundary layers-clouds and air, land and air, ocean and air. These are the places where interesting things happen, where complicated phenomena occur. All the models of global warming, El Ni帽o and climatic patterns depend on a knowledge of what鈥檚 happening at those interfaces-and a lot of it is very poorly understood. I went to NOAA, visited a lot of the scientists and saw what they did. Most of them are sitting in front of computers all day, trying to come up with mathematical descriptions of what nature is doing. It struck me that it wouldn鈥檛 be a bad thing to have these people walk by something real every day.
Tornado is your most popular sculpture. How does it work?
It鈥檚 basically a rotating airflow, with a central updraft. In air vortices, the updraft is many times stronger than the rotation. The combination of gentle rotation and strong updraft produces what the scientists who model tornadoes call the 鈥渟wirl ratio鈥�. When you get it within a certain numerical balance, you get an excellent vortex.
How do you make the tornado visible?
There鈥檚 a fine stream of fog introduced through a series of holes in the base of the structure. It鈥檚 created with an ultrasonic humidifier that vibrates two million times a second. That incredibly rapid vibration breaks water up into tiny droplets. But it doesn鈥檛 impart any heat to them, so it鈥檚 different from steam, which has a mind of its own. This is a cool fog that is easily sculpted by the air. The fog is drawn up into the vortex and makes the vortex visible.
Real tornadoes do their own thing, and we can鈥檛 influence them. Why did you make your tornadoes interactive?
I think it鈥檚 important for people to learn that some natural systems can be influenced and they will recover, whereas other systems, when you perturb them, are irreparably changed. One example is the Tornado. If you gently run your hand through it, it will curve around and recover. But if you jump through it, or wave your hands rapidly inside it, you completely disrupt the airflow, and it disappears. Sometimes it takes many minutes before the vortex can reorganise itself. I view that as an interesting metaphor for many natural systems that humans interact with. Like the oceans. You can perturb the oceans in certain ways and they will naturally recover. But there are some ways you can perturb them where it will take a very long time for them to recover-or they may be changed forever.
If money were no object, what would you build?
Part of my philosophy is that in our culture, with its increased interest in computers and television and media-with the bombardment of mediated experiences-people have fewer and fewer opportunities to nurture their ability to observe and look closely. So my underlying goal is to create objects or places designed to encourage and nurture observation. One of the pieces I鈥檓 building for Chabot is called Cloud Observatory. It has reclining chairs, large cylinder-shaped tubes that will frame a portion of the sky, and polarising filters. The idea is to create a place that says: 鈥淚t鈥檚 OK to sit here and look at the clouds.鈥� I鈥檇 like to create places like that, places that frame a natural phenomenon in a way that focuses people鈥檚 attention and awareness.