#beamtime

Hello unity devs, Beamtime is 25% off as part of the Unity asset store big sale!

Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the Central Laser Facility in Oxfordshire again to work with a group of scientists on the Vulcan laser.

The Vulcan laser is one of a small group of petawatt lasers, currently the most powerful in the world. Over the next month a group of scientists will be using the laser to generate X-rays by hitting a target and creating plasma. The X-rays themselves will be used to test new forms of imaging.

In the last few months I have followed a team working with the Gemini laser at the CLF. Dr Rajeev Pattathil lead the team and kindly allowed me to take part in aspects of the experiment and also set up my own camera equipment in the target area. 

Gemini is a petawatt class laser with 2 beams, allowing very high energy and very short timescale experiments. The team were studying many different aspects of the laser interaction with the targets to better understand a number of properties of plasma. This is an area of high energy physics where things start to behave very strangely.

My goal with this project is to investigate the strong similarity I see between scientists and artists, I wanted to do this by taking part in their experiment. My hypothesis is that both ultimately search for truth and both see beauty in that truth. 

What this group of scientists were doing over the month long period of the experiment (and many months before and after in preparation and analyzation) was an immensely creative exercise. They were creating new ways of looking at the world, both physically and conceptually in order to better understand it. Everyone from the scientists who designed and built the laser (which is constantly adapted and monitored), to the scientists who designed the experiment (which involved weeks of building tables full of lenses, mirrors and heaps of high tech diagnostics) are as creative and inventive as the most adapt artist. 

The creative and abstract thinking involved in building such a thing is immense. This is where I see similarities with a more conceptual form of art. There is something that they're looking for which you can not look at, is as hot as the sun and it's all over in timescales only an atom would understand. Their task is to build a machine that can look at this in an almost sideways and abstract manner. 

The final product of this experiment will be a paper (or number of papers). This will add to the permanent advancement of knowledge that incrementally benefits and enriches us all. What greater artwork is there than that?

You can read more about this here:

http://studio.alistairmcclymont.com/post/89377498845/this-is-what-happens-when-you-put-paper-with-an

Chris Hooker (a scientist at the CLF) was demonstrating the Gemini laser. The comment 'did it survive' was in reference to my camera. I've got an infra red filter over the lens to try and protect it from the laser (which was infra red). The previous shots, filming without it, shut down my camera and the next time had a big purple ball of light on the side of the viewfinder.

A laser burning a piece of paper. This is the Astra Gemini laser (specifically the Astra stage). The flashing you can see is pulses of laser light - the laser itself is around 1cm in diameter at this stage. You can hear a snap as the laser instantly burns a mark on the paper. When you're there it sounds pretty loud. The firing end of the Gemini laser - further down the chain i'm told sounds more like a gunshot if you put a piece of paper in it, at that stage its much more powerful. I'm hoping to be able to experience that at some point.

I've just begun an art residency with Artquest, Arts Catalyst and the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire. I'll be blogging about my experiences there here.

My group just got done with some beamtime at the National Synchrtron Light Source. Beamtime is when we have time to an x-ray experiment at a national lab and all work in close quarters for long hours for a week or so. This experimental involved a lot of long scans, so we really get to know each other during the down time. Here are some of the highlights from this round.

We collected an x-ray map that reminded me a lot of a certain part of a lady's anatomy (See similar type example here.) My adviser and I were discussing what it looked like. He insisted it looked like Yoda (?) and, not wanting to say vagina or directly reference lady bits, I told him it looked like a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. I thought that was universally understood as the classy way to allude to the fact that something looks like a vagina. He said he didn't know who Georgia O'Keeffe was. I neglected to expand on the topic.

I told a post-doc friend that our data looked like a vagina (well labia technically) but I didn't want to directly say that to my adviser. He asked if I used the Georgia O'Keeffe analogy, furthering my conviction that it's the universal way to say something looks like feminine nether regions.

My adviser started talking about how he thinks vitamin D and sunshine over break are starting to help him grow some of his hair back. I told him it was just migrating because he has a rather pronounced "neck scarf" (his words). He then proceeded to tell me us that he just never knows where to stop shaving and doesn't want to be one of those guys that shaves all the way to down there. 

In all the talk about man-shaving, there may have been a lot of gesturing involved.

My adviser's dad is apparently the best ever at BYOB restaurants. He brings a rolling cooler with a variety of wines and beers so he can select the perfect drinks to go with the meal. 

I am apparently the group party animal. I take this to mean that I am very good at planning social activities (read: picking out bars) during conferences. I hope that future group members will hear about me and have to live up to my reputation.