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LOS ANGELES, Feb. 12, 2004 — On a drizzly Saturday afternoon, a couple hundred people have come to the Boone Children’s Gallery at the L.A. County Museum of Art to experience the world of nanotechnology. In a time in which cultural interpretations of nanotechnology are hyping its darkest, most far-fetched visions, the “nano” exhibit is something of a shock.
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White pods that look like huge molecules are arranged throughout the 10,000-square-foot gallery, each containing an exhibit that promises to offer insight into a tiny world that most people know only through science fiction movies and TV shows. In the largest pod, which is nearly as big as a house, kids are rolling around inflated, 2-foot balls. Video projectors overhead display buckminsterfullerene patterns on the balls.
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In another pod, children are clustered around a circular box filled with white sand, raking patterns into it with their fingers. An overhead projector shines images of Tibetan sand paintings onto the sand. A young mother leans against the wall, watching her kids play. She was asked what she thinks her kids are learning about nanotechnology today.
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“I don’t think they’re learning about nanotechnology,” she says. “I think this is giving them a feel for it, though, and maybe they’ll be more comfortable with it 20 years from now.”
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That’s the kind of reaction that makes the exhibition’s creators, Victoria Vesna and James K. Gimzewski very happy. Vesna, the chair of the UCLA Department of Design/Media Arts, and Gimzewski, a nanoscientist in the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, purposely avoid serving up the typical version of nanotechnology offered by the popular media, which has tended to focus on extremely long-term science fiction-like prospects, such as self-replication, injectable nanobots and all-consuming gray goo.
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“The director of the museum told me that ‘nano’ has the broadest spectrum of ages for any exhibition held at the Boone Gallery,” says Vesna, who launched the project two years ago. “A lot of people with kids and without kids show up. It is a museum for the child in us, to provide a sense of wonder, experience and interactivity.”
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“We wanted to present nanoscience and nanotechnology in a way that was accessible to the public,” says Gimzewski, “and introduce it to children in a gentle, playful way — to play with buckyballs, make them think and drive their curiosity.”
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Gimzewski was excited to work with Vesna on “nano” because he was getting tired of seeing the same old images of nanotechnology repeated at scientific conferences. “Scientists are using cartoons, more or less, to explain nanotechnology,” he says. “These cartoons are more in the realm of science fiction. They start to copy or use science fiction terminology, and the science fiction writers kind of go back and forth with and feed off of the scientists.”
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Today, nanotechnology-inspired art has branched in two directions. One kind, exemplified by the “nano,” exhibit “is very much about connections and interconnections,” says Gimzewski. “Artists respond to new scientific discoveries and vice versa. That’s what we’re seeing at the moment and I find it very beautiful.”
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Then there’s the dark side — art that appeals to the public’s primal attraction to fear. “Fear is the biggest thing,” says Gimzewski. “Michael Crichton’s “Prey” is like “Jurassic Park.” There’s a scientific idea and then it generates something out of control and you have fear. The media love fear. If that is all you are going to get, what do you expect the perception to be?”
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Which raises an important question: Does the public’s perception of nanotechnology influence policy and legislation?
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“It’s very much the case,” says Gimzewski. “People could say ‘Oh, the U.S. government is funding this project that’s going to produce these nanobots that are going to fly around and kill people.’ It’s some thing that the ‘nano’ show is trying to address. And scientists have to make an effort to communicate what nanotechnology is to the public in a form that is digestible and appealing to them. That is something that is terrifically lacking, in my opinion. If they don’t make an effort, they could find themselves alienating the public.”
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Phil Bond, the U.S. Commerce Department’s undersecretary for technology and a big promoter of nanotechnology, says it’s very important to depict nanotechnology accurately. “With each step that we take toward the revolution it’s going to get more important because public fear and anxiety really will become a factor. Things like “Prey” have some effect. I think the general coverage by the mass media as a news item is probably more important, but the others certainly factor in.”
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The problem with telling an appealing and truthful story about nanotechnology, says David Berube, a professor of speech communication at the University of South Carolina who is finishing a book called “Nanohype,” is that “nanoscientists didn’t do a good job of what they were explaining. But people like [Eric] Drexler did. He grabbed everybody’s attention with that 1986 book of his, “Engines of Creation.” It was readable, it was popular, it was a little bit science fiction, and a whole cult developed around this book.
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Back at “nano,” Dan and Gwendy, both 24, are looking at large projection screens on either end of the long, black-colored room, called the “Quantum Tunnel.” As they fiddle around with video cameras mounted on flexible goosenecks coming out of the floor, the images on the screen flicker and shimmer like a cloud of intelligent particles.
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What’s their reaction to this exhibition?
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“I’m not sure,” says Dan. “I looked through some of the books over there, and it seems pretty neat. I think it will be important in the future.”
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How so?
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“It could improve medicine,” offers Gwendy.
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Is there anything that scares them about it?
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“Not really,” says Dan. “There will be benefits. Every technology can be used for good things or bad ones. Nanotechnology is not inherently better or worse than any other technology. I think we just have to be careful.”