A Mason finds his muse
in nano’s building blocks

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Feb. 18, 2005 — Jack Mason has written about micro and nanotechnology for Technology Review, Salon.com, and the publication you are now reading. But mere words from the small world weren’t enough for him.

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The veteran journalist decided to broaden his palette through an online store on eBay called Nanotechno Fine Arts. The Web boutique shows and sells his images based on molecular engineering.

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Haunted by nano

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“It began when I was reporting on this stuff. I so often came across these images that haunted me,” he said. “Here you are able to see or depict these devices at the scale of molecules. … These always made nanotech more real and tangible for me.”

The wordsmith, who now handles communications duties for IBM in New York, first talked to artists about helping out. Mason figured he ought to give them ideas, so he experimented with the public domain images in digital imaging software.

The experiment became the process, and all of a sudden he was telling the visual story he desired. The NanoTechno series consists of composite images of molecular structures and materials — quantum dots, nanowires, carbon nanotubes, thin films — twisted and tweaked to artistically express the micro and nanoscale.

From pixels to prints

To complete the picture, he wanted to see his images printed. Someone recommended a fine-arts quality printer called IRIS, which has special ink jets that produce droplets of pigment the size of red-blood cells and results in a continuous, pixel-free image. “In a way, the printing technique speaks to the ultrasmall,” he said.

The signed and unframed limited edition prints, which include titles like “Memorph,” “Subang” and “Trolicule,” are available in two sizes and sell for $600 and $1,200. He has exhibited some of the work in an art show and has a couple of sales pending, but it’s not the end of the road. He still seeks to engage artists, only this time he’d like to incorporate his images into other media, such as video and sculpture. That, he said, would be even more true to nanoscale science and technology.

“This nanotechnique in some ways also reflects the idea of guided self-assembly. I’m editing and controlling the process, but … in some ways the image is trying to create itself.”

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