Interactive ice crystal nucleation installation where the growth of microscopic ice crystals are generated by realtime environmental input from visitor activities.
Aqua Echo
Aqua Echo, was an installation and performance series commissioned by, The Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities. Performed at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1987, the project was created by Shawn Brixey in collaboration with the Laura Knott Dance Company, Boston, MA.
Aqua Echo was an interactive ice crystal nucleation installation whose space and performance site were engineered to allow the growth of microscopic ice crystals (snowflakes) based on direct environmental input from performance and audience activities. Ultrapure and super-cooled water are used in a novel isolation chamber to record the installation space and performance events on a microscopic scale, triggering ice nucleation to grow large-scale prismatic ice forms.
Just as no two snowflakes in nature are alike because they are precise environmental recordings of the history of their fall, in Aqua Echo, the combination of the installation site, performance and audience is the history that is recorded during the crystal growth. The ice crystals in Aqua Echo are the story of that moment written molecularly in ice.
The isolation chamber for Aqua Echo used a series of sealed super-cooled vertical copper cylinders with a stainless steel and glass viewing port. The glass view port at the top of the chamber had a high-powered stereo-microscope that was used for observing ice crystal growth. Below the glass window, a nylon ring was staged with a thin surfactant membrane stretched across, and a drop of ultra-pure, ultra-cold water was held without freezing. Four small solenoids at the top of the chamber automatically opened at the start of the performance when dance company members performing in the work stepped through a laser light plane that bisected the exhibition space 16" above the floor. As the audience and dancers stir and contaminate the air, the solenoid ports allow the ultra-pure water to pick up airborne nucleating material that include dust, skin cells, pollen and naturally occurring organic compounds, as well as shift the temperature gradient of the membrane. The water freezes during the performance and is used as an ice seed that will then trigger the growth of large prismatic ice crystals which are the record of the project.
Above the performance site a large 8' x 10' aluminum framed water filled ripple-tank floats 10' above the floor. Two 500W point source lights with barn-doors placed next to each other, and fixed 16' from the ground project bright light through the surface of the water hovering above the dancers and audience. Each point source is fitted with circular polarizers that project polarized light through the water.
The surface of the water is hypersensitive to movement in the installation space as the ripple tank is cabled to a sprung wood floor allowing the tiniest vibration to undulate the surface of the water by both dancers and audience movement.
The floor, painted with non-depolarizing paint has stereo 3D pair images of the ripples projected on the floor as well as on to the bodies of the dancers and audience. Audience members wear 3D glasses creating a stereo 3D image of the ripples, and the sensation of being immersed in water.