A Random Walk (2018)

Originally developed for the Spring 2018 exhibition at Corners Gallery in Ithaca, NY, A Random Walk was an installation of geometric origami-like sculptures that was conceived as an extended improvisation on a theme; it was based on one sculpted print chosen from a previous body of work that consisted of folded paper patterns of pyramids and squares. Photographs of this seed piece became the source material for other sculpted prints, which were themselves selectively photographed and folded in turn. Through many repetitions of this meandering procedure, new pieces were recursively generated from the original parent. Along the way, some thematically related external images were incorporated into the mix, resulting in a diverse chorus of variations on a single object.

The centerpiece of A Random Walk was a 6-by-9-foot tapestry of folded paper that was mounted directly to the wall. This sculpted print showed a close-up view of the folded shapes in one of the other pieces, with the implied three-dimensional space of the photograph being flattened by its conversion to black and white. This image also appeared in various guises elsewhere in the installation, and its landscape-like qualities suggested a functional relationship between the operations of photographing and folding used here and the cartographer’s practice of mapmaking.

Photographs by Sheryl Sinkow and Werner Sun

Project Statement

If my time as an artist has taught me anything, it is the power of experiential learning. What skills I have gained were acquired not by thinking but by practicing them over and over. In fact, I find that the basic physical activities involved in art can themselves trigger novel thoughts, as if the reason for making a work of art were to provide ideas for the next piece.

Throughout my working life, I have seen many examples of this connection between doing and thinking. Before I was an artist, I played music, and the practice room was where insights would form and gel. Even in my research as a physicist, it was not the book-learning, but the actual building of an experiment and the analysis of data that gave me the most intellectual pleasure.

For me, the joy of being creative is not in the end product but in experiencing the constant (and sometimes frustrating) feedback loop between concept and execution. At their most fundamental operational levels, I see no difference between science and art, and this commonality — the mechanics of thoughtful action — is the animating engine of my installation, A Random Walk, which was originally developed for a 2018 exhibition at Corners Gallery in Ithaca, NY.

The title of this work is also the name of a mathematical model for a wide variety of statistical processes, from the diffusion of smoke through the air to the behavior of stock markets. Smoke particles, to take the first example, are bombarded on all sides by air molecules. So, according to this model, each particle follows an unpredictable trajectory zigzagging through space, a random walk independent of all the other particles. This picture is a fitting analogy for the wandering paths of artists and scientists: It captures the way scientific discoveries build unexpectedly on those that came before, and it also describes how my installation took shape, with each action defining the starting point for the next.

As a musician, I have long been drawn to musical forms that grow organically from some small detail. Fugues, passacaglias, chaconnes, and Renaissance cantus firmus masses — these are self-referential compositions in which a chosen theme is repeatedly transformed and reworked over the course of a piece. Often, this theme is pulled and stretched beyond recognition and buried under strata of sound, such that the listener is only dimly aware of its presence. Nevertheless, it exerts a unifying influence, acting as an unseen backbone undergirding the musical structure.

Just as I was starting work on A Random Walk, I was also getting to know Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae for viola and piano (Op. 48), which was written in 1950 and later scored for viola and string orchestra (Op. 48a). Subtitled “Reflections on a song of Dowland”, this 15-minute-long gem is not a conventional set of variations on a theme but, rather, a loose meditation that spins off in many different directions, itself a random walk of sorts. The piece starts off episodically, with the song of John Dowland being presented only as fragmented and re-harmonized snippets adorned by moody figurations. But Lachrymae builds slowly, and the theme gradually inches forward from the mist, until it bursts memorably into sharp focus at the end. Britten was not the first (nor the last) composer to reverse the traditional placement of the theme, which is normally at the beginning, but he did so in a way that we are led on what feels like a personal journey of discovery.

With Britten’s Lachrymae by my side, creating A Random Walk became a parallel journey of discovery for me. My visual source material, my theme, was derived from a sculpted print I had previously made and which I also included in the installation. I printed photographs of this sculpture and subjected them to repeated manipulations — digitally processing the images, folding and collaging the prints — with each transformation spawning several others. As I made my way step by step, each time ringing the changes on what came before, the various elements in the installation appeared to coalesce spontaneously around the original theme, which then became an unspoken organizing principle hidden in plain view.

Perhaps it goes without saying that the deepest truths we seek are hidden truths. The most vexing questions of our existence are the ones that require the greatest ingenuity and treasure to address. After all, that which is obvious needs no seeking. Both as individuals and as societies, we cannot help but pour tremendous resources into constructing the next particle collider or crafting the perfect poem, all to illuminate that which we suspect can never be fully understood.

The plain fact that uncovering truths takes a fair amount of effort means that it is an irreducible, individual exercise. We each devise our own strategies for understanding. Whenever I encounter some new piece of information, it tends to skim the surface of my consciousness until I spend the time to digest it, to internalize it, questioning and evaluating its merits and then fitting it into place in my worldview. As I made A Random Walk, this internal cognitive process played out externally in my studio. Every transformation of my material resulted from its close scrutiny. I would choose certain details to accentuate, which then led to new trains of thought. By the end of the process, the installation was a cumulative record of my prolonged engagement with the source images.

I believe that all knowledge is personal. This is not a denial of objectivity, but simply a recognition that, even in a field as rational as science, objectivity cannot avoid being tempered by our subjective vantage points. We scientists do our best to tame our preconceptions and biases, but we must still contend with insufficient data and the limitations of our instruments; in other words, with the inherent specificity of existing in a certain time and place. The universe’s secrets are hidden from us because we are not infinite beings. And deducing these secrets from what little information we have takes an infusion of imagination while remaining tethered to reality. So, although it is possible to view truth as a mythical fixed star in the distance, truth as experienced on the ground, even scientific truth, is an ever-shifting mosaic of partially overlapping subjectivities, collectively constructed by all of us together.

Some scientists might bristle at this characterization of what they do, but in the final analysis, scientists, like artists, are social and passionate creatures with individual experiences. Both artists and scientists are dogged seekers of hidden truths, be they truths in nature or truths within ourselves. Even works of art that are spun from whole cloth contain an element of self-discovery. I consider myself to be a scientist and an artist because I am interested not only in the inner workings of the natural world but also in how we relate to that world.

Of the many math courses I took in school, geometry captivated me the most because of its strong visual component. It seemed like a feat of magic that one could prove Euclid’s theorems merely by drawing diagrams on paper. Geometry convinced me of the visceral connection between immaterial concepts and things in the real world, and my fascination with geometry is evident in the shapes and patterns featured in A Random Walk.

Geometric objects are relatively easy to describe. But on the other hand, such objects are also pure fictions. A sphere, for example, is the set of points in three dimensions that are equidistant from a given reference point (i.e., the center of the sphere). However, if one looks in nature, there are no perfect spheres to be found. A soap bubble descending through the air is slightly deformed by the pull of the earth. The earth itself bulges around the equator because of its rotation. Perfect spheres exist only in the mind’s eye.

But, calling the earth a sphere gives us a yardstick to measure it by. The earth’s deviations from a perfect sphere demand an explanation, but without the very notion of a sphere, there would be no deviations to study. So, like with a mathematical proof, it is only after the selection of a starting point that the rationality of science takes over. Making assumptions, defining one’s terms, attaching names to things — these arbitrary acts mark the creative, irrational leap at the start of any logical sequence. Such elaborate games we play in order to cope with our finite, imperfect knowledge!

With its own sequence of actions, A Random Walk can be seen as an ode to imperfection. Lodged in the center of the human condition, imperfection conspires with finiteness to generate a multiplicity of valid outcomes and understandings. In my installation, this multiplicity is expressed as a constellation of interpreted details, of partial and occluded views of the material I began with.

I included among this material some photographs of pixels on a computer screen that bear a resemblance to stained glass. Although this was done on a whim, I subsequently realized that, for me, digital culture has come to evoke a sterile yearning for perfection that we sometimes use as a substitute for a more expansive sense of eternity. Cyberspace is an uncanny finite utopia, entirely manmade, and therefore unconstrained by truth.

These days, truth feels like a precious commodity under attack. In developing A Random Walk, this state of affairs was in the back of my mind. So, I attempted to model the treatment of my visual material on the approach I imagined that Britten took with his theme for Lachrymae, which is also the approach I have been trained as a scientist to adopt with my measurements, one that aspires to integrity and humility in the face of uncertainty.

I tend to see the world as full of things to study — whatever the object of one’s attention, there is no aspect of it that cannot be delved into ever more deeply. In observing the diffusion of smoke, one might find that each individual particle flutters erratically. But taken together, an ensemble of many such particles flows like a cloud with predictable properties. This well-defined macroscopic behavior arises non-trivially, via a mathematical slight of hand, from the sum of countless intricate movements at microscopic scales. In much the same way, hidden truths in both science and art emerge from a sea of insignificance. The world is composed of layers upon layers of ordinary details, and to catch a glimpse of the light within, one must handle these details with a soft touch and a genuinely open mind, devoid of any intention except for the desire to fashion something lasting and special.