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Ned Kahn, who presented at IdeaFestival on Day2, offered the Louisville audience a glimpse into how a greater collaboration between scientists and artists can help improve our understanding of the most complex processes in nature.

Kahn, who is a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, had a hard time deciding what to do after graduating college in the early 1980s. Entering science or arts were the two options. Eventually, he went for the scientific track and joined the Explotarorium in San Francisco, a special facility promoting ways to combine scientific knowledge and educational aims with technological expertise (Kahn was an apprentice to Frank Oppenheimer, the brother of the famous physicist). At some point, he began exploring his own ideas and, apparently, quite successfully.

Kahn is fascinated with turbulence patterns, their characteristics and formation, so he persistently applies them in his work. Chaos physics has made another strong influence on Kahn (the artists acknowledges that he had spent a lot of time with scientists in this field in the 1990s-- the heyday of chaos physics).

It's next to impossible to describe Kahn's projects with words. His online portfolio lists all his works separated into four parts, based on the substance: fog, water, fire/light, wind, sand. Pick anyone of those and you'll understand the important role that Kahn's artistic experiments carry for our improving our understanding how nature works.

Take “Encircled Stream - Founders Court, Seattle Center, Seattle,Washington. 1995"

“As water spirals into the basin, a turbulent vortex is created. After a few minutes, the water shuts off and the vortex becomes calmer and as smooth as glass. Waves spiraling out of the center of the whirlpool create the illusion that the vortex has begun to spin in the opposite direction. The process is quite complex and different each time. The fountain is encircled by a series of spiral-shaped granite benches that invite people to sit and observe. The spiral motif is reflected in paving patterns which swirl out from the fountain and flow throughout the plaza"

Or “Technorama Facade - Technorama, The Swiss Science Center, Winterthur, Switzerland. 2002

"In 2002, Ned Kahn worked with the staff of Technorama, the major science center in Switzerland, and their architects, Durig and Rami, to create a facade for the building which is composed of thousands of aluminum panels that move in the air currents and reveal the complex patterns of turbulence in the wind. The facade is visible from the large urban plaza in front of the museum”

See video below:

Kahn's projects may not be entirely scientifically significant, but they do contribute to our understandings of how complex natural patterns emerge out of seemingly unrelated processes. By now, probably everyone is familiar with the so-called “butterfly effect”, which, simply put, says that even small variations in the initial condition of a system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system (the popular culture metaphor being that a butterfly in Brazil may cause a tornado in Texas; those with an interest in intelligence/new media applications of this idea, see this excellent CIA paper on the topic).

At least, on the level of popular science, Kahn's work does the magic trick of explaining how complex some of nature systems are and how many ways there exist to study them. By following Kahn's work, one can actually see a tornado he sets in motion; one of his pieces of art entitled “Invisible Whirlwinds” was created using fans, curved walls, and the existing ventilation system in the gallery. However, the movements of viewers also altered the air currents, thus modifying the shape of the vortex. Whether it does really happen or not in nature is not that important-- after all, it's art not science; what is important is to recognize the great interdependence that exists not only between all forces of nature, but also between man-made phenomena, like trade or technology.

But there are also other applications to Kahn's work which many in both the developed and the developing world may find interesting given the rising fascination with sustainable housing. A project that he works on in Singapore is going to use rain-powered vortexes as fresh-water gathering systems (the absence of clean drinkable water is a huge problem for the country and rain is not well-captured).

Yet one feels that there is more to Kahn's work than just practical focus on sustainability. There is a strong spiritual component to his work-- he has been a Buddhist most of his working life and this does seem to have a visible impact on the overall contemplative philosophy of his works, no matter how complex.

Kahn's approach to project work is also quite interesting. His design process builds heavily on trial and error method (or what he prefers to call the “error-error” method). He trolls through junk yards, finds interesting things, and experiments with them. Some of them evolve with an idea in mind, but many just appear spontaneously. Khan doesn't hide the fact that many of his projects fail at an early stage and are never seen by the publicly.

Talking about his equipment and source materials, Kahn recalls how he was once ordering so much weird industrial stuff from 3M that their salesman got curious and asked what Kahn actually does with all of this. When Kahn sent in a few videos of his works, 3M got really excited and still send him huge boxes of materials and products that got launched but failed commercially.

It was truly refreshing to see somebody who is ambidextrous in so many fields. The work that Kahn is doing has not only made many structures beautiful, it has also allowed us to get a closer look at the complex web of relationships that exist in nature. One can only hope that there is no real turbulence in the life of this great master of, well, turbulence.

You can read more about Ned Khan's works and watch more videos  of them at his web-site.