Nanomaterials /// PLASMATIC

2018 | berlin science week
holographic video animation

Nanomaterials /// PLASMATIC is an artist and scientist exchange project by Sadie Weis in collaboration with the Leibniz Science Campus GraFOx at Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik during Berlin Science Week 2018.

For Nanomaterials, Sadie Weis approaches the curious dialogue between scientific research and artistic investigation through the shared sense of wonder and quest for knowledge both subjects hold. In Weis’s multi-media creations, she simulates future-world-making through channels of fantastical science and crystal growth experimentation, often pairing scientific reality with imagination. Over a period of seven weeks, Weis has observed scientists at Paul-Drude-Institut working on the synthesis and physical characterization of crystals beyond those developed by nature.

Crystalline materials are obtained combining oxygen and metal atoms to create thin layers (at the nanometric scale) of oxides in a deposition process called Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE). In this process, the reaction of metal with an oxygen plasma results in the formation of a crystal structure where atoms are ordered in a regular lattice. Plasma is the fourth fundamental state of matter also known as ‘radiant matter’.

Inspired by the artist’s laboratory observations and insight gained through Nanomaterials, her impressions about the formation of oxides in the MBE culminated into an exhibition entitled PLASMATIC. The visual, holographic and sound installation experience can be viewed inside a historic aviation engine test stand. Accompanying work of drawings, paintings and observational notes will be exhibited at the Erwin-Schrödinger-Center and Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik.

PLASMATIC hologram
concept: sadie weis
3-D Animation: Camille Lacadee
Sound Design: Kornelius Glaser