The Politics of Art and Science

Research Project Number 33 was officially cancelled two weeks before flight by NASA chief counsel as a result of his interpretation that we were not conducting scientific research as mandated by the NASA program charter. After an intense week of institutional negotiations, our flights were once again tentatively approved; however, our artist team was required, at this point, to engage only in strict scientific research. Scientific research guidelines were provided to us by SFAI administrators on 20 March 1998, two days before we left for Houston to participate in the program. We were handed what I considered a performance script governed by the language of science: We were instructed by SFAI administrators to avoid using the words “dance,” “paintings” and “performance”—despite the fact that my original intention for this action was to create dialogue with scientists about the benefits of art in space.

With our artistic work safely restricted, our research objectives translated to (1) observing fluid dynamics in microgravity, (2) utilizing the law of conservation of angular momentum, (3) observing the collision of hard and soft objects, and (4) studying the effects of vertical inversion illusions.

When studying fluid dynamics, I compared the movement, adhesion and control of fluids in microgravity to the same characteristics in fluids in a gravity-based environment. I planned to compare the oscillatory behavior of acrylic paint, which is approximately equal to the viscosity of toothpaste, to the behavior of paint that has the viscosity of table cream and water. In a modification to this experiment, I added iron filaments and diamond dust to some of the paints to observe how their movement might be influenced by the introduction of magnetism. I attached loadstones to wands with the intent of using them in microgravity as one might use paint brushes. I knew that diamond dust was not magnetic; however, I was interested in using it to reference Diamond Dust Shoes by Andy Warhol [20]. Prior to our flight, I conducted and documented experiments on the ground in order to compare the results of identical experiments conducted with magnets in microgravity.

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