The Qualcomm Institute | IDEAS Everything is Dust @calit2 | Uploaded 1 year ago | Updated 2 hours ago
“Everything is Dust”
by Heige Kim, Emmet Norris, & Dr. Sarah Aarons
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Dust surrounds us at all times. The most common dust particles, composed of our dead skin cells, can be found gathering quietly in places around our homes. Even the most common dust mixes with cosmic stardust and particles that have traveled by wind from remote and distant places. Migration of dust from the Sahara Desert across the Atlantic ocean to the rainforest of South America occurs throughout the year and replenishes the soil with nutrients and supplies phytoplankton with phosphorus and iron. Depending on where we live, the dust composition varies widely. In places like the Salton Sea, where the supply of water has ceased, wind abrades the exposed sea playa and transports dust particles that contain unhealthy amounts of toxic chemicals such as cadmium present in pesticides, causing asthma and other respiratory ailments for local residents. As noted by Hannah Holmes in “The Secret Life of Dust” in 2001, our world can be understood through a grain of dust that travels far and wide without borders.
But how do we study and visualize something mostly invisible, like dust particles?
“Everything is Dust” is a collaborative project with Sarah Aarons, an isotope geochemist, Ph.D. student Emmet Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Victor Castaneda H, multimedia artist, and Heige Kim, an M.F.A. candidate from the University of California, San Diego’s Visual Arts Department. They are working on a speculative visual/aural art installation using the movements of dust particles in real time. By using a similar scientific instrument that collects dust in specific research sites such as the San Jacinto Peak in Riverside County, “Everything is Dust” metaphorically and abstractly visualizes how we share and interact with the nearly invisible layers of dust particles through an immersive installation comprised of real-time video feeds, data visualizations, and sound interlaced with archival material of dust at the Qualcomm Institute’s Calit2 ‘Black Box’ Theater.
“Everything is Dust”
by Heige Kim, Emmet Norris, & Dr. Sarah Aarons
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Dust surrounds us at all times. The most common dust particles, composed of our dead skin cells, can be found gathering quietly in places around our homes. Even the most common dust mixes with cosmic stardust and particles that have traveled by wind from remote and distant places. Migration of dust from the Sahara Desert across the Atlantic ocean to the rainforest of South America occurs throughout the year and replenishes the soil with nutrients and supplies phytoplankton with phosphorus and iron. Depending on where we live, the dust composition varies widely. In places like the Salton Sea, where the supply of water has ceased, wind abrades the exposed sea playa and transports dust particles that contain unhealthy amounts of toxic chemicals such as cadmium present in pesticides, causing asthma and other respiratory ailments for local residents. As noted by Hannah Holmes in “The Secret Life of Dust” in 2001, our world can be understood through a grain of dust that travels far and wide without borders.
But how do we study and visualize something mostly invisible, like dust particles?
“Everything is Dust” is a collaborative project with Sarah Aarons, an isotope geochemist, Ph.D. student Emmet Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Victor Castaneda H, multimedia artist, and Heige Kim, an M.F.A. candidate from the University of California, San Diego’s Visual Arts Department. They are working on a speculative visual/aural art installation using the movements of dust particles in real time. By using a similar scientific instrument that collects dust in specific research sites such as the San Jacinto Peak in Riverside County, “Everything is Dust” metaphorically and abstractly visualizes how we share and interact with the nearly invisible layers of dust particles through an immersive installation comprised of real-time video feeds, data visualizations, and sound interlaced with archival material of dust at the Qualcomm Institute’s Calit2 ‘Black Box’ Theater.
