La Poussière de soleils (Dust of Suns)
In the semicircular conservatory is a tall standing sculpture. It’s called La Poussière de Soleils, the Dust of Suns. On its back are tubes full of murky amber fluid; sunlight that has yet to be illuminated, still yet to set fire. Its façade comprises three hexagonal panels filled with a magical alchemical solution of la poussière de soleils, of the artist’s own invention. Each appears filled with thick golden sunshine. The bubbles blown through them leave trails of light even brighter and more golden; like trails of light torn through the heavens, like pools of shooting stars.

Argos
The work Argos is a 41-channel muon particle detector. It reacts with a flash each time a muon particle emitted by the universe is detected in the air – a mechanism that is carried over to another work titled Impulse. Taking the form of a chandelier, Impulse is a work consisting of numerous cylindrical tubes that extend out like the hanging branches of a tree as clear fluid flows through them. Every time Argos detects a particle, it transmits a signal to Impulse, with the result that we can see with our own eyes the air bubbles and motion of the fluid running through the artwork.

Impulse
The Cascade Project explores matter by capturing the pattern of muons: i.e. electrically charged subatomic particles. It does so through an installation comprised of three live elements: a muon detector; a complex assemblage of pumps; and an arrangement of tubes through which fluid flows. When muons are detected, a light and connected pumps are activated, triggering the movement of an uncanny, viscous fluid through the sculptural system.

This installation, for a restaurant in San Francisco, responds to three large skylights high overhead in a long, narrow space. The design is an interpretation of “extruding” the skylights down through a partial false ceiling and into the more intimate space below. For this project, we pushed our glass “fabric“ techniques (used in the Capella Hotel and the IHG Lobby installations) one step further, heating the woven glass fabric in a kiln for further shaping. This lets us deform the tubes in the fabric as well as flex the overall matrix to create large continuous glass surfaces that billow like sheets in a breeze.