In the late ‘90s someone bashed into my car and I got an insurance check. Rather than fix the car, I went to a titanium bike building course in Ashland, Oregon, and then went home, got a nice TIG welder, and
proceeded (slowly) to build this titanium bike. Titanium welding is VERY touchy, and took a lot of practice. This led to teaching titanium welding for several years at The Crucible in Oakland.
I have worked with Mark Pauline’s Survival Research Lab since the ‘90s, and one day I met Ulrika Andersson there, who happened to be curating a display at the Chabot Space and Sciences Museum in Oakland. I had some experience with plasma, and she asked me if I could make a very large plasma globe for a ‘Touch the Sun’ exhibit. The result is this 22” globe, made with the help of Ed Kirshner, master plasma artist.
The other part of the ‘Touch the Sun’ exhibit was to be a magnetic fluid display. Another company got the contract, but their display failed because the magnetic fluid stuck to the vessel and resulted in a smear.
Ulrika asked me if I could do this, so I embarked on a long series of chemical experiments to develop a way of allowing the magnetic fluid to ‘swim’ in a clear liquid, and not stick to the container. After many attempts and with some luck, I developed the technology, and built the exhibit. The magnetic fluid can be manipulated from below with a magnet to form beautiful patterns.
My two ‘Touch the Sun’ exhibits were installed in 2013, and were supposed to last a year. In 2019, they are still going strong.
The technology for the magnetic fluids was published as an Instructable.
The Ziophane Series Seventeen Plasmadoid – 2016, now in a private collection in Woodside.
The Pyrex vessel was blown by Adams and Chittenden Scientific Glass, one block from our shop in Berkeley.
