Farewell to an Ice Colleague

This week I lost a dear friend and colleague, Dr. Matt Florczyk, to a long illness.  I first knew Matt as a graduate student in our Biomedical Sciences program, and later as an ice hockey teammate with the Albany Lab Rats. He was an incredibly gifted young man, both athletically and intellectually, with a warm, compassionate personality. 

I shed blood with him during hockey games; tonight I shed tears, missing him on the ice.

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Matt's obituary and information on a memorial fund can be found here.

YES WE CAN

Today we celebrate the inauguration of our new President. It is a time of hope, and an opportunity for change. I will work comfortably with that thought.

There is much to do ...

Curiosity

One theme of this blog, and of my website, is the intersection of art and science. I delight in conversation with artists, scientists, and educators who share this interest.

As you might gather from previous posts, Claire Beynon has been a constant source of inspiration in exploring the art/science interface. Our projects leave me puzzled at times, but they always foster playful curiosity. We are now collaborating with Schenectady artist/educator Chris Moran to help promote art, science, and their common element of curiosity through an upcoming workshop sponsored by the Capital Region Center for Arts in Education.

A puzzling moment (for me; Claire is amused) in the studio

Curiosity is a powerful driving force. In an evolutionary context, the adaptive significance of curiosity seems quite obvious: It prompts an individual to discover new resources (food, shelter, material goods), to find solutions to problems (e.g., cure an ailment), to select a compatible mate, and to occupy a comfortable social setting. At a personal or psychological level, however, curiosity presents many challenges. The risks and rewards of acting on our curiosity must be weighed carefully in order to optimize the outcome, which is the measure of success (and a definition of wisdom).

Modern science employs a well-scripted process - the scientific method - to act on curiosity. Adhering to this approach provides us with verifiable (more accurately, falsifiable) information which, in sum, has freed humanity from reliance on chance or superstition. Metaphorically, the scientific method provides us with the factual tools needed to navigate successfully the labyrinth of nature.

I wonder if the scientific method can help us explore imagined worlds, where outcomes are not necessarily the product of natural law? This question must have been asked a thousand times already. I'd love to hear from an artist who has formalized hypotheses, conducted controlled experiments, and analyzed the results with some measure of statistical significance.

More importantly, I'd love to know how they measure success. And I wonder if that success defines artistic wisdom...

Cellular masonry (and intelligence?)

In 1878, agglutinated foraminifera were dubbed "nature's little masons" by A.M. Norman, a prominent British reverend and naturalist. William B. Carpenter, arguably the 19th-century's premier cell biologist, also pointed to the "skill" displayed by foraminifera in selecting materials to build their shells -- a characteristic that got Edward Heron-Allen in heated debates with colleagues over the definition of intelligence. (See, for example, his paper entitled Purpose and intelligence in the Foraminifera published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1914:1069-1070.) In future posts, I'll dedicate some space to Heron-Allen and examine the seemingly incongruous mix of science and mysticism that marked his career.

Four species of agglutinated foraminifera from the same handful of Antarctic sediment. Each species collects a characteristic range of grain sizes or type of mineral to build a shell.

Speaking of incongruous mixes, Claire Beynon's December 28th post juxtaposed a recipe for chicken kofta and my watercolor of Astrammina rara - one of the unicellular giants that we collect in Antarctica. About a decade ago, Joan Bernhard and I used straightforward statistical approaches to show that Astrammina "selects" sediment particles that range in size from 0.25 to 0.50 mm to use as the main non-compressible (read: hard) component of its shell. Since then, we and coworkers have noted that A. rara's shell usually contains a conspicuous, red-orange sand grain. This feature prompted ceramic artist Katherine Glenday to write a poem in which, to paraphrase, she describes A. rara as "the species that builds its heart on its house." I adore the beautiful aesthetic of that anthropomorphism! But it begs the question: does it really select one red grain, or is this simply a consequence of chance? If it is indeed displaying selectivity, what is the molecular basis of this cellular process?

As an expression of rote scientific curiosity, we'll do a bit of experimental work to explore this question and post some results here. In a sense, though, I almost don't want to know the answer. Why despoil a beautiful poem with a rational whitewash?

Foram food

A final thought for 2008 ... and a bold prediction:  I'll think more about this topic in 2009!

A tasty foraminiferan protist?

I work with many clever people. One measure of "cleverness" is the capacity to make quick connections between disparate concepts. Check out Claire Beynon's post at Ice Lines for a good example.

(I wonder if I've been clever enough to figure out what Claire was thinking of ...)

Knew Year Wishes

... as in, the year I knew. To acknowledge the New Year, I'll pictorially summarize some significant stuff 2008 brought (in no particular order).

HAPPY Y2K+9!

InterfaCE III viewed at home before installation at ISOP '08 in Halifax

On stage

InterfaCE I at the Tang (!!!)

Simon Starling's sculpture at Mass MoCA

The mother of all ice storms almost wrecks our house

Katherine Glenday shows me her vessels in NYC

I show Katherine her vessels in Antarctica

Claire and I find flat, easy-to-drill ice (finally!)

For the birds

... as in, "This weather is for the birds!"

It's a good thing my "polar wings" were spread when I landed here. Between the big ice storm last week (no power for 6 days), the recent snow, and now the bitter cold, it's as though Explorers Cove doesn't want to release her grip. 

Some musings today about birds and making images, just to warm the spine:

Finches at the bird feeder during a snowstorm

I've always held a fascination for birds. Winter brings out their best: when it's cold, they puff up their feathers and become animated fuzzballs. Many of their root behaviors - forage and battle for food / attract and battle for mates - become evident in footprints frozen in the snow. The sleuth in me tries to discern these behaviors from their tracks, much as a paleontologist tries to interpret the life of dinosaurs from their prints in fossil mud.

Chickadee tracks in the snow

Frozen footprints and fossil tracks represent hard evidence of reality in the natural world. I find it interesting that photographs were once analogous to these tracks. That's no longer true, thanks to digital imaging and software that allow us to merge images seamlessly. For example, I can show you compelling pictures of Chairman Mao wearing a New Jersey Devils uniform (I hear he was a big ice hockey fan!) or Caroline Kennedy pushing a broom at Wal-Mart (that's what every soccer-mom representative of middle-class America has done, right?). But do such images represent reality? No - they are manifestations of the imagination. What has unlocked our limitless creativity has also shattered our faith in photographic evidence. It's a New Age for creatives ... as well as charlatans and thieves.

There is considerable debate among scientists about how we should use images to report our findings, i.e., to depict the realities of nature. I have touched on this topic in my art/science blog, and it is something that Claire Beynon and I have incorporated in previous work.

Ah, look -- an Adelie penguin has been visiting my bird feeder! For the first time in evolutionary history, penguins have tasted sunflower seeds.

Out of the frying pan ...

...and into the fire. In my case, however, the expression is "out of the freezer and onto the ice."


I left Explorers Cove because it became an icy, slushy mess. Look at the scene here in upstate New York!

Everything is coated with ice due to a freak storm. For the past four days, we've been without electricity ... and heat, and a washing machine, and a TV. It's like camping near the Herbertson Glacier!

Well, not exactly...

Sweet sorrow

The sea ice is getting too sloppy to work on safely -- each step can drop you into a waist-deep pool of melt water. Time to make the last dive, pack camp, and head for home.

It's hard to say goodbye. We had a difficult, weather-abbreviated 2008 field season filled with logistical challenges due to the 10-yr-old ice. But the season was a success: sampling sites were surveyed, specimens were collected, experimental arrays deployed, and art was made. And -- most importantly -- no one was injured in the process.

I'm sure I speak for Molly and Sally when I say that five outstanding people made this season not only possible, but thoroughly enjoyable. Cecil Shin, Shawn Harper, Henry Kaiser, and Steve Clabuesch were an awesome team of divers.

G-093 divers: Cecil, Shawn, Henry, me, and Steve

In addition to dive tending, Claire Beynon worked within and behind the scenes to ensure that things got done and that our voices, visions, and music were heard worldwide.

Claire photographing ice lines

Eight souls aboard Explorers Cove field camp ... eight souls sad to leave it. I'm sure that we will cast long shadows together far into the future.

What we do to amuse

We are often asked "what do you do for fun while in camp?"

The quick answer, at least for me, is "everything!" It seems like there isn't a moment that I'm not enjoying Antarctica, even when working on broken equipment in the freezing cold or toiling to batten down the hatches during a katabatic wind.

There are a few routine things we do as a group that are a lot of fun. Cooking comes to mind, with conversation around the dinner table focusing on animated story-telling. We also show a weekly movie (with popcorn, of course) inside the Jamesway, although it's sometimes difficult to find a film that matches our disparate tastes. This year, it looks like a new activity has been added to our repertoire: "Felting" hats.

Pat Clabuesch (Steve's mom) knitted a red hat for each of us to wear for our group picture. The plan was for us to felt the hats, so that they fit snugly. That turned out to be a problem -- no matter how much we boiled, stirred, and swirled the hats, we just couldn't get them to felt correctly. We still had a lot of fun felting ... and posing for pictures.

Shawn's hat is properly felted (I guess it's now a "cap"). Mine stayed rather floppy. Henry preferred to wear his like a French painter's cap ... or perhaps a Cardinal's headgear, given his prayer-like pose? I don't know for sure.

I do know that we had a lot of fun felting, thanks to Steve's mom.

Split rocks and long shadows

Walks are an important part of field work. We take them often ... it affords an opportunity to ponder this place, collect data, and plan future work. Sometimes we walk to blow off steam.

Claire and I took a final walk along the glacial moraines overlooking Explorers Cove. We were searching for rocks that had been split in half by the weather ... basically, moisture seeps into cracks during the summer, then freezes and expands during winter. Repeated freeze/thaw cycles like this turn rock into sand. We will make a story out of this process, and develop some K-12 education materials together with a dedicated team of teachers.

We cast some long shadows during that walk -- over broken ground and split rocks to reach the sea ice. Our thoughts extended across that frozen ocean...

Water water everywhere and lots of drops to drink

As a biologist, I spend a lot of time studying life in a drop of water ... or sometimes I drop myself into water to study life. On rare occasions I depict life with paint, brush, and watercolor.

People often ask where we get our water at the field camp. We wash dishes, clothes, and (not often enough) our bodies using melted sea ice. When sea water freezes, most of the salt is "squeezed out" in the form of brine as water crystals form. As seen above, these brine channels form "crater star" patterns that are visible on the ice surface. Underwater, they form the ice stalactites that we ponder while doing a safety stop at the end of scuba dives.

Not all the brine drains from sea ice, however, and this brackish water is not suitable to drink. Instead, our potable water is brought in by helicopter from McMurdo Station. We use about 5 gallons a day when there are 7-8 people in camp, but lately we have been visited by many other scientists working in the area. As a result, our outhouse is getting a workout and our drinking water is gone.

Fortunately, there are many snow banks surrounding camp. Snow is, of course, essentially frozen rain. If you collect enough drops you can drink rainwater. Likewise, if you scoop up enough snow and melt it, you have "fresh" water to drink. We boil it first for proper hygiene: Skua Gulls fly overhead, and an occasional penguin waddles thru the snow.

To be honest, melted snow here doesn't taste very good. I hope it's because of all the sand mixed with the snow, and not because of the birds.