Engineering Art Neil Dodgson Admires the Technical Mastery of Sculptor Anish Kapoor
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COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS IS ANNTHEA LEW ANNTHEA Sky Mirror (2006) in London’s Kensington Gardens is one of four Anish Kapoor works manufactured by the process that is used to grind scientific optics. SCULPTURE Engineering art Neil Dodgson admires the technical mastery of sculptor Anish Kapoor. ndian-born British artist Anish Kapoor cavernous turbine hall Anish Kapoor: curved mirrors are engineered to reflect the is famous for his architectural sculptures at London’s Tate Mod- Turning the World viewer’s inner world. and vivid use of colour. His works are also ern. He helped Kapoor Upside Down In Kapoor’s recent foray into dynamic Ifeats of engineering — his speciality at uni- to refine his aesthetic Kensington Gardens, works, now on show in India, exquisite London, until 13 March versity before he left to pursue his art. From ideas, bringing exper- 2011. engineering underlies other mythologies. In ArcelorMittal Orbit, a tower of twisted steel tise in construction Anish Kapoor Svayambh (2007), an enormous block of red chosen as the centrepiece for London’s 2012 techniques, the tensile National Gallery of wax creeps along a hydraulic track, appar- Olympic park, to Svayambh, a gliding slab of strengths of materials Modern Art, New Delhi, ently being shaped as it passes through several blood-red wax, the significance of Kapoor’s and the limits of manu- until 27 February gallery doorways. The name derives from a installations lies in how they are built. facturing. The product 2011; and at Mehboob Sanskrit word, referring to that which is cre- Studios, Mumbai, until Kapoor, who is exhibiting in London, New was Marsyas (2002) — 16 January 2011. ated of its own accord, rather than by a human Delhi and Mumbai, regards his sculptures as two massive steel rings hand. In fact, little wax is scraped off the embodiments of “mythologies” that include joined by a red PVC membrane stretched installation after its first pass. Kapoor delights the process of their creation. “Meaning is 140 metres between them, supporting a third in this fiction: “The wax is not literally carved gradually constructed, just as the object is steel toroid above visitors’ heads. Balmond by the doorways, although it appears to be.” constructed,” he explains. The shows in India reprogrammed Arup’s in-house software to Kapoor’s meanings are complex and lay- highlight his dynamic artworks — shown in model the membrane’s precise form. ered. Svayambh, he explains, represents geol- the past year at London’s Royal Academy and A discarded design later appeared in ogy, body, blood and viscera, among other at the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain — which Chicago as Cloud Gate (2004): a 10-metre- themes. It is difficult to engineer such a piece, use machinery to evoke a sense of change. high, jelly-bean-like arch of polished steel. with its combination of motors, mechanism His current London exhibition, in Kensing- The forms in Kensington Gardens are similar and soft material requiring careful design ton Gardens, features four highly polished in style. Cut from segments of a sphere, they and constant maintenance. Questioning the stainless-steel forms that distort reflections of were produced by the same process that is artist’s intentions and methods unveils the their surroundings like fairground mirrors. used for grinding large scientific optics. One, fiction that the artwork formed itself. The genesis of that series lies in Kapoor’s C-Curve (2007), reminds me of a smaller mir- A second wax piece seems more convinc- collaboration with Cecil Balmond, head of the ror in my office: a relic of a proto type three- ingly self-made. Shooting into the Corner Advanced Geometry Unit at engineering firm dimensional television. That too is beautifully (2008–09) is a large air-fired gun that fires Arup. Kapoor first worked with Balmond a made, but its bending of light is directed by 11-kilogram cylinders of red wax across decade ago to produce a sculpture for the a practical purpose. By contrast, Kapoor’s the gallery every 20 minutes. The result is 762 | NATURE | VOL 468 | 9 DECEMBER 2010 © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT a chaotic pile. No artist directs its creation; used by engineers to build accurate models opposites — between perfection and imper- random perturbations are caused by varia- from fine threads of molten plastic. Kapoor’s fection, softness and firmness, movement and tions in the consistency of the wax, the gun larger version extrudes a thick concrete sau- repose — to tantalize the viewer. pressure and in how the deposits accumulate. sage that builds up layers of soft coils, ropes Kapoor knows he is treading a fine line Yet it is stage-managed. The art is not in the and worms under computer control. between artist and entertainer. He says: “It’s wax mound but in the whole performance. Whereas engineers seek precision with a short trip from Disneyland to something Another artful machine generated a set of their models, Kapoor delights in his prod- truly mysterious.” But that mystery is deliv- extruded grey concrete sculptures called Grey- ucts’ imperfections. Yet the appearance of ered only through precise engineering. ■ man Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, randomness involves technical sleights of Beauty Evoked (2008–09). These were pro- hand. To achieve each particular texture, his Neil Dodgson is professor of graphics and duced by a scaled-up version of a rapid proto- contraption must be finely tuned. Kapoor imaging at the University of Cambridge, UK. typing machine. Such technology is normally deliberately finds a point of balance between e-mail: [email protected] BIBLIOMETRICS promotions might apply home-made met- rics that are not transparent and may incor- porate unknown mistakes. Citation metrics are attractive because they have the potential Measure for measure of objectivity, but evaluators may put too much faith in quantitative aspects of research A useful guide to citation analysis shows that counting performance. Simple metrics then become a publications is harder than it looks, finds Ton van Raan. shortcut to decision-making. Many scientists are concerned that cita- tion analysis, particularly that done in an itation analysis offers a means to of different disci- amateurish way, is having detrimental effects quantify the impact of a scientist’s plines, particularly of on science. They fear that researchers are work. One tool for tracking cita- engineering, the driven to pursue citation quantity instead Ctions is the Publish or Perish (PoP) software social sciences and the of scientific quality. Statistical reliability program developed by Anne-Wil Harzing, humanities. In my view, may become a serious problem when deal- professor of international marketing at the however, its coverage ing with individuals rather than groups, as University of Melbourne, Australia. Her of well-funded fields, Harzing recognizes. Field-specific normali- guide describes how her program generates such as the natural zation is also necessary if research impact is citation analyses from Google Scholar and sciences and medi- to be compared across disciplines. gives an overview of bibliometric methods cine, is very good. For The Publish or Further statistical factors limit metrics. and sources. She champions the practical use novice users, the Web Perish Book: A Indicators often concern arithmetic mean of citation measures, yet also recognizes that of Science does have Guide to Effective values, yet the distribution of citations across calculating them reliably is a difficult task. trouble identifying and Responsible publications is skewed. Averages are thus not The Publish or Perish Book focuses on ambiguous author Citation Analysis the best statistic. Although this problem is ANNE-WIL HARZING citation analysis of individual researchers, names, especially those Tarma Software discussed, Harzing’s book doesn’t offer indi- not groups or institutes. Several metrics may in which the order Research: 2010. cators that are related to the distribution of be calculated for scientists and for journals, of the first name and 250 pp. $29.95 impact across a field, which would answer including their number of publications and surname is unclear. It the question ‘Does he or she belong to the citations, average number of citations per also struggles to aggregate articles with varia- top 10% of his or her field?’ publication and per author, and the h-index, tions of the same title and to identify self-cita- Harzing explains that the problem of the a widely used characterization of citation tions. But professional bibliometricians such skewed distribution can be removed using impact. Harzing argues using practical exam- as myself build and work from Web of Sci- the h-index: for instance, a researcher has an ples that such indicators are good markers ence reconstructions — usually proprietary h-index of ten if ten of his or her papers have of a researchers’ influence, and are useful in to their institutes — in which such sources of at least ten citations and the other papers assessing applications for jobs, promotion error are fixed. have no more than ten citations each. But and tenure, and for literature research and The book underplays the ethical issues that in my view, the h-index is inconsistent. For choosing a journal in which to publish. arise when performing a citation analysis for example, suppose that researcher A has three Using Google Scholar as a data source is a person other than yourself. Verification of publications with five citations each (h=3) advantageous as it retrieves publications research output is important — missing just and researcher B has four with four cita- not covered by Thomson Reuters’ Web of one highly cited paper can distort the results tions each (h=4). Both obtain one additional Science: books, edited volumes and ‘grey’ dramatically. This highlights the necessity publication with five citations.