Art and Science Intersect at Sun Labs

Artist-in-Residence Ashok Sukumaran is Creating a Large-scale, Interactive Work that Will Shed New Light on Technologies Developed at the Labs

February 28, 2006 - Ashok Sukumaran is an artist preparing for a show. He's doing what artists do: imagining possibilities, sketching concepts, exploring his subjects at greater depth, tinkering with the media he'll use to bring his vision to life, keeping his sponsors apprised of his progress.

What's unusual is that he's doing it all under the auspices of Sun Labs, the applied research and advanced development arm of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

In September, Mr. Sukumaran accepted an invitation to become the first Sun Microsystem's - ZeroOne San Jose artist-in-residence. His charter is to develop a work of art for display at the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) Symposium, to be held August 5-13, 2006, in downtown San Jose. And his plan is to develop a work he imagines as a “line-of-sight network” distributed across an entire city block— work that the general public can interact with and that incorporates wireless sensor technology developed at Sun Labs. More about all of that in a moment.

First the obvious question must be addressed—from both sides: why would an advanced research institution engage an artist; and why would a renowned artist such as Mr. Sukumaran take an interest in an organization so deeply engrossed in esoteric technology?

Mr. Sukumaran's background provides a partial answer. He is both an architect and media artist, with strong interests in science, technology, and digital art. Originally from India, Mr. Sukumaran earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in media art at UCLA. Recently, he was project director for NANO, an exhibition that blended multiple scientific disciplines to explore the intersection of digital art and nanoscale science at LACMALab, Los Angeles.

Mr. Sukumaran's art deals with the complex interrelationships between embedded technology and human habitat, and explores new ways to provide insight into the evolution of technology and the way people interact with it. His projects have received many art and design honors, including the UNESCO Digital Arts first award for 2005, a first prize in the Samsung Art and Design Institute's competition 2002, a David Bermant Foundation award for media art in 2003, and others (see examples of his previous work at http://users.dma.ucla.edu/~suku/).

From the perspective of Sun Labs, Mr. Sukumaran's art provides a unique and powerful new means of exploring the potential—and the potential impact—of the technologies its researchers are creating. “We're not developing technology for technology's sake,” said Glenn Edens, Sun Senior Vice President and Director of Sun Labs. “Our engineers take great pride in the fact that what they produce will one day make a difference in the way people work, play, and live their lives. Ashok's art adds a new dimension to our understanding of technology and its impact. It opens our eyes to new possibilities and new perspectives we haven't yet considered. That's the essence of invention, and that's also what researchers and engineers do. So in a broad sense we're all fellow artists.”

“A Game of Spot the SPOTs”

Mr. Sukumaran is still in the early conceptual stages of creating his artwork for the ISEA exhibit, but three things are certain: the scale will be large; the work will be interactive; and the design will incorporate sensors built using Sun™ SPOT (Sun™ Small Programmable Object Technology) from Sun Labs.

Sun SPOT technology simplifies the process of creating“wireless transducer” applications, which are sensors combined with actuation mechanisms. Potential applications for wireless transducers are all around us—literally. Your coffee mug, for example: sensors could detect and notify you when the coffee reaches the temperature at which you prefer to drink it, or send a command to the coffee maker to start a fresh pot when your cup is nearly empty. A wheelbarrow: sensors could alert you to an excessive or unbalanced load before you hurt your back trying to lift it, or notify you of inadequate tire pressure and lock the wheel until it's properly inflated. The list is endless.

“I knew even before I was selected for the residency that I wanted to work with Sun SPOT,” said Mr. Sukumaran. “The range at which these devices interact, the robustness of the technology, the possibilities of an actuation network are all very exciting. And at a conceptual level, I'm interested in the fact that so much of this type of development is geared toward the invisibility paradigm. In the application of this technology, the technology itself disappears from our view yet remains pervasively surveillant. It is in the trees tracking animal movements, in the walls monitoring room conditions, on lampposts and buildings doing everything from watching the traffic flow to tracing the origin of a gunshot. I am also interested in the inverse: the visibility, or the revelation of this embedded condition.”

Mr. Sukumaran said he envisions creating an interactive work in which the audience and a network of hidden devices can discover each other. “The audience doesn't just want to watch a static visualization—they want to actively participate in the change of topology,” he said. “I would like the audience and the network to have an evolving optical relationship with each other.”

He is currently experimenting with various ways to enable participants to point a hand-held infra-red device at the environment and illuminate or even “turn on” wireless sensors that are within the viewer's line of sight and within range. “It's a game of spot the SPOTs,” he said. “We could create a mesh of these devices, which remain hidden until they are propagated by the viewer. After a SPOT is spotted, the network could exhibit various reactions, including searching for the viewer!”

The final plans for the artwork are due to Sun Labs shortly. The work will be built in the summer of 2006, and displayed at the ISEA Symposium, August 5-13, 2006, in downtown San Jose.

Does Mr. Sukumaran agree with Mr. Edens' assertion that researchers, engineers, and artists share a common bond? “What I'm interested in is new strands of evolution that can be used to understand and critique the previous ones,” he said. “It's all about developing alternatives, and that's the scientist's job as well. My creativity simply gets pushed a different way.”