Eric Heller
Art has a unique capacity to intuitively and emotionally convey insights about complex subject matter. If there is a short circuit to wisdom, it is through art. I try to exploit the powers of art to relate secrets of nature that have only recently been uncovered. A key element in my work is exploitation of nature's almost narcissistic self-similarity, her repetition of pattern on vastly different scales and in radically different contexts: the motion of the planets around the sun and electrons orbiting a nucleus; or waves on water and electron waves in a semiconductor. With such repetition, nature provides her own windows into otherwise secret worlds. The images I produce always relate to concurrent research. Since September 2004, I have been investigating freak or rogue waves in the ocean. The Rogue image series arises from the complex branching patterns of energy flow that result as ocean waves negotiate a sea filled with complex currents (like the Gulf Stream and the eddies that spin off of it). Almost exactly the same patterns arise on a scale one hundred billion times smaller as electron waves negotiate paths through semiconductors. Both phenomena generate branching patterns familiar from trees and erosion landscapes. The branches are the danger zones: places where rogue waves are more likely to develop. The branches result from an unexpected focusing of wave energy. These images, at the same time abstract and literal, convey some of the mechanisms, the complexity, and the awesome danger of rogue ocean wave formation.