Selected Works of Eric J. Heller
Artist Statement
Art has a unique capacity convey insights, intuitively and emotionally, 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 only recently 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. Consider, 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 it spins off). Almost exactly the same patterns arise on a scale one hundred billion times smaller in 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.
About the Artist
Eric Johnson Heller (b. 1946) lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a member of the Physics and Chemistry faculties of Harvard University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 1973. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society. Professor Heller was selected as the 2005 recipient of the American Chemical Society Award in Theoretical Chemistry sponsored by IBM Corporation. Professor Heller's current research involves theoretical investigation of wave behavior, chaos and quantum mechanics, and collision theory.
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