Leaning Towards Frame Dragging

2004

City of Vancouver Public Art Collection

Galvanized steel pole, fibre glass, aluminum, wind driven mechanism.

8’ x 8’ x 27’h

I created this work during a 2 year Artist in Residence program with the National Research Council. I became interested in an experiment at the time called Gravity Probe B. It was a collaboration between NASA and Stanford University that was attempting to prove the theory of Frame Dragging or the Lense Thirring Effect. Gravity Probe B was a satellite-based experiment to test some of the unverified predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity: the geodetic effect and frame-dragging. Frame dragging is the distortion of the spacetime metric by a large rotating gravitational mass. The experiment took ten years to complete and ultimately proved that the time space frame is indeed minutely altered by a rotating mass.

The pole leans against the pull of gravity at 7 degrees. The wind driven mechanism drives a set of clock hands backward in a black hole shaped face that has a historical timeline inscribed around the edge of its event horizon.