do you know this art piece involving the expansion of 1 liter of argon gas?

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i read about it in a book when i was younger and now i can't remember any names or dates. the artist(s) filled a glass container with (i think) 1 liter of argon gas and took it outside, possibly to the beach, and opened the container. it was about the transition from a finite volume to an infinite volume.

tell me.

― lf (lfam), Monday, 24 April 2006 17:57 (twenty years ago)

rad

― JW (ex machina), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:01 (twenty years ago)

also helpful would be pointers on research methods for this sort of thing.

― lf (lfam), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:03 (twenty years ago)

I did this once, but it was with nitrogen, methane, and trace amounts of sulfur. Also I didn't use a bottle, and it was an elevator, not a beach.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:03 (twenty years ago)

http://www.westga.edu/~chem/courses/chem1211d/lecture/Chapter5/img021.GIF

I had to help a chem major with this the other day; it does not bode well for her.

― JW (ex machina), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:04 (twenty years ago)

nabisco artsy-fartsy otm

― dave's good arm (facsimile) (dave225.3), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:17 (twenty years ago)

fuck you art fags and your time wasting bullshit.

― the unbearable lightness of peeing (orion), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:19 (twenty years ago)

that sounds lame. why would you use a noble gas for your art project, which is boring and non-reactive, when you could use an alkali metal to illustrate the fiery perils of oxidation? exposing pure Na to the beach would create some fireworks of epic proportions!

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:27 (twenty years ago)

in middle school, our science teacher threw too much Na into the beaker of water and shattered it.

― the unbearable lightness of peeing (orion), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:29 (twenty years ago)

about ten years ago, when i got to MIT, i watched a bunch of upperclassmen drop a kilogram of sodium into the charles river. the river looked like a huge orange lake of fire, and you could hear the thunderous crashes for miles. then the cops came.

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:33 (twenty years ago)

yeah dude - my dad saw someone do that at the UMD golf course sometime in the 70s. he always talks about it.

― pssst - badass revolutionary art! (plsmith), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:34 (twenty years ago)

our high school science teacher did the Na thing for us. he said as an undergrad they would lob chunks of into the the pool during water polo practice.

― jinx hijinks (sanskrit), Monday, 24 April 2006 18:41 (twenty years ago)

http://thebiggerbang.tripod.com/id11.html

― /me aaaaaaaaaa (eman), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:20 (twenty years ago)

not having seen the piece for five years, geeta, i think i can say that they chose argon because it was inert. if it reacted with its surroundings, it would never diffuse around the world, and eventually, the universe. it would go from a finite volume to another finite volume, which is pretty boring. also, high conceptualism demanded dematerialization, so an invisible gas was perfect.

no conceptual art finding guides anywhere, people?

― lf (lfam), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:40 (twenty years ago)

Argon is also monatomic and thus obeys the gass law most closely :D

― JW (ex machina), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:45 (twenty years ago)

sure, but most common gases, like hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, maintain their stability by being diatomic with themselves. they're not going to react spontaneously with their surroundings, either.

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:53 (twenty years ago)

Geeta, stick to being a writer PLZ!!!!!!!!112!@

http://www.h2ou.com/h2images/NitrogenCycle-lgr-F.jpg
http://www.mf.mpg.de/en/abteilungen/dosch/projects/stierle_oxidation_bild01.gif

― JW (ex machina), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:55 (twenty years ago)

http://www.nlhs.com/images/hindenburg/big_hindenburg_explodes_over_lakehurst.jpg
FWIW, the paint is a bigger culpret!

― JW (ex machina), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:57 (twenty years ago)

what i meant was, you don't usually have free nitrogen ions floating in air! in air, nitrogen and other common gases exist in diatomic form.

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 19:59 (twenty years ago)

Barbecuing with Hydrogen Gas!

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:03 (twenty years ago)

dear jon,

the equilibrium constant for nitrogen fixation at atmospheric temperature and pressure is approximate 1x10^-30.

discus

― DEEDS NOT WORDS (vahid), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:04 (twenty years ago)

VAHID IN THE HOUSE

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:08 (twenty years ago)

i'm going to get back to the european dance music threads--this shit is giving me flashbacks

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:10 (twenty years ago)

The artwork being asked about is by Robert Barry, and it is called "Inert Gas Series: Argon". It was performed on the beach of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California in 1969.

You can see a "photo" of said action on page 95 of Lucy Lippard's immortal classic "Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972".

― Drew "Conceptual Art Fag" Daniel (Drew Daniel), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:13 (twenty years ago)

OH, and Lippard's book is an excellent book and a great scrapbook like guide to conceptual work. It's killer!

Also really useful reference works on conceptual work:

Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, by Alberro & Stimson, eds. (MIT)

Conceptual Art, by Tony Godfrey (Phaidon)

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:17 (twenty years ago)

the equilibrium constant for nitrogen fixation at atmospheric temperature and pressure is approximate 1x10^-30.

http://www.laserbeast.com/photos/042306/dsc02043.jpg

Geeta, but the point is... they are not "stable"

― JW (ex machina), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:18 (twenty years ago)

but it depends on what gas you're talking about! nitrogen gas is incredibly stable under most conditions, because N2 has a triple bond that's super hard to break.

― geeta (geeta), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:22 (twenty years ago)

xpost to Drew - i used to have that lippard one. the godfrey book is very cool, recommended

― /me aaaaaaaaaa (eman), Monday, 24 April 2006 20:24 (twenty years ago)

drew daniel you are a genius. really. first do you want new wave or do you want the soft pink truth and now you are able to see into my past. and what a surprise - i am facing lippard's 'dadas on art' from where i sit in my room.

― lf (lfam), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:04 (twenty years ago)

xpost geeta

the point is that diatomic nitrogen is highly unstable compared to argon. argon is like the gold of gases.

― lf (lfam), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:05 (twenty years ago)

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/7339/1987revengeofthenerds2b9ro.jpg

― BROSAMA (jaxon), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:19 (twenty years ago)

i'm glad Droo handled that, because i was going to guess Robert Smithson and would have been totally off.

also: is it true JW got sonned by Geeta after a nitrogen beef?

― jinx hijinks (sanskrit), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:28 (twenty years ago)

nabisco made a fart joke!

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:49 (twenty years ago)

and it was so OTM.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:49 (twenty years ago)

oh fuck sloppy seconds. :(

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 02:50 (twenty years ago)

lf i mean sure argon is the "gold of gases"--that's why you work under argon in a closed system in a fume hood when you want to do a sensitive reaction, like for instance if you're working with lithium aluminum hydride or something. but you can also do those reactions under nitrogen, because N2 is almost as inert.

haha i once got really freaked out at a job interview when the professor interviewing me asked "do you have experience working under anaerobic conditions? i will be expecting you to work under anaerobic conditions!" and i thought, shit, this guy is trying to kill me! suffocate me! before realizing that he just meant working with argon. those bastards!

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 03:50 (twenty years ago)

this x got sonned by y after a z beef meme is fab

― lf (lfam), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 04:20 (twenty years ago)

SHE CAME BACK TO KICK MORE ASS

― jinx hijinks (sanskrit), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 08:15 (twenty years ago)

our high school science teacher did the Na thing for us. he said as an undergrad they would lob chunks of into the the pool during water polo practice

either we went to the same high school or the dual career path of high school chem teacher / water polo coach is more common than I would have guessed

― Renard (Renard), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 16:35 (twenty years ago)

exposing pure Na to the beach would create some fireworks of epic proportions!

i want to see n/a purely exposed on the beach

― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 25 April 2006 16:39 (twenty years ago)

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