In Particular

Building 52a, Zone A1, Position 068

I have just moved to a new desk space on Cranfield campus. The new building is a glass addition to an old hanger style building, which there are a few of here as there is a private airport on-site. It's very light and airy, standard grays with flashes of lime green, pink and yellow. I like it, even it's corporateness, as it's novel for me to be in a place like this. On the outside it's impressive to visitors but inside is pretty inflexible in terms of workspace – a small desk and a tiny cabinet each – but it's not to house artists, it's for academics so maybe that's all they need, and there are the labs upstairs which are ace and slightly sci-fi and smell just right. I doubt some of the format meets their needs but will have to remember to ask around. The great thing is that it is populated with people and that is what I need. People. Yip.

My old desk space was in an office halfway up the stairs. I had two desks, some shelves, a white board, lots of light, walls to put things on, spare tables BUT it was empty (and it smelled). SamNewPhD joined me in the room after a few months but the isolation was still there as we were cut off from the rest of the people in the building – we couldn't see them and they couldn't see us. I didn't spend much time there and came up with lots of reasons – TP wasn't in, I need to save fuel, I'm wasting 40 mins due to the drive, I work better at home, my dog chewed the front door handle off with me inside…

I realise now that when I was in there I felt like an item of storage stuck halfway up the stairs – like your Grandma's corner cabinet that is potentially valuable but doesn't fit anywhere.

So today I am feeling excited as I have witnesses (even though they don't know it). Does everyone need an involuntary audience for their life?

The cartoons are a-coming

I am finally getting somewhere with a set of nanoparticle cartoons.

Part of the residency is to create some form of online journal with tales from nanoparticles. Nanoparticle perspectives if you will. The idea is to communicate in a simple and humourous way about the change in a material's properties when it is reduced to the nanoscale.

Take copper, for example, a lovely soft jam pan making metal that adorns pubs and caravans, and sea-sick passengers wrists. As a nanoparticle it becomes explosive – imagine an exploding jam pan, it would be lethal and very, very sticky. (BTW: have a search for the chemical symbol of a copper nanotube, it amuses the researchers no end.)

So I've been asking the research staff and PhD students at Cranfield University some questions: "If you were a nanoparticle which one would you be?" "What is the particle's greatest strengths and weaknesses?". On the basis of this feedback I'm creating a set of characters that will feature in the comic strips. It's easier said than done. Scientists are very particular about representation of fact, and for an artist who is used to using artistic license to the full (it goes with the job) this isn't very compatible.

How accurate do I need to be to conveying scientific concepts through artwork? How much can I leave for the viewer to fill in the gaps? How can I encourage anthropomorphism of these materials when to do so would give them characteristics they actually do not have? Does this matter?

I had a breakthrough with PJ who grasped what I want to do and even wrote who his particles' nemesis would be if it had one. Great.

"I am silver, I am bismuth, I am carbon, we are sub-tiny and not to be relied on, our behaviours will baffle the brainiest Prof and as for containment -we're always wandering off. Your Newtonian principles mean nothing, nitto, nada to us, and we don't go in for this gravitational fuss. We are Brownian, we bump and we turn, we stick and we burn, we have our rule set which you want to learn. You want to control us, make us collide, make us act, make us stand in line? You'll be lucky because try as you might (and try you will) our special properties will put up a fight."