Experiments in the Desert: The Art and Science of Lightning Along U.S. Route 60

Abstract

This article examines the overlapping histories of the Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research and The Lightning Field, a sculpture by Walter De Maria. The formal, functional, and disciplinary differences between these sites suggests that they should be analyzed separately. However, their shared interest in lightning, the nature of their seclusion, and their proximity to one another in a surprisingly stormy section of the high desert of central New Mexico, along U.S. Route 60, suggests that a more synthetic approach is needed to understand their affinities and the lessons held within them. This comparison is aided by their shared use of both speculative and evaluative modes of experimentation. Why directly compare scientific and natural landscapes with artistic and artificial ones? Because, as Ulrich Beck recognized, the risks created by optimization, specialization, and modernization, especially the environmental risks, can only be addressed by seeking solutions that integrate rather than isolate different fields of inquiry. As the science fiction writer and poet Ursula K. Le Guin argues, we need both science and art to reorient how we think about and operate on our changing planet. “We need both,” she writes, “to save us from merely stockpiling endless ‘information’ that fails to inform our ignorance or our irresponsibility” (Le Guin, 2017). Studied independently, the Langmuir Lab and The Lightning Field (and by extension, the environment at large) would repeat the division between science and art, between understanding and experience, between thinking and feeling. Studied together, they offer an opportunity to create a more complex understanding of the relationship between humans and the many contexts in which they exist.