Pneumatic art on display at the Science Museum

Darrell Viner is a sculptor who works with movement, sound and light; he enjoys using pneumatics and chose to work with SMC Pneumatics for the new Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum

The new Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum links exhibitions about the present and future, and is a vast exhibition area presenting up-to-the-minute science and technology.

It's a breathtaking place.

A huge wall of blue glass, and blue interior lighting add to the sense of space and drama.

The vast 350 seater Imax cinema has a volcanic orange glow around it.

And leading up to it is a piece of sculpture by Darrell Viner, using pneumatics in a way that is intriguing, attractive, challenging - and adds a delightful touch of madness too.

As Viner observes "It's a very eccentric piece of machinery.

It's really massive, its point is purely visual, and its function non-existent!" It is one of twelve "Talking Points" dispersed around the ground floor.

Some are industrial products: visitors for example gaze, often with a gasp, at the F1 car whose safety design saved Mika Hakinnen from being killed in the German Grand Prix in 1999.

Its wrecked body an evocative reminder of both the danger and safety of technological advance; or they gape at the biggest tyre in the world, towering over them; or they puzzle over some modern art.

There are four art Talking Points, and the Science Museum thirteen art pieces altogether in the whole wing.

Why put art here? Rhona Garvin is co-ordinator of art commissions in the Wellcome Wing: "We've been aiming for a set of Talking Points which are easy to understand, and difficult to forget.

You have to remember that our audience range from sometimes highly knowledgeable adults to pre-school children, and we want to give each of them something that really sparks their imagination.

"Advances in science and technology transform our daily life, and artists are particularly good at revealing more about the changes, in a way that more people can react to.

The Science Museum commissioned these pieces because we felt artists would bring something extra to the experience of Wellcome Wing.

And they'd appeal to different learning preferences." The works appeal and intrigue brilliantly.

Yinka Shonibare's video artwork "effective-defective-creative", for example, projects a patchwork of ultrasound images of foetuses.

Stand and watch it for a few minutes, and you'll be intrigued; listen to the comments of visitors around you and you'll have no doubt this is thought provoking, catching the imagination and involving people of all ages.

Darrell Viner's pneumatic sculpture is entitled "Is tall better than small?" and it hangs like an extraordinary animated chandelier above the escalator which brings visitors to the largest new attraction in the new wing - the enormous Imax cinema.

It is a charming, busy piece of work, gently hissing at people, massive but agile, dancing above their heads as people glide, relaxed, beneath it.

Blue LEDs flicker on and off as if the machine pulses with life.

If it has no human company for a couple of minutes to trigger its movements, it performs its own "Busby Berkeley" routine.

"What interested me for the Wellcome Wing was the links not just between science, maths, physics, astronomy - but also with people and politics." says Viner.

"One of the thoughts behind this piece is "Who's controlling who?" With this piece, you're triggering off a mechanism which also has a natural momentum of its own." "The idea for the machine came partly out of genetics - how in future nature and even ourselves may be controlled.

It sets you thinking - it questions people's notions of what is normal.

I was also thinking about "Metropolis", the classic Fritz Laing film, which presents a glimpse of a world where men are dominated by machines and where politics and science join forces." In that film there are particularly memorable scenes of hundreds of people moving up staircases - and in a lighthearted way Viner has brought that image up to date here.

Viner is a sculptor who works with movement, sound and light.

He enjoys using pneumatics and chose to work with SMC Pneumatics for this new commission.

"I like pneumatics - it's clean and simple.

Air is such a lively medium.

I've used pneumatics a fair bit to generate sound and movement, and find SMC very helpful, providing great technical assistance even for a bizarre one-off project like this one.

The fact I wanted cylinders specially made to measure was no problem at all." And it is a bizarre project.

It's almost as if you are seeing the odd jottings of an artist or inventor comes to life.

You could imagine it springing into life from one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.

Or on the back of one Viner's fag packets ? But Leonardo would have had trouble working here, because even if you're an artist, these days you can't avoid Health and Safety issues.

Darrell Viner comments.

"We could have brought the cylinders really close to people's heads - it would have been dramatic to bring them to a few millimetres' distance, but H and S considerations meant our highly accurate people processing has to go on rather further away!" Laser rangers measure every visitor as each gets on the escalator - each person is tracked very precisely as the escalator rises, and each of the ten cylinders adjusts to react precisely to each person's height.

So the profile of a group of people on the escalator is duplicated exactly.

Cylinders position aluminium panels precisely above your head, matching your height as you rise.

There's a delightful puzzle in your mind as you go up - are you being processed? In a way it's as if you're on a production line.

But then it's you that's triggering the action - so who's in control? Most visitors will be blissfully unaware of the complexities of the machine.

A central microcontroller communicates with 22 microcontrollers in its own fieldbus.

Each cylinder calibrates itself every time.

There are ten cylinders (all specially made SMC CP95s, the largest a massive 2.85m, the smallest 450mm), set a metre apart, and although health and safety did not permit close encounters with people, the machine works in fact to a very high precision, recalibrating every 2.306 seconds.

Making a living as an artist may not be easy, but Darrell enjoyed some freedoms here most engineers would envy - for example, being able to specify putting aesthetic reasons first.

"I love blue - so chose blue cabling, and LEDs - even if they seem to be the most expensive LEDs in the universe!" As well as the enormous Imax cinema, where a special technique of filming means audiences are treated to the most extraordinary impression of large format two and three dimensional images.

And a space travel simulator, there are hundreds of enthralling displays and interactive exhibits to interest visitors of all ages and levels of understanding: "Who am I" consists of three main sections ("Human Animal", "Family Tree" and "Identity Parade") to encourage visitors to explore current biomedical research about what makes each of us unique - genes, brains, language consciousness and physical and psychological characteristics.

"In future" gives people glimpses of imaginary futures created from the decisions they themselves make about appropriate uses of innovations and new discoveries.

It challenges the imagination and addresses key issues which new science and technology throws up.

"Digitopolis" explains the latest applications of digital technology - digital sounds, digital visions, global communications, artificial intelligence "Antenna" responds to changes in the world of science, with rapidly changing exhibitions that track important scientific stories as they unfold, and includes continually updated bulletin boards.

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