Neighbors

This project presents a series of tactile reliefs created from scientific data of cosmic objects and phenomena, marking a compelling intersection of scientific rigor and artistic translation. It fundamentally recalibrates our relationship with the universe by transforming remote, abstract data into tangible, touchable sculptures. The work invites a haptic engagement—a direct connection through touch—with phenomena previously confined to sight or conceptual understanding. Here, you can run your fingers over the actual craters of the Moon and the surface of Mars, their topographies recreated from remote sensing data. You are also invited to explore physical interpretations of events and structures that have no solid surface: the warped spacetime around a black hole, the vast density of the Milky Way, and the fleeting, dynamic form of a solar flare. This act collapses immense astronomical distance into personal, intimate proximity. By bypassing purely intellectual or visual perception, the work fosters an embodied cognition, constructing a deeply personal and immediate connection to the cosmos rooted in our most grounding sense.

The work situates itself within a contemporary lineage of art that leverages scientific data to evoke a new kind of technological sublime—an experience of awe mediated not by a vast landscape, but by the elegant translation of complex information into physical form. This project is a natural culmination of artist Todd Margolis's career-long exploration of making the invisible visible and the digital tangible. Drawing on decades of experience in 3D fabrication and designing immersive virtual reality systems—translating scientific data into experiential environments—Margolis now inverts his process. Instead of creating virtual worlds from data, he materializes data into real-world artifacts that we can hold and feel. Echoing ancient reliefs that embedded narratives in stone, these sculptures embed the discoveries of 21st-century science into their very texture. They transform scientific data from abstract information into a palpable presence, creating a bridge between the unseen forces of the universe and our most direct, human sense of touch.