Wind Tunnel Bulletin #05 [electronic resource].

ZHdK 2016

Open access content

This fifth issue of the Wind Tunnel Bulletin marks the end of the research project Size Matters: On Scale and Size of Models that was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) from 2013 to 2016. Our application for an extension was put down by the SNSF. We assume that our ideas were too airy and we like that – a certain airiness. It is the basis of our project: an invisible wind that returns to itself having its open test-section precisely there. Our frontispiece for this issue is the Ouroboros, the self-eating serpent (pp. 84–85). The Ouroboros stands for constant regeneration and cyclical return. While some things end, like projects (pp. 86–87), some arise, like The Inflatable Wind Tunnel (pp. 88–89), that Kaspar König and Florian Dombois developed, and some stay the same, like wind tunnels in general. A wind tunnel is a place and instrument that hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years and as such is a rare example in the history of science. This is reason enough to take a closer look at wind tunnels and the working processes in and around them like research groups and calibration objects and rituals (pp. 90–105). As the Ouroboros eats its tail we’re finally passing the mic to our faithful friend, our own wind tunnel, to let him/her interview us, the Size Matters team (p. 106). Even though it’s an end, it’s also a beginning. Sooner or later our wind tunnel research projects will have a return and we are faithful that it will again be financed by the SNSF. It demonstrates far too clearly what is at stake when it comes to research at an art school. We know that the questions will return like the little cloud of smoke that you can send into the tunnel and watch coming back. Auf Wiedersehen!
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Haseeb Ahmed
Florian Dombois
Sarine Waltenspül
Martin Burr
Julie Harboe
Kaspar König
Viola Zimmermann
Joy Laporte