Since the early 2000’s, Adam Ekberg has been making photographic spectacles that play on, and sometimes poke fun at the trial and error of the scientific method. Engaging milk cartons, paper airplanes, beer bottles, and dominoes with mirrors, flashlights, prisms, and other science-fair ephemera, his photographs depict highly controlled, yet seemingly pointless experiments that make science and fantasy seem easy, approachable, and even humorous. Sometimes spending days at a time staging a single still life – for example, an image of milk spilling seamlessly from carton to carton – until he gets it right, Ekberg’s pictures, unaided by digital manipulation, recall childhood playfulness and present an optimistic view of the often overlooked. Unlike the heavy, cinematic tableaus of Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall, his lighthearted theatrics, though precise and intentioned, wears its self consciousness on his sleeves. I caught up with Adam after his recent solo exhibition at Seattle’s Platform Gallery, to learn more about his process and ideas, and his recent monograph The Life of Small Things.