Photon (colourless light carrier), by Jan-Henrik Andersen. (Ink on canvas, 42×56″)
From* an article by Elizabeth Wade, in Symmetry Magazine, on a gallery of artworks about particle physics. Quoting:
Ultimately, Andersen hopes to have his visualization of particle physics used for educational purposes. “The distance between Fermilab [a particle physics laboratory] and the dinner table is getting larger,” he says. “I want to aid communication between a larger audience and physicists, and make this fantastic and beautiful part of our world conceptually available to a broader audience.”
Godspeed.
-cvj
*via Boing Boing.
October 13th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
cool
October 14th, 2005 at 12:03 am
This reminds me of a QFT class with Sidney Coleman, when he did an impression of the photon (in Coleman’s interpretation, the photon was very arrogant and full of himself.)
October 14th, 2005 at 6:33 am
There are rules about this…as a massless entity, it would have been still been effected by the gravity of the situation:)
It ’s just nice to see the travelling roadshow and all possible journies , and the artistic inclination of such a travel. Non?
October 14th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Obviously it’s hard to judge without seeing them, but the paintings seem pretty insubstantial, more suited to a corporate lobby than a serious art gallery.
I’m not convinced that collaborations between artists and scientists work; they often seem to produces banal pieces that worship science rather than engage critically with it. The work of people like Keith Tyson, Cornelia Parker and Damien Hurst, acting alone, is much more interesting.
October 14th, 2005 at 11:32 am
You use the phrase “worship science” in a negative way. I’m confused by this…
I don’t agree that these sorts of projects are neccesarily banal.
Anyway, I think there is a spectrum of activity that is important to maintain…You should indeed have artists acting on their own, but you should also have dialogue and direct collaboration. And everything in between. Further, who know what work this guy will produce later on when he is not working directly with the scientists, which was nevertheless directly influenced by the things he learned in this collaboration? These things do not happen in isolation - especially in art. That may well have happened with some of the “independent” artists of the type you mention.
Cheers,
-cvj
October 14th, 2005 at 2:27 pm
So, would this be a good place to tell you what I thought of Doctor Atomic?
October 14th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
YES… Please!
-cvj
October 14th, 2005 at 7:16 pm
Okay! For anybody reading this who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, Doctor Atomic is a new opera by John Adams, about Robert Oppenheimer and the Trinity test. More at:
http://www.doctor-atomic.com
http://www.sfopera.com/operaspotlight.asp?operaseasonid=233
To start by summing up, I would say that it works better musically than it does dramatically, but that I’m really glad to have been able to see this production. It helps to be an opera fan, and to like contemporary opera; otherwise, it might be tough-going.
The basics: The story takes place during the time leading up to the test, and revolves around Oppenheimer, his conflicts with other physicists (Edward Teller and Robert Wilson — Fermi, Bethe, and others are mentioned but don’t appear as characters); with his wife; and with General Groves and other military figures. The one semi-fictional character is Kitty Oppenheimer’s Tewa Indian maid, Pasqualita (more about the role of women in the opera below). The libretto is largely taken either from primary sources (letters, declassified documents, etc.) and from poems, some of which are known to have been important to Oppenheimer, e.g. (Possibly the most chilling line in the libretto: “Nagasaki. A secondary target.”)
My impression is that they tried very hard to be accurate — thus the emphasis on primary sources. At one point there’s a blackboard on stage, and we were kicking ourselves for not having brought our binoculars, which would have made it possible to read what was on the board. I would be willing to bet that what’s on the board is based on a photograph taken at the time. My husband (named Matt, ex-physicist) thought the explanation of how the bomb worked was well-done and accurate.
I loved the first act, which revolves around Oppenheimer’s struggles with Teller and then with Wilson (who wants to try to convince the government to arrange a demonstration of the bomb for the Japanese, rather than bombing cities). The highlight for me was Oppenheimer’s aria that ends the first act: a setting of John Donne’s sonnet “Batter My Heart, Three-person’d God,” which was the basis for his naming the site “Trinity.” It’s an amazing poem, replete with paradoxes and contradictions that somehow make sense in this context. It’s beautifully set and brilliantly performed. (The performances are excellent overall; I was most impressed by Gerald Finley as Oppenheimer and Thomas Glenn as Wilson.) The second act, which covers the hours leading up to the test, seemed kind of formless, a long series of false climaxes. That might be appropriate to the story, but it did drag a bit as drama.
I thought the dance and choreography were much better than we usually see at the opera; my interpretation was that the dancers (even though they were costumed in either street clothes or military uniforms) were meant to represent or reflect the physical forces at work. The staging was also interesting — very busy, a lot of nervous movement of props and people coming on and off stage, adding to the feeling of tension and anxiety, and then as things progress, becoming more and more static.
Matt commented afterward that a lot of the drama depends on knowing what’s going to happen with the test and how the bomb will be used, and also what will later happen to Oppenheimer and Teller. (During the curtain calls, he said he felt weird about applauding Teller, even though of course he was applauding the performer.) We also agreed that there’s something odd about the way the story is framed — it’s about the event more than the characters, even though it’s the characters’ reactions to the event. Anyway, the story seems oddly truncated. At the beginning of the opera Oppenheimer is very much in the mode of leaving the decision-making about what’s to be done about the bomb and the war with the government, and I think I would have liked to see more of how he got to that point, especially given his politics. The role of the women in the story was disappointing, too. Given that so few women were actually involved in the project, it’s hard to see how they could have been integrated otherwise, but it did seem like their role, representing home, family, normal life — all the things threatened by the war and the bomb — was even more exaggerated than it had to be. This is especially true of Pasqualita, since she was partly invented for the opera, giving the sense that she was introduced just to get an intuitive, nurturing person of color on stage. (Actually, like most opera companies these days, SF opera does colorblind casting; the bass who sings Groves is black. The opera world, once it finally broke the color bar, quickly realized that the main thing that matters is finding someone who can sing the role — thus, color joined size and age as a secondary consideration.)
Anyway, it’s very exciting to see an opera on this topic, and overall I was impressed. It’s not flawless, but I’m definitely glad I saw it.
And now, having written a lot more than I intended, I’ll be off….
October 14th, 2005 at 11:00 pm
Janet that was very interesting…I wonder sometimes if Heisenberg knew the potential behind these events as geometrically expressed idealization in terms of gravitational collapse…just thinking here.
Anyway I wanted to add to to this article, my own here and do not want to interrupt janet’s explanation…so I’ll butt out now too.
Stephen said: “I’m not convinced that collaborations between artists and scientists work;”
The sources that I can add are tremendsous in terms of what art and science can mean. I had to do this because of Stephen’s statement.
October 14th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
Janet, that was fantastic! Thanks a lot. I was really hoping to see this one day soon, and now I’m even more motivated to see it!
Cheers,
-cvj
October 15th, 2005 at 12:14 pm
Probably a little off topic but I saw the picture at the top and it reminded me of a really cool video I saw this week care of gooseania . The video which is found at optiverse shows an “eversion” – S^2 being turned inside-out such that the surface remains continuous. It’s allowed to pass through itself, in case you’re wondering. It’s a great video and certainly doesn’t take a mathematical education to appreciate.
Best wishes,
Paul
October 16th, 2005 at 12:06 am
bubble world and creating ideas around it, were quite interesting in plate 47. From when they arise in the early universe?
I guess there are different ways of visualizating and creating perspective.
Pictures are links.