Changing Space. Changing Time.

Issue 72 July 2022

World Lines

Paul Friedlander is an artist who first trained as a physicist. He became fascinated by art involving the use of movement and light in the late 1960s. In 1983 he made an important discovery of the chaotic properties of spinning string and invented chromastrobic light – “light that changes colour faster than the human eye can see”. Many of his works make use of persistence of vision, a property of how light is perceived combined with movement to create a three-dimensional kinetic body of light in sculptural form. Friedlander applies his scientific knowledge to his art and is heavily influenced by chaos theory, string theory and cosmology. He continues to show his light sculptures around the world in art and science museums and festivals.

Collaborating with Living Matter

Darya Warner works at the intersection of art and science by bridging growth/connections with human and non-human actors through the prism of Climate Change. By addressing site-specific history, ecology, and local systems of communication, Darya aims to cultivate a new form of hybrid space for “intermatter” interaction with an emphasis on the interconnectivity of intelligence across species.

On ‘Nature Fast and Nature Slow’

Nicholas P. Money (Nik Money) is a gentleman of letters, mycologist, and professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of popular science books that celebrate the diversity of the microbial world. His latest book, ‘Nature Fast and Nature Slow: How Life Works, from Fractions of a Second to Billions of Years’, is a vision of biology set within the entire timescale of the universe. It is about the timing of life, from microsecond movements to evolutionary changes over millions of years.

Biophilia

Laura Stack is a visual artist, educator, and eco-enthusiast residing in Minneapolis, MN. She creates biological abstract paintings, ink collages & installations informed by science, science fiction, and the natural world. Her work alludes to fictional organisms and plays with the tension between organic and synthetic.

Buster Simpson – Proto-Habitat Design Sculpture

Seattle artist Buster Simpson is a pioneer in the field of urban environmentalism and art in public spaces. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, Simpson has been dedicated to working in the public realm; his method is grounded in a farsighted contract between the artist and where he lives. His career parallels the rise of public art in the Pacific Northwest and he has played a crucial role in establishing Seattle as a significant center for community-minded artistic practice. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.

Poems

Lynne Goldsmith’s first book, ‘Secondary Cicatrices’, won the 2018 Halcyon Poetry Prize, was a 2019 Finalist in the American Book Fest Awards, a 2020 Human Relations Indie Book Award Gold Winner, a new Finalist Award in the International Book Awards, and a Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Awards . Her poetry has been published in Backchannels Journal, Spillway, Thimble Literary Magazine, Environmental Magazine, Red Planet Magazine, among others, with upcoming poems in Tiny Seed Literary Journal and Scotland’s 2020 Geopoetry Conference program. Her poetry book ‘Secondary Cicatrices’ recently won a Book Excellence Finalist Award. Her self-published children’s book is a Royal Dragonfly Award Winner—Honorable Mention for Picture Books 5 & Younger.

Rohini Devasher: One Hundred Thousand Suns

Rohini Devasher is an international artist and amateur astronomer based in Delhi, India. Her practice spans film, drawing and printmaking, mapping the ‘antagonism’ of time and space. ‘One Hundred Thousand Suns’ is another kind of rendering of the Sun, assembled from data that is both historical and contemporary. work explores the notion that there may be multiple readings and avatars of data depending on the site, the observer, and the mode and method of observation, collection and preservation.

Time Waves (II)

Artist and writer, Richard Bright, has addressed the relationship between art, science and consciousness for over 40 years. He studied Fine Art and Physics before founding The Interalia Centre in 1990. Since then, he has lectured extensively on art and science and written articles on James Turrell, Andy Goldsworthy and Susan Derges, among others. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally and was the recipient of the ‘Visions of Science’ Award, The Edge, Andrew Brownsward Gallery, University of Bath (Second Prize Winner). Co-author of ‘The Art of Science’ (Welbeck Publishers, 2021).

James Webb telescope: a scientist explains what its first, amazing images show – and how it will change astronomy

Martin Barstow is Professor of Astrophysics and Space Science, University of Leicester.
He is also the president of the Royal Astronomical Society and Pro-Vice Chancellor as well as Head of the College of Science & Engineering. He is chair of the Space Telescope Institute Council, which will operate James Webb Space Telescope. He is already working on proposals for an even larger space telescope to follow that.
Martin’s research interests are the study of hot white dwarf stars and the surrounding interstellar medium. He has been involved in many space missions during his career, including NASA’s Voyager probes, which travelled to the outer planets of the Solar System. More recently he has worked on the Hubble Space Telescope helping to develop the plans for the final servicing mission, which took place in May 2009. He leads the Leicester contribution to the ESA Gaia mission.

How the James Webb deep field images reminded me the divide between science and art is artificial

Cherine Fahd is an artist and academic working in photography and video performance. Cherine has a PhD from Monash University and is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at University of Technology Sidney. Cherine’s current research focuses on the ways photography and portraiture bring people together, facilitate trust and build social connections. She writes broadly on photography and creativity practice, publishing across various platforms, including The Conversation, academic journals, and art and design contexts. Her artistic projects have been exhibited and commissioned nationally and internationally, including for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Sydney Opera House; Carriageworks, Sydney; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece; and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Japan, among others.

Time might not exist, according to physicists and philosophers – but that’s okay

Sam Baron is Associate Professor, Australian Catholic University. His present research focuses on the connection between key topics in the philosophy of mathematics concerning mathematical ontology, and topics in the philosophy of time concerning temporal ontology. A central focus of this research is the role of truthmaking and non-causal explanation in arguments both for and against particular ontological views.
Dr Baron is currently investigating the role of non-causal explanation in the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects, as well as timelessness in theories of quantum gravity and timelessness in metaphysics more generally.

Say hello to Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 180 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards and has taught three massive open online classes with over 180,000 enrolled. Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society and he has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and most recently, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He’s written over 70 popular articles on cosmology and astrobiology, two introductory textbooks, a novel called ‘Shadow World’, and eight popular science books: ‘The Living Cosmos’, ‘How It Ends’, ‘Talking About Life’, ‘How It Began’, ‘Dreams of Other Worlds’, ‘Humble Before the Void’, ‘Beyond: The Future of Space Travel’, and ‘Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes’.

Brain charts: first comprehensive view of how the brain changes over a lifetime

Richard Bethlehem is Director of Neuroimaging at the Autism Research Centre and Research Associate at the Brain Mapping Unit, University of Cambridge. He works on integrated Neuroimaging and Transcriptomics in order to gain better understanding of genetic underpinnings of atypical neurodevelopment.

Jakob Seidlitz is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Lifespan Brain Institute of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania. He uses tools such as neuroimaging and genetics to probe basic questions about the emergence of the human brain, how it develops, and what it looks like in various clinical contexts.

Unpacking a mystery of physics: Why processes in nature operate only in one direction

Tjaart Krüger is Associate Professor in Biophysics, University of Pretoria. His research interests include Biophysics: Quantum Biology; Primary Processes of Photosynthesis & Bio-Inspired Solar Cells
Biophotonics: Single-Molecule Spectroscopy, Ultrafast Spectroscopy.

Emil Roduner is Professor, University of Stuttgart
“I first graduated to become an elementary school teacher and worked teaching 1st to 6th grade before entering the University of Zürich to study chemistry. As an exchange student I obtained a Masters in Chemistry (1975) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. I then returned to pursue my PhD degree. For my work on developing the muon spin resonance technique to detect and study muon substituted free radicals I was awarded the Werner Prize (1989). in 1995 I accepted a chair in Physical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart. After my formal retirement (2012) I accepted a part-time post-retirement position at the University of Pretoria”.

Warp factor: we’ve observed a spinning star that drags the very fabric of space and time

Matthew Bailes is ARC Laureate Fellow, Swinburne University of Technology. In 2015 he was awarded an Australia Research Council Laureate Fellowship to work on the discovery of Fast Radio Bursts. He was the founding Director of the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology from its inception in 1998 until 2010. He is currently the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).

Vivek Venkatraman Krishnan is part of the Scientific staff, Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy
“I am an Astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. I use large radio telescopes to observe dead stars and understand gravity”.