Arte. Documentary by Michael Lachmann (UK, 2019, 52mn)
https://youtu.be/LDHxAyzac3Y
Could Einstein and Hawking together have reconciled relativity and quantum mechanics? This captivating documentary mirrors the discoveries of the two greatest minds in modern physics who revolutionized our vision of the Universe. This first part looks at the work of Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Relativity, the Universe seen as a space-time continuum and attraction as a distortion of this continuum caused by stars and planets… This first part looks at the work of Albert Einstein (1879-1955). They are put into perspective by astrophysicists, in particular those of the Laser Interferometry Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), which brings together 900 scientists from around the world. How do researchers today view the ideas of the Swiss-American genius?
It’s time to take your capsule! No, we’re not talking about a medicine, but rather about something whose effects could be similar to a vitamin shot: a bit of Elsewhere… at home! “A Bit of Elsewhere in Your Home” is a micro-series of daily episodes based on culture, science fiction and good humour. Because we all need it, and at the moment it’s difficult (or rather impossible) to go out to take care of our morale: we’ll bring you every day a little bit of Ailleurs, our Ailleurs, the one of the museum and its collections, and this, until April 30th at least. So get ready to discover works, games, comics, books, objects… and to meet the partners and actors of the museum! Hang on, we’re coming up fresh, motivated and disinfected, to make you laugh and think… Let’s spread the culture virus!
The symposium “Revisiting Black Mountain College: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments and Their Potential for Democratization (in Times of Post-Democracy)” asked questions in relation to anti-democratic tendencies in many countries worldwide. How can education still hold up democratic values, while at the same time presumably measuring its success by careers in the market? This issue brings together contributions from participants of the conference and adds further contributions by Andres Janser, Olga von Schubert, Caroline Adler, Boris Buden, Lucy Bayley, Sascia Bailer, Simon Fleury, Gilly Karjevsky, Asli Uludag, and Mieke Matzke.The interview by Ronald Kolb with Bitten Stetter, Brandon Farnsworth, Dorothee Richter, Jochen Kiefer, Martin Jaeggi, and Paolo Bianchi—all professors or lecturers at the Zurich University of the Arts—provides an internal perspective of today’s curriculum-based universities in relation to an education model like Black Mountain College—which can be seen as the opposite.
“I strongly believe in the importance of having physical, embodied experiences. It matters to actually engage with our senses.” Olafur Eliasson
At its centre is a large scale installation created exclusively for Zurich that addresses a key issue of our age: the relationship and interplay between human and non-human actors on Earth. In ‘Symbiotic seeing’, Eliasson tackles themes such as coexistence and symbiosis and aims to bring about a fundamental shift of perspective. The exhibition invites us not only to reflect on climate change – as a consequence of human action – but also to comprehend the human being as part of a larger system. The socially and environmentally committed artist, who was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals by the UN in September 2019, proposes an idea of the world based on coexistence and collaboration rather than competition. Eliasson’s art translates complex theoretical deliberations into spatial works that not only appeal to people rationally but also touch them emotionally and move them physically. He has been working for over twenty years with an interdisciplinary team that includes craftspeople, architects, media specialists and cooks. He is known for space-filling works, light works and sculptures that prompt audiences to reflect on themselves and the world as they experience them. His works often resemble scientific experiments. In contrast to scientists testing speculative hypotheses, however, Eliasson is interested in conjuring uncertainty and raising questions that can provide a space for new ideas, themes and thought experiments. In Eliasson’s art, the viewers or users play an active role. They interact with the works in different ways and, in doing so, they become their co-authors. Many of his works invite the viewers to consider their own position in the room in relationship to the work and other visitors. In a wider sense, this means becoming aware of one’s own role in the world at large. Eliasson’s works therefore also function as models of society and of the relationships between individuals and groups.
Research pin-wall, detail. Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019, Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson
“The central theme is the role of the viewer or user. The question is whether their activities or actions are what actually brings the artwork into being. One can say that, without their participation, it has no meaning.” Olafur Eliasson
Installation view Symbiotic seeing, Visualisation by Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019
One important inspiration for Symbiotic seeing was the research conducted by the American biologist Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) and the chemist James Lovelock. In the 1960s, the two researchers formulated the ‘Gaia hypothesis’. Gaia, from the Greek root meaning ‘Earth’, was the name of the mother goddess who personified the planet. Margulis and Lovelock hypothesized that the planet Earth and the biosphere can be understood as an organism, given that the biosphere (the entirety of all organisms) creates and maintains the conditions not only for life, but also for the evolution of more complex organisms. In her book The Symbiotic Planet (1998), Margulis goes on to explain how symbiosis in the development of life is just as important as the ‘survival of the fittest’ formulated by Charles Darwin. She describes how symbiotic relationships take place at the micro as well as at the macro level: ‘[H]umans are not the work of God but thousands of millions of years of interaction among highly responsive microbes.’ Just like the transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms was based on cooperation, the populating of Earth was only possible thanks to fungi and plants working together. According to Margulis, all lifeforms together regulate the Earth’s temperature and atmosphere – an interesting idea in the era of the Anthropocene, during which the relationship between humans and the Earth has become severely unbalanced. (You can find out more about this topic in the exhibition catalogue.)
It was Albert Einstein who first shattered Isaac Newton’s hypothesis of a universal time and explained that it is in fact a subjective experience. An episode in a captivating documentary series on the mysteries of the cosmos. If man has been trying to measure time with increasing precision for thousands of years, it would be difficult to define it, as it is still one of the greatest mysteries of physics. For the perception of its continuous flow is nothing but an illusion. Albert Einstein was the first to shatter Isaac Newton’s hypothesis of a universal time and explain that it is in fact a subjective experience. Why is this? Simply because movement in space affects its flow. Einstein thus reveals the fundamental connection between space and time, inducing in passing that past, present and future exist in the same way and without distinction! The magic of the cosmos Episode 1: The Illusion of Time Documentary series by Randall MacLowry (United States, 2011, 53mn)
Part 2 | ARTE
https://youtu.be/-KlbMsP1Vls
Space separates two galaxies as well as two atoms. Author of the book “The Magic of the Cosmos”, published in 2004, the physicist Brian Greene reveals that it is a dynamic fabric that can stretch, twist, deform and undulate under the effects of gravity. Even stranger still is the recent discovery of a mysterious ingredient that is said to make up 70% of the universe and which physicists call “dark energy”. Even if they admit its existence, they still don’t know what it is. Examining space on infinitely small scales only makes the mystery even deeper. 3D animated sequences prove that our ability to reason quickly reaches its limits and struggles to influence our behaviour. Mundane objects such as matches and chairs allow for surprising experiments when handled by researchers. To prove the validity of their theses, researchers don’t hesitate to jump on a surfboard or study the methods of magicians. All of these are reasons to worry sometimes, especially when we learn that our brains make decisions seven seconds before we are aware of them! A fascinating journey to the four corners of the world, from Australia to Germany via the United States and Sweden, to observe our neurons in all their states.. The magic of the cosmos Episode 2: What Is Space Documentary series by Randall MacLowry (United States, 2011, 53mn)
We are living in a technology-driven age, and the right digital medium can help museums stay in the loop.
Museums face a lot of competition for people’s attention nowadays, making the challenge of maintaining and increasing visitor numbers all the more difficult. Technology is everything a museum should be: entertaining, educational, and engaging. It is also a powerful storytelling tool, creating new worlds and showing new perspectives with a single click of a button. Of course, storytelling is at the heart of the museum experience as well. They showcase the story of civilisations: of art, music, history, literature and science, using thematic organisation, audio guides, videos, and varied cultural perspectives to enrich the experience for visitors. But interactive digital technology often goes much further, being adaptive to the individual and much more interactive. So what can museums do to compete? Well, as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. Increasingly, museums are looking to technology to transform the visitor experience from that of a passive observer to that of an active participant. For one, augmented reality (AR) can make a walk through a museum much more personal and varied, allowing the visitor to interact with museums in a greater number of ways. Some would even argue that such an immersive approach enables appreciation for an exhibition on a deeper level.
During the interwar period a remarkable evolution has been in museography of art galleries. New practices are elaborated, developed and continued for a long time – actually up to now for some. The debates in which they originated sometimes strangely resemble the discussions that animate the museums today. A look to back is necessary…
This series of photographs proves the interest of certain curators, such as B.I. Gilman, author of the photographs opposite, in studying visitor comfort from the beginning of the twentieth century: analyses are carried out to determine a ‘normal’ level of vision, so that the majority of visitors can see the exhibits with the minimum possible physical effort.
RTS report at the UniNE Time-Frequency Laboratory. The LTF is starting its 15th major contract with @ESA, the European Space Agency, for the creation of a new generation of atomic clocks for use in space (for Galileo, the European GPS).
If art and culture is all about connecting with an audience,
then what can museums do to cement this relationship? Is it a case of
simply displaying exhibits of interest or is there more to it?
Nobody can deny that museums provide us with a rich seam of educational content. Museums provide the opportunity to enhance knowledge on a variety of subjects using a wide range of historical, contemporary and even future-thinking sources. The real challenge of a museum exhibition is to evoke an emotional as well as an intellectual response. By tapping into a visitor’s heart as well as their head, curators and interpretive planners can expect their efforts to stay with people for longer, enhance their experience and encourage museum-goers to make a recommendation to their friends and family. But the relationship between museums and emotion can be a tricky one to balance. We’re going to take a closer look at how museums can and do affect their visitors on a deeper level.
Creating an environment that encourages emotion
As the Museum of Feelings demonstrates, the way that an exhibit plays on one’s senses has a crucial role in generating emotion. Light, sound, smells, textures and even tastes can all enhance the bond between installation and visitor. Everything down to the size of the room and acoustics in a space can have a dramatic effect on the experience – helping to make an exhibit feel more grand and imposing or calm and intimate. This is a challenge and responsibility that faces interpretive planners each time they begin to map out the look and feel of an installation. As is stated in the white paper, Developing a Toolkit for Emotion in Museums. “Humans are emotional animals. Whether exhibition developers plan for emotion or not, every visitor brings their feeling self to the museum; it cannot be separated from the thinking self. Indeed, social science research suggests we wouldn’t even want to try, that emotions actually help us learn more effectively.” One approach to the conceptual design phase of a new exhibition is to generate an emotional map, documenting how visitors will move through an installation or collection in time. Of course, consideration also needs to be given to how varying visitor numbers might impact on the overall experience. After all, a quiet day at a museum provides plenty of time for quiet contemplation whereas a crowded gallery full of jostling tourists will undoubtedly change the dynamic. For this reason, managing space, positioning, visitor flow and many other environmental factors is part and parcel of this particular challenge.
No matter how well you remember your physics classes, you most likely don’t remember learning any stories in them. Theories and equations, yes, but not stories — yet each of those theories and equations has a story behind it, as does the entire scientific enterprise of physics they constitute. The video above from the BBC’s Dara Ó Briain’s Science Club provides an overview of the latter story in an animated four minutes, making it ideal for youngsters just starting to learn about physics. It will also do the job for those of us not-so-youngsters circling back to get a better grasp of physics, its discoveries and driving questions.
