From a September 7, 2023 SFU Café Scientifique announcement of their Fall 2023 event schedule (received via email),
We hope you had a great summer and are all excited for a brand new fall line-up:
SFU Café Scientifique lectures and discussions on Zoom
Tuesdays from 5:00-6:30pm, Zoom invites are sent to those who register.
Email cafe_scientifique@sfu.ca for inquires.
Sept 26, 2023 Vance Williams, Chemistry
Title: (Un)Natural Beauty: Art, Science and Technology
Description: While art is often described in opposition to science and technology, in reality, these disciplines are mutually supporting and reinforcing explorations of the natural and constructed world. In this presentation, I will examine the intersection of art and science and the often blurry distinction between the scientist and the artist.
Title: Who, What, Where, When, and Why: the power of genomics in public health
Description: Within days of first being identified the full genome sequence of SARS Cov-2 was published online. Here we discuss the extraordinary power and limitations of genomics for understanding disease spread and for designing effective public health interventions.
November 28, 2023 Dustin King, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Title: Decoding how life senses and responds to carbon dioxide gas.
Description: Dustin King’s Indigenous background is central to his work and relationship with the biochemical research he conducts. He brings Indigenous ways of knowing and a two-eye seeing approach to critical questions about humanity’s impact upon the natural world.
Join Dr. King on a microscopic journey into intricate cellular systems, which make use of CO2 in incredible ways. The presence of CO2 on Earth has given rise to a diverse evolutionary tree, with plants and animals developing ingenious methods for harnessing and using CO2 in their unique habitats. We travel from the depths of the ocean floor to the air we breathe, to understand the implications of increasing CO2 levels in nature and in daily human life.
I wouldn’t have thought art/science or, as it sometimes called, sciart was a particularly obscure concept these days but it’s a good reminder that much depends on the community from which you draw your audience.
Be careful not to fall, is a familiar stricture when applied to ‘leaning out of windows’ supplying a frisson of danger to the ‘lean’ but in German, ‘aus dem Fenster lehnen’ or ‘lean out of the window’, is an expression for interdisciplinarity. It’s a nice touch for a book about an art/physics collaboration where it can feel ‘dangerous’ to move so far out of your comfort zone. The book is described this way in its Vancouver (Canada) Public Library catalogue entry,
Art and physics collide in this expansive exploration of how knowledge can be translated across disciplinary communities to activate new aesthetic and scientific perspectives.
Leaning Out of Windows shares findings from a six-year collaboration by a group of artists and physicists exploring the connections and differences between the language they use [emphasis mine], the means by which they develop knowledge, how that knowledge is visualized, and, ultimately, how they seek to understand the universe. Physicists from TRIUMF, Canada’s particle physics accelerator, presented key concepts in the physics of Antimatter, Emergence, and In/visible Forces to artists convened by Emily Carr University of Art + Design; the participants then generated conversations, process drawings, diagrams, field notes, and works of art. The “wondrous back-and-forth” of this process allowed both scientists and artists to, as Koenig [Ingrid Koenig] and Cutler [Randy Lee Cutler] describe, “lean out of our respective fields of inquiry and inhabit the infinite spaces of not knowing.”
From this leaning into uncertainty comes a rich array of work towards furthering the shared project of artists and scientists in shaping cultural understandings of the universe: Otoniya J. Okot Bitek reflects on the invisible forces of power; Jess H. Brewer contemplates emergence, free will, and magic; Mimi Gellman looks at the resonances between Indigenous Knowledge and physics; Jeff Derksen finds Hegelian dialectics within the matter-antimatter process; Sanem Güvenç considers the possibilities of the void; Nirmal Raj ponders the universe’s “special moment of light and visibility” we happen to inhabit; Sadira Rodrigues eschews the artificiality of the lab for a “boring berm of dirt”; and Marina Roy metaphorically turns beams of stable and radioactive gold particles into art of pigments, oils, liquid plastic, and wood. Combined with additional essays, diagrams, and artworks, these texts and artworks live in the intersection of disparate fields that nonetheless share a deep curiosity of the world and our place within it, and a dedication to building and sharing knowledges.
Self-published, “Leaning Out of Windows: An Art and Physics Collaboration” and edited by Ingrid Koenig & Randy Lee Cutler (who also wrote many of the essays) was produced through an entity known as Figure 1 (located in Vancouver). It can be purchased for $45 CAD here on the Figure 1 website or $41.71 (CAD?) on Amazon. (Weirdly, if you look at the back outside cover you’ll see a price of $45 USD.)
Kind of a book
“Leaning” functions as three kinds of books in one package. First, it is documentation for a six year project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), second, a collection of essays, and, third, a catalogue for three inter-related exhibitions. (Aside: my focus is primarily on the text for an informal book review.)
Like an art exhibition catalogue, this book is printed in a large, awkward to hold format, with shiny (coated) pages. It makes reading the essays and documentation a little challenging but perfect for a picture book/coffee table book where the images are supposed to look good.
I particularly liked the maps for the various phases of the project and the images for phase 1 showing what happens when an image is passed from one artist to the next, without explanation, asking for a new image to be produced and passed on to yet another artist and so on. There is no discussion amongst the artists about the initial impetus (the first artist in the stream of four met with physicists at a science symposium to talk about antimatter).
Ingrid Koenig, Antimatter Process Design (detail), 2017. This diagram shows the process design of five different streams of interactions, mapping out routes for 26 artists and 26 physicists, as well as an experimental class taught by Koenig at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. [downloaded from https://canadianart.ca/features/searching-for-the-language-of-the-universe/]
Unexpectedly, the documentation proved to be a highlight for me. BTW, you can find out more about the Leaning Out of Windows (LOoW) project (e.g. participants, phases, and art/science resources) on its website.
Koenig should be congratulated for getting as much publicity for the book as possible, given the topic and that there are no celebrities involved. CBC gave it a mention (May 8, 2023) on its Books: Leaning Out of Windows webpage. It also got a mention by Dana Gee in a May 12, 2023 ‘Books brief‘ posting on the Vancouver Sun website.
Plus, there were a couple of articles in an art magazine highlighting the art/science project while it was in progress featuring the few images I was about to access online for this project.
A January 6, 2020 article in Canadian Art Magazine by Randy Lee Cutler and Ingrid Koenig introduces the project (Note: I’ll revisit the “metaphor and analogy” mention in this article and throughout the LOoW book later in this post),
The disciplines of art and physics share certain critical perspectives: both deal with how metaphor and analogy inform creative processes. Additionally, artists and physicists address issues of the imagination, creative thinking and communication, and how meaning is made through theoretical research and process-based investigations. There are also important differences in these perspectives. Art brings an appreciation for abstract or non-representational practices. Physics research addresses complex problems relevant to understanding the study of matter and motion through space and time. Physicists also contribute knowledge about how the universe behaves. Together, the achievements of art and physics allow the possibility of a much richer understanding of the nature of reality than each field can contribute individually.
There’s a January 13, 2020 article in Canadian Art Magazine by Perrin Grauer featuring Mimi Gellman, Note: A link has been removed,
Artwork by artist and ECU Associate Professor Mimi Gellman was selected to appear on the cover of the current issue of Canadian Art magazine.
The gleaming, otherworldly image graces the magazine’s issue on antimatter —a subject which “presents a mirror world of abstract phenomena: time reversals, mutual annihilation, cosmic rays, cloud chambers, an infinite sea of sub-atomic particles that parallels our ‘real’ world of matter,” according to the issue’s editors.
Mimi describes her work as approaching some of the affinities between the biological, the perceptual, the cultural and the astronomical.
“My drawings do not explore the exterior world we perceive but rather what I call the ‘architecture of consciousness’ which permits us to perceive it,” she says.
“Recalling astronomical diagrams and reflecting the mixture of hybrid cultural worldviews in my background, they reveal deep similarities between the dimension explored by sub-atomic physics and the implicit interiority of contemporary art.”
…
I’m sorry I never saw any announcements for the project exhibitions, all of which seemed to have taken place at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design. There were three concepts each explored in three exhibitions, with different artists each time, titled: Antimatter, Emergence, and In/visible Forces, respectively.
A bouquet or two and a few nitpicks
Randy Lee Cutler and Ingrid Koenig have a wonderful quote from Karen Barad, physicist and philosopher, in their essay titled, “Collaborative Research between Artists and Physicists,”
Barad introduces the concept of intra-action and the fluidity of materialization through our bodily entanglements—through intra-action our bodies remain entangled with those around us. “Not only subjects but also objects are permeated through and through with their entangled kin, the other is not just in one’s skin, but in one’s bones, in one’s belly in one’s heart, in one’s nucleus, in one’s past and future.This is a true for electrons as it is for brittlestars as it is for the differentially constituted human.” As Barad asks herself, “How do I know where my physics begins and ends?” … [p. 13]
To the left of the page is a black and white photograph of entangled cables captioned, “GRIFFIN (Gamma Ray Infrastructure for Fundamental Investigations of Nuclei- TRIUMF.” It’s a nice touch and points to the difficulty of ‘illustrating’ or producing visual art in response to physics ideas such as quantum entanglement, something Einstein called, ‘spooky action at a distance’. From the Quantum entanglement Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others [[emphasis mine], including when the particles are separated by a large distance [emphasis mine]. The topic of quantum entanglement is at the heart of the disparity between classical and quantum physics: entanglement is a primary feature of quantum mechanics not present in classical mechanics.[1]
Some of the essays
One essay that stood out in LOoW, was “A Boring Berm of Dirt’ (pp. 141-7) by Sadira Rodrigues. She notes that dirt and soil are not the same; one is dead (dirt) and the other is living (soil) and that the berm has an important role at TRIUMF. If you want a more specific discussion of the difference between dirt and soil, see David Beaulieu’s February 23, 2023 essay (Soil vs. Dirt: What’s the Difference?) on The Spruce website.
Rodrigues’ essay (part of the Emergence concept) situates the work physically (word play alert: physics/physically) whereas all of the other work is based on ideas.
In “Boring Berm … ,” radioactivity is mentioned, a term which is largely taboo these days due its association with poisoning, bombs, and death. The eassy goes into fascinating detail about TRIUMF’s underground facility and how the facility deals with its nuclear waste and the role that the berm plays. (On a more fanciful note, the danger in the title of the book is given another dimension in this essay focused on nuclear topics.) Regardless, the essay was definitely an eye-opener.
Aside: The institution has been rebranded from: TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) to: TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre). You can find a reference to the ‘nuclear’ name in my October 2, 2018 posting although the name was already changed, probably in the early to mid-2010s. There is no mention of the ‘nuclear’ name in TRIUMF’s Wikipedia entry, accessed August 22, 2023.
Gellman and language
Mimi Gellman’s essay, “Crossing No Divide: Mapping Affinities in Art and Science” evokes unity, as can be seen in the title. She’s one of the more ‘lyrical’ writers,
There is a place in our imagination where east or west, or large or small, or any other opposites cease to be productive contradictions. As an artist and educator, I have become interested in the non-binary and resonance between Indigenous Knowledge and physics, between art and science, and between traditional ways of considering cognition and thinking with the hand. [p. 33]
This is how Gellman is described for the January 13, 2020 article in Canadian Art Magazine, which is archived on the Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD) website,
Mimi Gellman is an Anishinaabe/Ashkenazi (Ojibway-Jewish Métis) visual artist and educator with a multi-streamed practice in architectural glass and conceptual installation. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Culture + Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada, and is completing her research praxis PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University on the metaphysics of Indigenous mapping.
…
She highlights some interesting observations about language and thinking,
The Ojibwe language, Anishinaabemowin, like many Indigenous languages is verb-based in contrast with Western languages’ noun-based constructions and these have deep implications for the development of one’s worldview. …
I suspect anyone who speaks more than one language can testify to the observation that language affects one’s worldview. More academically, it’s called linguistic relativity or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I find it hard to believe that it’s considered a controversial idea but here goes from the Linguistic relativity Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
The idea of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis /səˌpɪər ˈhwɔːrf/ sə-PEER WHORF, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers’ worldview or cognition, and thus individuals’ languages determine or shape their perceptions of the world.[1]
The hypothesis has long been controversial, and many different, often contradictory variations have existed throughout its history.[2] The strong hypothesis of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and restrict cognitive categories. This was held by some of the early linguists before World War II,[3] but it is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists.[4] Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a weaker version of linguistic relativity:[4][3] that a language’s structures influence and shape a speaker’s perceptions, without strictly limiting or obstructing them.
…
Gettng back to Gellman, language, linguistic relativity, worldviews, and, adding physics/science, she quotes James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson “a research fellow at the Native Law Centre of Canada, University of Saskatchewan College of Law. He was born to the Bear Clan of the Chickasaw Nation and Cheyenne Tribe in Oklahoma in 1944 and is married to Marie Battiste, a Mi’kmaw educator. In 1974, he received a juris doctorate in law from Harvard Law School,”
[at a 1993 dialogue between Western and Indigenous scientists …]
[Youngblood Henderson] We don’t have one god. You need a noun-based language to have one god. We have forces. All forces are equal and you are just the amplifier of the forces. The way you conduct your life and the dignity you give to other things gives you access to other forces. Even trees are verbs instead of nouns. The Mi’kmaq named their trees for the sound the wind makes when it blows through the trees during the autumn about an hour after the sunset, when the wind usually comes from a certain direction. So one might be like a ‘shu-shu’ something and another more like a ‘tinka-tinka’ something. Although physics in the western world has been essentially the quest for the smallest noun (which used to be a-tom, ‘that which cannot be further divided’), as they were inside the atom things weren’t acting like nouns anymore. The physicists were intrigued with the possibilities inherent in a language that didn’t depend on nouns but could move right to verbs when the circumstances were appropriate.3
…
This work from Gellman is a favourite of mine, and is featured in the January 13, 2020 article in Canadian Art Magazine and you’ll find it in the book,
Image courtesy Mimi Gellman.
Mimi Gellman, ‘Invisible Landscapes,’ 2017. Conte on Japanese Obonai paper, 63.5 x 48.3 cm.
[downloaded from https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2020/canadian-art-magazine-features-cover-artwork-by-mimi-gellman]
There are more LOoW images embedded in the January 6, 2020 article on the Canadian Art Magazine website.
Derksen and his poem
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Theodor W. Adorno, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel were unexpected guest stars in Derksen’s essay, “From Two to Another: The Anti-Matter Series,” given that he is an award-winning poet. These days he has this on his profile page on the Department of English, Simon Fraser University website, “Dean and Associate Provost, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.”
From LOoW,
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are well known as materialists, having helped define a materialist view of history, of economics and of capitalism. And both Marx and Engels aimed to develop Marxism as a science rather than a model based on naturalizing capitalism and “man.” … [p. 89]
Derksen includes a diagram/poem, for which I can’t find a digitized copy, but here’s what he had to say about it,
My mode of looking at this [antimatter] is through poetic research —which itself does not aim to arrive at a synthesis but instead looks for relational moments. In this I also see a poetic language emerge from both discourses [artistic/scientific]—matter-antimatter thought and dialectical thinking. For my contribution to Leaning Out of Windows, I have tried to combine the scientific aspect of dialectical thinking with the poetic aspect of matter-antimatter thought and experimentation. To do this, I have taken the diagrammatic rendering of Carl Anderson’s experiment which resulted in his 1932 paper … as a model to relate the dialectical thinking at the heart of Marxism and matter-antimatter thought. …
Towards the end of his essay, Derksen notes that he’s working (on what I would call) a real poem. I sent an email to Derksen on August 21, 2023 asking,
Have you written the poem or is still in progress?
If you have written it, has it been published or is it being readied for publication? I would be happy to mention where.
If you do have it ready and would like to ‘soft launch’ the poem, could you send it to me for inclusion in the post?
No response at this time.
Flashback to Alan Storey
I think it was 2002 or 2003 when I first heard about an artist at TRIUMF, Alan Storey. The ‘residency’ was the product of a joint effort between the Canada Council for the Arts (Canada Council) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC).
I spoke with Storey towards the end of his ;residency; and he was a little disappointed because nothing much had come of it. Nobody really seemed to know what to do with an artist at a nuclear facility and he didn’t really didn’t seem to know either. (Alan Storey’s work can be seen in the City of Vancouver’s collection of public art works here and on his website.)
My guess is that someone had a great idea but didn’t think past the ‘let’s give money to science institutions so they can host some artists who will magically produce wonderful things for us’ stage of thinking. While there is no longer a Canada Council/NSERC programme, it’s clear from LOoW (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC]) that lessons have been learned.
Kudos to David Morissey who acted as an interface and convenor for the artists and to Nigel Smith (Director 2021 – present) and Jonathan Bagger (Director 2014 – 2020) for supporting the project from the TRIUMF side and to Ingrid Koenig and Randy Lee Cutler who organized and facilitated LOoW from the artists’ side.
Now, for the nits
“Co-thought” is mentioned a number of times. What is it? According to my searches, it has something to do with gestures. Here’s one of the few reference I could find for co-thought,
Co-thought and co-speech gestures are generated by the same action generation process by Mingyuan Chu and Sotaro Kita. Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2016 Feb;42(2):257-70. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000168. Epub 2015 Aug 3.
Abstract
People spontaneously gesture when they speak (co-speech gestures) and when they solve problems silently (co-thought gestures) [emphasis mine]. In this study, we first explored the relationship between these 2 types of gestures and found that individuals who produced co-thought gestures more frequently also produced co-speech gestures more frequently (Experiments 1 and 2). This suggests that the 2 types of gestures are generated from the same process. We then investigated whether both types of gestures can be generated from the representational use of the action generation process that also generates purposeful actions that have a direct physical impact on the world, such as manipulating an object or locomotion (the action generation hypothesis). To this end, we examined the effect of object affordances on the production of both types of gestures (Experiments 3 and 4). We found that individuals produced co-thought and co-speech gestures more often when the stimulus objects afforded action (objects with a smooth surface) than when they did not (objects with a spiky surface). These results support the action generation hypothesis for representational gestures. However, our findings are incompatible with the hypothesis that co-speech representational gestures are solely generated from the speech production process (the speech production hypothesis).
It would have been nice if Koenig and Cutler had noted they were borrowing a word ot coining a word and explaining how it was being used in the LOoW context.
Fruit, passports, and fishing trips
The editors/writers use the words or variants, metaphor, poetry, and analogy with great abandon.
“Fruitful bridge” (top of page) and “fruitful match-ups” (bottom of page) on p. 18 seemed a bit excessive as did the “metaphorical passport” on p. 5.
I choked a bit over this on p. 19, “… these artist/scientist interactions can be seen as ‘procedural metaphors’ that enact a thought experiment … .” Procedural metaphor? It seems a bit of a stretch.
A last example and it’s a pair: “metaphorical fishing trips whereby artist and scientists received whatever they might reel in …” on p. 42 (emphases mine). Fishing trips are mentioned in a later essay too, one of the few times there’s some sort of follow through on an analogy.
Maybe someone who wasn’t involved with the project should have taken a look at the text before it was sent to the printer.
Using the words, poetry, metaphor, and analogy can be tricky and, I want to emphasize that in my opinion, those words were not often put to good use in this book.
Moving on, arts and sciences together have a longstanding history.
Poetry and physics
One of the giants of 19th century physics, James Clerk Maxwell was also known for his poetry. and some of the most evocative (poetic) text in the LOoW book can be found in the quotes from various physicists of the 20th century. The link between physicist and poetry is explicit in a September 17, 2018 posting (12 poignant poems (and one bizarre limerick) written by physicists about physics) by Colin Hunter for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.
Going back further, there’s De rerum natura, a poem in six books, by Lucretius ((c. 99 BCE– c. 55 BCE). Amongst many other philosophical concerns (e.g., the nature of mind and soul, etc.), Lucretius also discussed atomism (“… a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms; from the Atomism Wikipedia entry). So, poetry and physics have a long history.
Leaving aside Derksen’s diagram/poem, there’s a dearth of poetry in the book except for a suite of seven poems from TRIUMF physicist and professor at UBC, Jess Brewer following his “Emergence, Free Will and Magic” essay,
Emergence / An extremely brief history of one universe, expressed as a series of science fiction poems by Jess H. Brewer, June 29, 2019
Inspired by Dyson Freeman’s delightful lecture series , “Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe,” Reviews of Modern Physics (51) 1979
1. Bang Why not? For reasons known only to itself, the universe begins The quantum foam of spacetime seethes with effortless energies, entering and exiting this continuum with a turbulent intensity transcending the superficially smooth expanding cosmos and yet it kens the glacial passage of “time”, because it waits. And kens the vast reaches of “space”, because it watches, Its own experiences has taught it that from each iteration of complexity, awareness will emerge.
… [p. 149]
My thanks to Brewer for the poetry and magic and my apologies for any mistakes I’ve introduced into his piece. I was trying to be especially careful with the punctuation as that can make quite a difference to how a piece is read.
While Muriel Rukeyser is not a physicist at TRIUMF or, indeed, alive, one of her poems leads the essay “Leaning into Language or the Universe is Made of Stories,” by Randy Lee Cutler and Ingrid Koenig,
Time comes into it Say it. Say it. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.. —Muriel Ruykeyser, Speed of Darkness, 1968
Before getting into the response that physicist, David Morrissey, had to the poem, here’s a little about the poet, from the Poetry Foundation’s Muriel Ruykeyser (1913-1980) webpage,
Muriel Rukeyser was a poet, playwright, biographer, children’s book author, and political activist. Indeed, for Rukeyser, these activities and forms of expression were linked. …
…
One of Rukeyser’s intentions behind writing biographies of nonliterary persons was to find a meeting place between science and poetry. [emphasis mine] In an analysis of Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry, Virginia Terris argued that Rukeyser believed that in the West, poetry and science are wrongly considered to be in opposition to one another. Thus, writes Terris, “Rukeyser [set] forth her theoretical acceptance of science … [and pointed] out the many parallels between [poetry and science]—unity within themselves, symbolic language, selectivity, the use of the imagination in formulating concepts and in execution. [emphasis mine] Both, she believe[d], ultimately contribute to one another.”
…
Rokeyser’s poem raised a few questions. Is her poem a story? Or, is she using symbolic language, the poem, to poke fun at stories and atoms? Is she suggesting that atoms are really stories? I found the poem evocative especially with where it was placed in the book.
Morrissey takes a prosaic approach, from the essay “Leaning into Language or the Universe is Made of Stories,”
… [in response to Rukeyser’s claim about stories] Morrissey responded stating that “scientific theories are stories—but how we evaluate stories is important—they need to be true, but they do probe, and some are more popular than others, especially theories that we can’t measure.” He surprised us further when he said that wrong stories can also be useful—they may have elements in them that turn out to be useful for future research. … [pp. 205-6]
In general and throughout this project, it seems as if they (artists and physicists) tried but, for the most part, were never quite able to articulate in poetic, metaphoric, and analogical forms. They tended to fall back onto their preferred modes of scientific notations, prosaic language, and artworks.
Both sides of the knife blade cut
Everybody does it. Poets, academics, artists, scientists, etc. we all appropriate ideas and language, sometimes without understanding them very well. Take this for example, from the Canadian Broadcasting’s (CBC) Books “Elementary Particles” August 16, 2023 webpage,
Elementary Particles by Sneha Madhavan-Reese
A poetry collection about family history and scientific exploration
Through keen, quiet observation, Sneha Madhavan-Reese’s evocative new collection takes us from the wide expanse of rural India to the minute map of Michigan we carry on the palms of our hands. These poems contemplate ancestral language, the wonder and uncertainty of scientific discovery, the resilience of a dung beetle, the fleeting existence of frost flowers on the Arctic Ocean.
The collection is full of familiar characters, from Rosa Parks to Seamus Heaney to Corporal Nathan Cirillo, anchoring it in specific moments in time and place, but has the universality that comes from exploring the complex relationship between a child and her immigrant parents, and in turn, a mother and her children. Elementary Particles examines the building blocks of a life — the personal, family, and planetary histories, transformations, and losses we all experience. (From Brick Books)
Sneha Madhavan-Reese is a writer currently based in Ottawa. In 2015 she received Arc Poetry Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize and was shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. Her previous poetry collection is called Observing the Moon
As you can see, there’s no substantive mention of physics in this book description—it’s just a title. Puzzling since there’s this about the author on Asian Heritage Canada’s Sneha Madhavan-Reese webpage
Sneha Madhavan-Reese’s award winning poetry has been widely published in literary magazines in North America and Australia. She earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 2000, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan in 2002. Madhavan-Reese currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario. [emphases mine]
It seems the mechanical engineer did not write up her book blurb because even though the poet’s scientific specialty is not physics as such, I’d expect a better description.
In the end, it seems art and science or poetry and science (in this case, physics) sells.
Alchemy, beauty, and Marx’s surprise connection to atomism
It was unexpected to see a TRIUMF physicist reference alchemy. The physicists haven’t turned lead into gold but they have changed one element into another. If memory holds it was one metallic atom being changed into another type of metallic atom. (Having had to return the book to the library, memory has serve.)
The few references to alchemy that I’ve stumbled across elsewhere in my readings of assorted science topics are derogatory, hence the surprise. Things may be changing; Princeton University Press published a November 7, 2018 posting by author William R. Newman about Newton and alchemy. First, here’s a bit about William Newman,
William R. Newman is Distinguished Professor and Ruth N. Halls Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University. His many books include Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution and Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
People often say that Isaac Newton was not only a great physicist, but also an alchemist. This seems astonishing, given his huge role in the development of science. Is it true, and if so, what is the evidence for it?
WN: The astonishment that Newton was an alchemist stems mostly from the derisive opinion that many moderns hold of alchemy [emphasis mine]. How could the man who discovered the law of universal gravitation, who co-invented calculus, and who was the first to realize the compound nature of white light also engage in the seeming pseudo-science of alchemy? There are many ways to answer this question, but the first thing is to consider the evidence of Newton’s alchemical undertaking. We now know that at least a million words in Newton’s hand survive in which he addresses alchemical themes. Much of this material has been edited in the last decade, and is available on the Chymistry of Isaac Newton site at www.chymistry.org. Newton wrote synopses of alchemical texts, analyzed their content in the form of reading notes and commentaries, composed florilegia or anthologies made up of snippets from his sources, kept experimental laboratory notebooks that recorded his alchemical research over a period of decades, and even put together a succession of concordances called the Index chemicus in which he compared the sayings of different authors to one another. The extent of his dedication to alchemy was almost unprecedented. Newton was not just an alchemist, he was an alchemist’s alchemist.
…
Beauty
The ‘beauty’ essay by Ingrid Koenig was also a surprise. Beauty seems to be anathema to contemporary artists. I wrote this in an August 23, 2016 posting (Georgina Lohan, Bharti Kher, and Pablo Picasso: the beauty and the beastliness of art [in Vancouver]), “It seems when it comes to contemporary art, beauty is transgressive.”
Koenig describes it as irrelevant for contemporary artists and yet, beauty is an important attribute to physicists. Her thoughts on beauty in visual art and in physics were a welcome addition to the book.
Marx’s connection to atomism
This will take a minute.
De rerum natura, a six-volume poem by Lucretius (mentioned under the Poetry and physics subhead of this posting), helped to establish the concept of atomism. As it turns out, Lucretius got the idea from earlier thinkers, Epicurus and Democritus.
Karl Marx’s doctoral dissertation, which focused on Lucretius, Epicurus and more, suggests an interest in science that may have led to his desire to establish economics as a science. From Cambridge University Press’s “Approaches to Lucretius; Traditions and Innovations in Reading the De Rerum Natura,” Chapter 12 – A Tribute to a Hero: Marx’s Interpretation of Epicurus in his Dissertation,
Summary
This chapter turns to Karl Marx’s treatment of Epicureanism and Lucretius [emphasis mine] in his doctoral dissertation, and argues that the questions raised by Marx may be brought to bear on our own understanding of Epicurean philosophy, particularly in respect of a tension between determinism and individual self-consciousness in a universe governed by material causation. Following the contours of Marx’s dissertation [emphasis mine], the chapter focusses on three key topics: the difference between Democritus’ and Epicurus’ methods of philosophy; the swerve of the atom; and the so-called ‘meteors’, or heavenly bodies [emphasis mine]. Marx sought to develop Hegel’s understanding of Epicurus, in particular by elevating the principle of autonomous action to a first form of self-consciousness – a consideration largely mediated by Lucretius’ theorization of the atomic swerve and his poem’s overarching framework of liberating humans from the oppression of the gods.
Fascinating, eh? The rest of this is behind a paywall. For the interested, here’s a citation and link for the book,
Approaches to Lucretius; Traditions and Innovations in Reading the De Rerum Natura Edited by Donncha O’Rourke, University of Edinburgh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press Online publication date: June 2020 Print publication year: 2020 Online ISBN: 9781108379854
It’s a little surprising Derksen doesn’t mention the connection in his essay.
Finally
It’s an interesting book if not an easy one. (By the way, I wish they’d included an index.) You can get a preview of some of the artwork in the January 6, 2020 article on the Canadian Art Magazine website.
I can’t rid myself of the feeling that LOoW (the book) is meant to function as a ‘proof of concept’ for someone wanting to start an art/science department or programme at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, perhaps jointly with the University of British Columbia. It is highly unusual to see this sort of material in anything other than a research journal or as a final summary to the granting agency.
Should starting an art/science programme be the intention, I hope they are successful in getting such it together and, in the meantime, thank you to the physicists and artists for their work.
We should all ‘lean out of windows’ on occasion and, if it means, falling or encountering ‘dangerous, uncomfortable ideas’ then, that’s alright too.
Thanks to Rebecca Bollwitt’s August 29, 2023 posting on her miss604.com blog for notice of this upcoming exhibit and event, Note 1: A link has been removed; Note 2: This is not my usual topic area (emerging science and technology),
The Precipice art exhibition, presented by CPAWS-BC [Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – BC Chapter], showcases seven BC-based artists working in mixed media to tell stories of biodiversity, loss, and hope.
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Precipice is an exhibit and gathering place where artists, biologists and activists will teach, play and host conversations about biodiversity with the community. The exhibition features work by Cherry Archer, Nell Burns, Adea Chung, Grace Lee, Jesse Recalma, Sarah Ronald, and Clare Wilkening and is curated by Rachael Ashe.
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Courtesy: Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – British Columbia (CPAWS-BC)
Works by seven BC artists renew hope amidst an extinction crisis
Take a sensory journey from loss to hope at Precipice, an art exhibit and gathering space where conversations about solutions to biodiversity loss will thrive. Precipice: Changing the Course of the Extinction Crisis in BC runs at the Alternatives Gallery in Vancouver from September 15-23, 2003.
Precipice: Changing the Course of the Extinction Crisis in BC is an art exhibition that tells stories of loss and hope for lands, animals, waters and people in British Columbia, Canada’s most biodiverse province. At Alternatives Gallery in Vancouver, seven BC-based artists will express how deeply biodiversity in nature affects the human experience.
Presented by Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – British Columbia, Precipice is more than an art exhibit. It’s a gathering place where artists, biologists and activists will teach, play and host community conversations about biodiversity.
“Precipice is a convening space for critical conversations about what people living in BC can do to protect our children’s futures,” says Tori Ball, Terrestrial Conservation Manager at CPAWS-BC. “We’re living through an extinction crisis – forest fires, floods and droughts. But we can’t lose hope.”
Right now, Indigenous Nations are working to protect their traditional territories and the province has an unparalleled opportunity to support their vision and ensure that lands and waters are healthy and protected, says Ball. “This is how we can mitigate the effects of climate change and support communities in BC. Precipice is an open, community space for people to gather, learn and take action.”
Works featured at Precipice show that when we do better for Nature, people thrive too: a textile sculpture embodies the life experience of a tree; a ceramic tile installation depicts the family history of our Southern Resident killer whales; and textural cut-outs explore wildlife relocation caused by habitat loss.
Precipice’s community programs welcome guest speakers including Chief Rebecca David of Pauquachin Nation, Councillor Archie Little, Nuchatlaht First Nation, Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council artists workshops and storytelling events. Tickets are free or by donation and the schedule of events is listed below.
Precipice is curated by Rachael Ashe and features work by Cherry Archer, Nell Burns, Adea Chung, Grace Lee, Jessie Recalma, Sarah Ronald and Clare Wilkening. The gallery is always free to enter and is open Monday to Thursday from 4 PM to 6 PM for public viewing. All are welcome to join workshops and guest speaker nights during extended weekend and evening hours.
Precipice art exhibition is presented by Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – British Columbia (CPAWS-BC). A portion of the proceeds will support the non-profit’s work to advocate for the protection of lands, waters and wildlife in BC.
When: September 15-23, 2023 Time: 4 PM to 6 PM, [emphasis mine] plus special evening and weekend events. Where: Alternatives Gallery and Studio, 1659 Venables Street, Vancouver, BC. [emphasis mine] Tickets:Always free to visit the gallery Monday to Friday from 4-6 PM. [emphasis mine] Donations welcomed for special evening speakers night, weekend workshops and more online
Special events include:
Opening night: September 15, from 6-9 PM
Family Fun day: September 17 from 10-2 PM
Ocean Pollution panel: September 19 from 6-7:30 PM
The Future of Conservation panel: September 21 from 6-8 PM
Beginner-friendly ceramics workshop with Clare Wilkening: September 23 at 12 PM.
Here’s a bit more about the September 23, 2023 Precipice special event from the Precipice homepage (scroll down),
Saturday, September 23
Celebrate BC Culture Days by creating your very own clay creation inspired by the natural world at this Clay Workshop with Clare Wilkening. This is a beginner-friendly workshop. No previous artistic experience is required!
Tickets are by donation, with a suggested donation of $5-10.
Climate Action Through Circularity (Zero Waste Conference 2023)
Metro Vancouver’s annual Zero Waste Conference (ZWC) is coming up on November 1-2, 2023 and there’s more from the ZWC website,
THIS YEAR’S THEME – CLIMATE ACTION THROUGH CIRCULAIRTY
Join us at the 2023 Zero Waste Conference – an annual confluence of visionaries, innovators, and thought leaders committed to a future without waste. This year, we dive deep into the power of circular economy and regenerative principles to drive climate action.
Uniting champions and practitioners from across business, government, and civil society, our event is a celebration of transformational change. Experience the power of the circular economy, witness its prowess in driving climate action, and marvel at how industry leaders and organizations are deploying it to construct a sustainable future.
Apparently not all educational toys are equal so according to a July 18, 2023 article by Nate Berg for Fast Company, Note: Links have been removed,
Seemingly overnight, and almost by necessity, toys have become teachers. The educational toy market has exploded in recent years, with some researchers estimating more than $100 billion in sales globally by 2028. The uptick is partly thanks to an acronym. STEM—for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—has become an easy way to distinguish toys with an educational side from toys that are just meant to be fun.
Or at least it was supposed to be easy. With more and more toys labeled as offering STEM benefits, toymakers and toy buyers alike are starting to wonder where the line is drawn. Is a set of racing cars or building blocks actually educational, or are parents and kids being taken in by a widespread case of “STEM-washing”?
During the pandemic, STEM toys (and their artsy cousins, STEAM—science, tech, engineering, arts, and math—toys) became must-haves for families across the country. …
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STEM toys have a growing presence in toy stores and online, and a market that’s expected to grow by nearly a billion dollars over the next few years. Scientific toys, a subset of the STEM category, has grown 28% over the past three years to about $281 million in annual sales, according to Frédérique Tutt, a toy industry analyst at Circana. The growth is even bigger for STEM-adjacent building sets like Lego, which have grown 51% in that time, to more than $2 billion in annual sales, she says.
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From building blocks to toy car ramps to stomp-fired air rockets, a wide range of marginally educational toys were suddenly being sold as STEM products. Whether STEM-washing or inconsistent marketing is to blame, the confusion has led the toy industry to try to get precise about what a STEM toy is.
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You can read about an accreditation programme for STEM/STEAM toys in Berg’s July 18, 2023 article.
Perhaps they should adopt a similar approach to so-called art/science or SciArt installations and shows. Some of those shows are, at best, ‘science lite’.
From the August 14, 2023 SCWIST newsletter (received via email),
SCWIST x CSS: Experiences of Women in Space and Technology
August 24 | 5:30-6:30pm | Online
Join us for a conversation on technology, innovation and legacy! We’ll explore thought-provoking topics such as our role within the vast expanse of time, the idea of living a legacy rather than just leaving one and navigating stimulating careers in the fascinating industries of space and technology. Register.
I have a bit more information from the event page on the SCWIST website,
Women in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,] sharing their journeys, challenges and triumphs in the space and tech industries.
Since 1981, SCWIST has made great strides in promoting and empowering women in STEM. When you register, please consider adding a small donation to support our programs so all interested women and girls can see where a future in STEM can take them.
The Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) and the Canadian Space Society (CSS) have joined to bring you a captivating panel event, Exploring Frontiers – Women in Space and Technology.
We will be shining a spotlight on four extraordinary women who have charted their own paths in the space and technology sectors and delve into their remarkable journeys, challenges, and triumphs.
This event will be an excellent opportunity to explore the current state of women’s representation in STEM, gain insights into the diverse career options within space and technology industries, get valuable advice on seeking mentors and being one yourself and learn about their journeys from academia to industry.
SPEAKERS
Natalie Cook
Intermediate Geospatial Technician/Remote Sensing Operator, MDA [Mcdonald, Detweiler, and Associates]
Samantha Yueh
A versatile tech enthusiast with a solid grounding in emerging technologies (VR/AR/MR, AI, BCI) [virtual reality/augmented reality/mixed reality, artificial intelligence, and brain-computer interface]. Samantha has a proven track record in digital transformation, project management, and product development in cross-disciplinary teams. She is passionate about leveraging cutting-edge tech to innovate, inspire, and create impactful user experiences.
Other panellists to be announced.
MODERATOR
Mahima Kapoor
Mahima is a polymath and thrives at the intersection of science, business, and technology! Guiding organizations through disruptive technological changes and deeply understanding and solving for end user needs excites her. Her spare time is filled with a multitude of passion projects, producing a space podcast to highlight underrepresented narratives of those working in Canada’s budding space sector, working at a professional Bollywood dance company, and mentoring university women in STEM.
PRESENTED BY
The Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to empowering and supporting women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in Canada. With a focus on promoting gender equality and diversity, SCWIST offers mentorship, professional development, and networking opportunities to foster a thriving community of women professionals. Through their advocacy and transformative programs, SCWIST aims to break down barriers, inspire future leaders, and create a more inclusive and equitable landscape in the world of STEM. scwist.ca
The Canadian Space Society (CSS) is a leading organization at the forefront of space exploration and technology in Canada. Established to promote and advance the development of space activities, CSS serves as a platform for space enthusiasts, professionals, and researchers to collaborate and share knowledge. With a strong commitment to education, outreach, and advocacy, CSS strives to inspire and engage the next generation of space enthusiasts while contributing to Canada’s significant role in the global space community. css.ca
Do check out the event page for frequently asked questions and information about photo and video consent.
Quantum Leaps Career Conference – Cell Biology and Photochemistry
From the August 14, 2023 SCWIST newsletter (received via email),
Quantum Leaps: Cell Biology and Photochemistry August 24 | 5-6pm PDT | Online
Quantum Leaps are our virtual career conferences that give grade 8-12 girls a glimpse into what people in all fields of STEM do in their careers. This Quantum Leaps will focus on women professionals working in careers related to cell biology, photochemistry and science communication. Register.
This is a career conference event for high school girls to interact with women professionals in STEM and learn about science careers.
“Since 1981, SCWIST has made great strides in promoting and empowering women in STEM. When you register, please consider adding a small donation to support our programs so all interested women and girls can see where a future in STEM can take them.“
SCWIST Quantum Leaps is a virtual career conference uniquely designed for girls from grade 8-12 interested in or curious to explore careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This conference gives girls a glimpse into what women in STEM fields do in their careers.
During these events, girls can meet professionals who have been successful in their STEM fields and meet other like-minded girls who have similar aspirations and interests. This event will help them know more about the STEM fields they are interested in and discover new STEM fields. Quantum Leaps also aims to aid students in the transition between high school and higher education.
This particular Quantum Leaps event will focus on women professionals working in careers related to cell biology and photochemistry. They also have expertise in science communication and facilitating learning. Did they have a fixed plan for what they would like to do five years after high school? How do they ease into changing their career focus? Did they know that they wanted to pursue these careers when they were in university? Girls will get the opportunity to interact with these women to get the answers they need at the event.
AGENDA
5:00-5:25: Speaker 1 and Q&A session 5:25-5:55: Speaker 2 and Q&A session 5:55-6:00 Conclusion
SPEAKERS
Vaishnavi Sridhar completed a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She studied proteins required for parts of a cell to contact each other and the relevance of these contacts for cellular function and disease for her PhD. She completed an Integrated BS-MS, majoring in Biology from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali prior to her PhD.
As a scientist, she believes that science should be accessible to all and that it is important to communicate science to diverse audiences in engaging ways. In this regard, she has communicated her research and science in general via presentations, poems, articles, videos, and hands-on science activities. She enjoys writing and has adapted life science research articles for diverse audiences. She has mentored high school, undergraduate and graduate students, discussing careers in science, how to apply to graduate school, how to tailor statements of purpose and work-life balance.
Dr. Sree Gayathri Talluri (she/her) is a photo-chemist by training with expertise in self-assembled systems. She is currently a Scientist working towards developing advanced nucleic acid therapeutics at Cytiva. Sree graduated with a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Victoria in 2022. Her research focused on developing fluorescence methods to study the mobility of small molecules in drug delivery systems.
Sree is passionate about science communication and outreach. She served as the national and regional organizer of ComSciCon CAN, a workshop designed to provide science communication training to graduate students across Canada. In her previous role as the interview coordinator for UVic Women in Science, Sree worked towards amplifying the voices and highlighting the experiences of women in the scientific community across Vancouver Island. She served as a STEM specialist at BC girl guides, where she worked on designing and developing STEM experiments for girls. She is the acting director of mentorship at the Student Biotechnology Network in Canada.
It’s been years since the last time it’s been featured here and i can’t remember how I stumbled across PCAST’s ([US] President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) latest meeting but thank you.
Day 1: discussion and consideration for approval: A letter on advancing public engagement with the sciences & A Report on the seventh assessment of the national nanotechnology initiative [emphases mine]
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The video of the July 27, 2023 meeting is here on the PCAST YouTube channel, as well as, here on the PCAST 2023 Meetings webpage. It runs approximately 1 hr. and 22 mins.
Surprisingly (to me), science engagement took up more than 1/2 of the time (45 – 50 mins.). One of the recommendations was to get more community participation (they didn’t mention citizen science; the committee mentioned discussing values) and there was talk about listening more to the community (they acknowledged that experts tend not to do that enough).
Then, it was time for the 7th assessment of National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). Less time and more drama: the recommendation was to sunset or revise the 21st Century Nanotechnology R & D Act (2003). After 20 years, nanotechnology is considered ‘mature’ and the approach needs to change as applications become the focus of the work.
The documents for both science engagement (a letter to the US president) and 7th assessment of the NNI (a report) will be uploaded to the PCAST Documents & Reports webpage by mid- to late August 2023.
Should you be interested in the US PCAST discussions on artificial intelligence, scroll down to the May 18-19, 2023 meeting on the PCAST 2023 Meetings webpage.
Back in 2015, Melanie Keene’s book, “Science in Wonderland; The scientific fairy tales of Victorian Britain,” illuminated a storytelling approach used by Victorians to teach science. (See my September 13, 2017 posting about both Keene’s book and a book about innovation for an overview [part 1] and some commentary [part 2].).
More recently, a May 31, 2023 news item on phys.org describes a similar but updated approach to using fairy tales when communication about science,
A team of researchers, led by Lancaster University, has been developing accessible and creative means of communicating sustainability research from the social sciences for policymakers and the wider public.
Using fairy tale characters – mermaids, vampires, and witches – as metaphors, the team, including researchers from the Universities of Strathclyde and Manchester, have sought to communicate typically complicated arguments in evocative and engaging terms.
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Fig. 1. Renewables as mermaids.
Credit: Véronique Heijnsbroek (http://visitveronique.com). Courtesy of the journal: Energy Research & Social Science
Responding to some of the challenges of climate change (electricity generation, low-carbon transport, plastic pollution), the research team present three ‘telling tales’. These ‘translate’ existing academic research, taking inspiration from well-known fairy tale characters, to cast this research in an accessible and powerful light:
Renewables are mermaids – alluring and attractive solutions for policymakers to increasing energy demands, but a distraction from other important routes to Net Zero, like demand reduction. Like mermaid figureheads on sailors’ ships, renewables should accompany our transition to Net Zero but they should not be the only destination.
Cars are vampires – dangerous entities that are deadly and sucking the wellbeing from communities by dividing divide workplaces and retailing outlets from homes, creating lengthy commutes. Policymakers have, until now, waved garlic at them, to control how fast and where they travel, rather than reaching for the stake and re-imagining everyday life without cars.
Plastics are witches – a complex category that is, say the research team, misunderstood by the current witch-hunt against plastics. Though they can be harmers (e.g. single-use plastics), they also have ‘healing’ properties (i.e. durable and useful materials that can substitute more damaging materials). Policymakers should work towards systems of re-use to maximise their benefits, rather than simply ‘demonising’ plastics in general.
Having developed these tales, the team worked with illustrator Véronique Heijnsbroek to create a range of inspiring images.
This work responds to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) call for ‘transformational adaptation’. This paper offers serious messages and alternative policy approaches with the aim to accessibly communicate the types of shifts that this will involve:
– Renewables, though important, are not the only measure required by a future of fossil-free electricity generation. Demand reduction, though a less attractive solution, must be considered to ensure this future is possible.
– Cars are known to be deadly and dangerous, yet we have designed daily life and society around their use. More stringent measures are required when thinking of what role they should play in future societies.
– Plastics are currently demonised. Plastics are not to blame, as much as the systems of production, consumption, and disposal they are tied up with. Policies should encourage systems of re-use to maximise their benefits, rather than simply demonising plastics in general.
“It would be easy to interpret this work as a trivialisation of research or, even, a patronisation of potential readers,” says lead author Dr Carolynne Lord, from Lancaster University.
“This is not our intention. The point is that communicating through specialist language is not adequately conveying the message to the communities that it needs to reach. We need to start communicating our work in more accessible ways.”
Dr Torik Holmes, from the University of Manchester, adds: “Storytelling has been gaining traction in the field of energy research in the social sciences. We’ve built on this through the use of fairy tale characters to argue how UK policy reflects a fixation with renewables, over cautionary responses to car ownership and use, and too narrow understandings of, and reactions to, plastics.”
And Dr Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs, from the University of Strathclyde, comments: “Communicating in new and intelligible ways that combine the complexity of research with inspiring stories is important. There is now a real urgency in which transformative responses to climate change are required. Though much social science work offers potential solutions, it can do so in a way that is hard to understand by those who have the power to make change a reality”.
The authors hope their concept will inspire the scientific community to recommunicate energy-based social science research in more digestible forms.
They plan to hold an online workshop starting Monday 28th August [2023] [emphasis mine] with other researchers and illustrators to develop and extend this cast of characters. More information can be found on the Telling Tales of Energy Research website: https://tellingtalesofenergyresearch.wordpress.com/.
Their hope is that by moving research findings beyond academic circles, and to policymakers and popular audiences, this type of work can help bring about the changes required.
I have a bit more about the workshop but first, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
The organizers are definitely emphasizing enjoyment. Here’s more from the Telling Tales of Energy Research Workshop webpage,
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How much writing experience do I need?
You don’t need to have pieces already written, but you must be ready to dedicate at least 3 hours (or more) over the week to write. You don’t need to have taken other creative writing classes. And even if you have, there’s loads in store waiting for you.
You won’t just be learning the craft of writing, or how to pitch your piece to an outlet… You’ll be learning how to create space for writing in your life.
At the same time, you’ll be joining a community of writers also passionate about social and environmental justice! This community, with the activities and guidance, will make you feel ready to pitch your ideas to outlets to and beyond the Academy.
What does participating involve?
Online activities: 15:00-16:30pm BST on both Monday 28 August and 4 September 2023.
In addition, for the week 28 August to 1 September you’ll be committing to at least 30 minutes a day for our online writing retreat.
How do I enrol?
Attendance opportunities are limited, please fill in this Expression of Interest by Monday 31st July [2023] 17:00 BST. The team will let you know if you’ve been selected asap.
I realize it’s past the deadline for an Expression of Interest but it never hurts to try and, if there’s enough interest they might schedule a 2nd workshop. Good luck!
Thank you Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) for getting your notice to me so I have time to post it before tickets are made available. Not that I imagine a huge following in Waterloo (Canada) but it feels better to get the information out early.
The lecture is on July 27, 2023; the tickets are being given away on July 17, 2023.
Here’s more from a July 14, 2023 PI notice (received via email),
The Meaning of Spacetime: Black Holes, wormholes and quantum entanglement THURSDAY, JULY 27 [2023] at 7:00 pm ET
Juan Maldacena, Institute for Advanced Study
What is spacetime, exactly? And how does it impact our understanding of important phenomena in our universe?
According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, spacetime is both curved and dynamical. The theory had two surprising predictions: black holes and the expansion of the universe. In both cases, there are regions of spacetime that are outside the reach of the classical theory, the so-called “singularities.” To address them, we need a quantum mechanical description of spacetime
Juan Maldacena studies black holes, string theory, and quantum field theory. In his July 27 [2023] Perimeter Public Lecture webcast, he will describe some ideas that arose from the study of quantum aspects of black holes. They involve an interesting connection between the basic description of quantum mechanics and the geometry of spacetime. He will also delve into how wormholes are related to quantum entanglement.
Don’t miss out! Free tickets to attend this event in person will become available on Monday, July 17 [2023] at 9 am ET [emphases mine]
I found a bit more information about Maldacena on the event page,
Maldacena began his studies in his native Argentina, before completing a PhD at Princeton University in 1996. He has been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 2001. He is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and The World Academy of Sciences, among many other honours. Maldacena was also one of the inaugural laureates of the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2012.
The tickets go quickly. Not Beyoncé concert- or BTS concert-level quick but don’t dawdle.
Taryn Southern, a storyteller, filmmaker and speaker covering emerging technology who created an award-winning virtual reality (VR) series, as well as AI music and a sci-fi documentary, has joined the judging panel of Insilico Medicine’s Docuthon competition.
Southern has been a sharp observer of the influence and rise of technology. She first gained public notice at age 17 as a semi-finalist on American Idol and later became a YouTube sensation, garnering more than 1 billion views. Soon after, she began actively pursuing her creative interests in emerging technologies and the possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and VR to improve human life and potential.
Clinical stage end-to-end AI drug discovery company Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) launched the Docuthon (documentary hackathon) competition to invite participants from around the world to tell the story of AI drug discovery, using footage captured over the Company’s nearly decade-long journey. The competition provides a way for participants to share the achievements of generative AI in advancing new medicines through the story of Insilico’s lead drug for the rare lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which was discovered and designed by generative AI and has now entered Phase II clinical trials with patients.
Southern says that as a young breast cancer survivor she is personally motivated to support AI drug discovery.
“I can speak as someone with experience who has been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, in my case stage 3 cancer,” Southern says. “When you’re in that situation you are looking for any possibility of hope. As we are just now beginning to see, AI-enabled drug discovery will rapidly shift the realm of possibility for these patients.”
Since her breakout YouTube success in 2007, Southern has gone on to produce digital content and advise companies such as AirBNB, Conde Naste, Marriott, and Ford. She also released the world’s first pop album composed with AI, created an award-winning animated VR series for Google, made a video clone of herself, and directed and produced a documentary about the future of brain-computer interfaces called I AM HUMAN which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019.
Southern is also a three-time Streamy Award nominee, an AT&T Film Award Winner, one of the Top 20 Women in VR (VRScout), and was featured as part of Ford’s national “She’s Got Drive” campaign. She sits on the board of the National Academy of Medicine’s Longevity Challenge, which aims to award breakthroughs in longevity science, and invests in emerging tech companies like Cue, Oura, Vessel, Aspiration, and others.
Docuthon categories include best feature, best short, best curated, and most creative with prize amounts ranging from $4,000 to $8,000. Interested participants are invited to register. Submissions are due Aug. 31, 2023. [emphasis mine]
Southern says she’ll be looking for Docuthon submissions that connect on a human level.
“With storytelling about technology, it’s important to not forget the human piece,” she says,“really focusing on the impact this will have on humanity and the people who are creating the technology and their personal stories.”
“We’re thrilled to have Taryn join us as a Docuthon judge,” says Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. “She brings creative vision to all of her projects and really understands how to tell compelling stories around emerging technologies.”
About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine, a clinical stage end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery [AIDD] company, is connecting biology, chemistry, and clinical trials analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and the generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. www.insilico.com
With an extraordinary design and tremendous calculation speed, artificial intelligence has become an inevitable trend in many areas of drug discovery. It helps identify biological targets, design small molecules for potential cure, and save a ton of research time.
AIDD is good news to the entire human society, but the society has not learnt much about this new technology. When did AI enable the first pipeline? What happened when it failed? How did scientists persist along the way?
Inspired by the movie AlphaGo, we believe the AIDD world deserves its own seminal film. Through the DOCUTHON, we seek to bring together documentary filmmakers and enthusiasts with those who believe in the potential of AI and care about human wellbeing.
Insilico Medicine will share a massive collection of footage showing every step of AI-powered drug discovery, participants are also welcome to use original contents including graphics and animations. A group of judges from both the science and film industries will decide the best edited films based on accuracy, creativity, etc.
This is an excellent opportunity to build your scientific storytelling portfolio AND win a big prize. And all the documentaries might be aired on our official websites and national video platforms. For more details, please visit insilico.com/docuthon or email us at event@insilico.ai
Insilico’s ‘splash’ page features four categories (scroll down about 40% of the way), the judging criteria and more details about submission requirements,
Best Feature
🎬 Best long-form entry ⏱ 16-60 min 💵 $6K award
Best Short
🎬 Best short-form entry ⏱ 3-15 min 💵 $4K award
Best CURATED
🎬 Best edited storyline among all entries 💵 $5K award
Most Creative
🎬 Most creative format or plot among all entries 💵 $5K award
JUDGING CRITERIA
Comprehensive narration of AIDD [artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery] and development of Insilico Medicine Accurate referral and explanation of scientific facts Creative and interesting approach that holds public attention
You may want to take a look at the Docuthon Competition Agreement (PDF). Not a lawyer—but it looks like you’re signing away almost all of your rights.
There isn’t a list of past winners although Insilico seems to have run the contest at least once before, from the YouTube page featuring the company’s introductory Docuthon video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LmmXEVyqh4), Note: A link has been removed,
704 views Dec 13, 2022
Artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery company Insilico Medicine announces a first-of-its-kind documentary film hackathon called Docuthon to encourage creative scientific exploration. Participants from around the world are invited to use footage provided by the Company to tell the story of Insilico Medicine and of advances in AI-powered drug discovery, an industry now at a tipping point. Films can be submitted as a documentary short or a documentary feature and cash prizes of up to $8,000 USD will be awarded for Best Feature, Best Short, Best Curated, and Most Creative. Submissions will be judged based on their success at telling the story of AI drug development and of Insilico Medicine, on their scientific accuracy, and on the level of creativity and ability to hold the viewer’s interest. Registration for the Docuthon is open through March 1, 2023. Submissions are due in April 2023, and winners will be announced in May 2023. Additional details can be found at: https://insilico.com/docuthon.
I’m not sure if you have to register for this latest version of the contest as the Eventbrite registration indicates a submission date only so you may want to contact the organizers.
Good luck and don’t forget the August 31, 2023 deadline!
I have two news releases about this reseach, one from March 2023 focused on the technology and one from May 2023 focused on the graffiti.
Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the technology
While this looks like an impressionist painting (to me), I believe it’s a still from the spatial reality capture of the temple the researchers were studying,
Photo Credit: Simon Fraser University
A March 30, 2023 news item on phys.org announces the latest technology for research on Egyptian graffiti (Note: A link has been removed),
Simon Fraser University [SFU; Canada] researchers are learning more about ancient graffiti—and their intriguing comparisons to modern graffiti—as they produce a state-of-the-art 3D recording of the Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt.
Working with the University of Ottawa, the researchers published their early findings in Egyptian Archaeology and have returned to Philae to advance the project.
“It’s fascinating because there are similarities with today’s graffiti,” says SFU geography professor Nick Hedley, co-investigator of the project. “The iconic architecture of ancient Egypt was built by those in positions of power and wealth, but the graffiti records the voices and activities of everybody else. The building acts like a giant sponge or notepad for generations of people from different cultures for over 2,000 years.”
As an expert in spatial reality capture, Hedley leads the team’s innovative visualization efforts, documenting the graffiti, their architectural context, and the spaces they are found in using advanced methods like photogrammetry, raking light, and laser scanning. “I’m recording reality in three-dimensions — the dimensionality in which it exists,” he explains.
With hundreds if not thousands of graffiti, some carved less than a millimeter deep on the temple’s columns, walls, and roof, precision is essential.
Typically, the graffiti would be recorded through a series of photographs — a step above hand-drawn documents — allowing researchers to take pieces of the site away and continue working.
Sabrina Higgins, an SFU archaeologist and project co-investigator, says photographs and two-dimensional plans do not allow the field site to be viewed as a dynamic, multi-layered, and evolving space. “The techniques we are applying to the project will completely change how the graffiti, and the temple, can be studied,” she says.
Hedley is moving beyond basic two-dimensional imaging to create a cutting-edge three-dimensional recording of the temple’s entire surface. This will allow the interior and exterior of the temple, and the graffiti, to be viewed and studied at otherwise impossible viewpoints, from virtually anywhere— without compromising detail.
This three-dimensional visualization will also enable researchers to study the relationship between a figural graffito, any graffiti that surrounds it, and its location in relation to the structure of temple architecture.
While this is transformative for viewing and studying the temple and its inscriptions, Hedley points to the big-picture potential of applying spatial reality capture technology to the field of archaeology, and beyond.
“Though my primary role in this project is to help build the definitive set of digital wall plans for the Mammisi at Philae, I’m also demonstrating how emerging spatial reality capture methods can fundamentally change how we gather and produce data and transform our ability to interpret and analyze these spaces. This is a space to watch!” says Hedley.
Did Hedley mean to make a pun with the comment used to end the news release? I hope so.
University of Ottawa and ancient Egyptian graffiti
Egypt’s Philae temple complex is one of the country’s most famed archeological sites. It is dedicated to the goddess Isis, who was one of the most important deities in ancient Egyptian religion. The main temple is a stunning example of the country’s ancient architecture, with its towering columns and detailed carvings depicting Isis and other gods.
In a world-first,The Philae Temple Graffiti Project research team was able to digitally capture the temple’s graffiti by recording and studying a novel group of neglected evidence for personal religious piety dating to the Graeco-Roman and Late Antique periods. By using advanced recording techniques, like photogrammetry and laser scanning, researchers were able to create a photographic recording of the graffiti, digitizing them in 3D to fully capture their details and surroundings.
“This is not only the first study of circa 400 figural graffiti from one of the most famous temples in Egypt, the Isis temple at Philae,” explains project director Dr. Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, a professor of Classics in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa (uOttawa). “It is the first to use advanced, cutting-edge methods to record these signs of personal piety in an accurate manner and within their architectural context. This is digital humanities in action.”
Professor Dijkstra collaborates in the project with co-investigators Nicholas Hedley, a geography professor at Simon Fraser University (SFU), Sabrina Higgins, an archaeologist and art historian also at SFU, and Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin, a uOttawa alumna, now a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Oslo.
Temple walls reveal their messages
The newly available state-of-the-art technology has allowed the team to uncover hundreds of 2,000-year-old figural graffiti (a type of graffito consisting of figures or images rather than symbols or text) on the Isis temple’s walls. They have also been able to study them from vantage points that would otherwise have been difficult to reach.
Today, graffiti are seen as an art form that serves as a means of communication, to mark a name or ‘tag,’ or to leave a reference to one’s presence at a given site. The 2,000-year-old graffiti of ancient civilisations served a similar purpose. The research team has found drawings – some carved only 1mm deep – of feet, animals, deities and other figures meant to express the personal religious piety of the maker in the temple complex.
Using 3D renderings of the interior and exterior of the temple, the team gained detailed knowledge about where the graffiti are found on the walls, and their meaning. Although the majority of the graffiti are intended to ask for divine protection, others were playful gameboards; Old Egyptian temples functioned as a focus of worship and more ephemeral activities.
A first for this UNESCO heritage site, the innovative fieldwork is at the forefront of Egyptian archaeology and digital humanities (which explores human interactions and culture).
“What ancient Egyptian graffiti have in common with modern graffiti is they are left in places not originally foreseen for that purpose,” adds Professor Dijkstra. “The big difference, however, is that ancient Egyptian graffiti were left by individuals at temples in order to receive divine protection forever, which is why we find hundreds of graffiti on every Egyptian temple’s walls.”
The Philae Temple Graffiti Project was initiated in 2016 under the aegis of the Philae Temple Text Project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Swiss Institute for Architectural and Archaeological Research on Ancient Egypt, Cairo. It is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and aims to study the figural graffiti from one of the most spectacular temple complexes of Egypt, Philae, in order to better understand the daily practice of the goddess’ worship.
The study’s first findings were published in Egyptian Archeology
Fascinatingly for a project where new technology has been vital, the work has been published in a periodical (Egyptian Archaeology) that is not available online. It is published by the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) which also produces the similarly titled “Journal of Egyptian Archaeology”.
You can purchase the relevant issue of “Egyptian Archaeology” here. The EES describes it as a “… full-colour magazine, reporting on current excavations, surveys and research in Egypt and Sudan, showcasing the work of the EES as well as of other missions and researchers.”
Here’s a citation for the article,
Figures that Matter: Graffiti of the Isis Temple at Philae by Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin, Jitse Dijkstra, Nicholas Hedley and Sabrina Higgins. Egyptian Archaeology, Spring 2022, [issue no.] 60.