Arts

Slow Life

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Watch and savor this remarkable video by Daniel Stoupin. It shows tiny marine animals in motion — motions that are typically so slow that we would never notice, here enormously sped-up so that humans can appreciate them.

Slow Life from Daniel Stoupin on Vimeo.

I found it at this blog post by Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher of biology. He notes that some kinds of basic processes, like breathing, are likely common to creatures that live at all different timescales; but others, like reaching out and grasping things, might not be open to creatures in the slow domain. Which raises the question: what kinds of motion are available to slow life that we fast-movers can’t experience?

Not all timescales are created equal. In the real world, the size of atoms sets a fundamental length, and chemical reactions set fundamental times, out of which everything larger is composed. We will never find a naturally-occurring life form, here on Earth or elsewhere in the universe, whose heart beats once per zeptosecond. But who knows? Maybe there are beings whose “hearts” beat once per millennium.

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Snobby Connoissuership

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xkcd raises an interesting issue or three. Click to see the exciting conclusion, starring Joe Biden.

Naturally, in less time than it takes to eat a sandwich there was a Tumblr account dedicated to Joe Biden eating.

But one can’t help but ask — is it true? Does it really not matter what it is we choose to lavish our attentions upon? Would we find as much depth and complexity in different cans of Diet Dr. Pepper as oenophiles would claim are lurking in a bottle of fine Bordeaux?

I think we have to say no. Some things really are more complex and nuanced than other things. I could provide examples, but they aren’t any better than ones you can imagine yourself.

That’s okay, it doesn’t make the comic any less funny. And there is a clever point that remains true: people pick and choose the things on which they lavish their attention. To one person, all jazz is just noise; another would say the same about classical, and another about punk. The real issue isn’t the existence of complexity, it’s how we choose to recognize and value it. If we went through life taking note of every fact around us, we’d go insane within minutes. Making sense of existence relies heavily on coarse-graining.

But there’s yet another issue! (Yes I know I’m spending too much time analyzing a single comic — or am I deviously making a point?) The cartoon didn’t choose Diet Dr. Pepper as its example, it chose pictures of Joe Biden eating sandwiches. And you know, there really is a lot of depth there. There’s a lot you could say about a large collection of such photographs. So the question is — are any of those things worth saying? Complexity might be necessary for great art, but it doesn’t seem to be sufficient. Paying attention to certain kinds of details seems rewarding in a way that paying attention to others is not.

Anyone have a simple demarcation between the two? When is complexity deserving of study, and when does it merit being ignored? I’m sure aestheticians have argued about this for centuries, and I’m not trying to break any new ground here. I’m just at a loss for a good theory, which isn’t a condition I like to be in.

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Pepsi Galaxy, Pepsi Universe

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Warning: following links may lead to places no thinking person was meant to go. At least that’s what I discovered when I was reading this Discoblog post about a recent branding fiasco involving the Gap. I was led to a Times article about the incident, thence to a Gawker post, and ultimately to an investigation of Pepsi’s new logo. You know the one I mean:

Pepsi_Logo

How much thought do you think went into creating this bit of branding genius? Even better, of what did those thoughts consist?

Wonder no more! Here is the full marketing document prepared by the marketing group that reveals the unique blend of physics, theology, symbolism, art, and a certain je ne sais quoi that made this landmark of design possible.

Excerpts presented below the fold without further comment, which could only be superfluous.
…

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Edge-Serpentine Map Marathon

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Edge is collaborating with the Serpentine Gallery in London on projects at the art/science interface. Last year they looked at equations; this year they’re looking at maps. It’s a playful and broad conception of what constitutes a “map”; you will see a few astrophysical examples in there.

Here’s an excerpt from a map of the emotions by Emanuel Derman, based on Spinoza’s Ethics. I zoomed in on the cluster centered around pain, because that’s what people will be drawn to first anyway.

Map of Emotions, according to Spinoza

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Art, Meet Science

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Apologies for the dismal lack of blogging — apparently even scientists travel around the holidays, who knew? I’m in South Carolina at the moment, so instead of the well-constructed argument (complete with witty parenthetical asides) on a pressing issue of the moment that I’d love to provide, please accept this simple link to some sketches by Richard Feynman. (Via Chad Orzel, author of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog.)

Feynman’s fondness for drawing is well-known, especially when the subject was naked ladies. The sketches aren’t going to win any art competitions, but they’re certainly better that I could do. And here’s one I bet very few professional artists could pull off:

feynmanart302

I find that the subtle use of integration by parts really speaks of man’s inhumanity to man, don’t you agree?

But my favorite recent example of science-inflected art has to be this newly discovered late-period Jackson Pollock:

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Oops, sorry; that’s not an abstract expressionist masterpiece at all. It’s a plot of theoretical predictions and experimental constraints for dark matter, as linked by Brian Mingus in comments. Check out dmtools if you’d like to make your own plot. Science and art are for everyone.

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Playing the Audience Like a Xylophone

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This was originally relegated to a tweet, but it deserves to be elevated to a blog post. Bobby McFerrin, at the World Science Festival, demonstrating the pentatonic scale. A rare combination of joy, passion, and teaching. I dare you not to smile at the 0:42 mark.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

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What’s Yellow, Hovers, and is in the Midst of a Funding Crisis?

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The Geostationary Banana Over Texas, that’s what! Longtime readers will recall that we love the GBOT here at Cosmic Variance. What is not to love? Just the existence of the very concept holds out promise for a brighter future. Truly, it’s projects like this that define what it means to be human.

(After all, actual bananas may soon go extinct, leaving us with only their giant inflatable brethren to remember them by.)

Now, however, Backreaction points to terrible news: the GBOT is facing a funding crisis! Artist/visionary Cesar Saez has received about $100,000 from the Canadian government, and needs to raise another $1.5 million to make his dream a reality. So far, efforts have fallen short; only $12,018 has been collected. Hey, it’s a start!

Now, some will say that the GBOT isn’t really a realistic project; that it’s more an excuse to have a cool website, generate a bit of buzz, and play with some drafting software than an honest attempt to float a banana over the Lone Star State.

Some will say that the flight plan looks more like a scribble in Microsoft Paint than a NASA-approved model of the GBOT’s trajectory.

We say, true art doesn’t listen to people like that! True art thinks those people are wankers.

Some day the GBOT will fly — if only in our hearts.

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Hidden Structures

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When it comes to art (considered broadly, so as to include literature and various kinds of performance, not to mention a good bottle of wine) I am a radical subjectivist. If you like it, great; if you don’t, that’s your prerogative. There is no such thing as being “right” or “wrong” in one’s opinion about a work of art; what’s important is the relationship between the work and the person experiencing it.

Nevertheless, there’s no question that one’s attitude toward a work of art can be radically changed by outside information or experiences. You might come to understand it better, or conversely you might be overexposed to it and just get bored.

Scientists, in particular, love it when they discover that some boring old art thing that they had previously perceived as undifferentiated and uninteresting actually possesses some hidden structure. If you were ever caught in the unfortunate situation of teaching an art- or film-appreciation class to scientists, the right strategy would be to reveal, insofar as possible, the underlying theories by which the work in question is constructed. And if you think there are no such theories, you’re just not looking hard enough.

Recent examples, which I would blog about in extraordinary depth and breathtaking insight (with a dash of self-deprecating humor) if I were a professional blogger rather than a scientist with a blogging hobby:

  • Patrick House in Slate reveals the algorithm for winning the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. Involves concepts such as the “theory of mind” joke. (Via 3QD.) As far as I know, there is not yet an algorithm for winning the New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest.
  • The Science of Scriptwriting! This one actually appeared on the arxiv, under the more formal title “The Structure of Narrative: the Case of Film Scripts.” (Via Swans on Tea and the physics arxiv blog.)
  • Relatedly, back in March Jennifer was serving as the Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, and ran a series of Friday workshops. One of them was Inside the Writer’s Room: Where Physics and Hollywood Collide, featuring guest speakers David Saltzberg and David Grae. David #1 is a physicist at UCLA and also the science consultant for the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, which I will write about someday, I promise. David #2 is a TV scriptwriter, who was there to tell the physicists how to write for TV. About which maybe also more, someday, but right now I just wanted to highlight one phenomenon: when David was talking about possible plot lines and characters, the physicists played along and seemed mildly interested. But when he revealed that an hour-long TV drama is inevitably broken up into specific acts, each of which generally (in the case of each show) has a particular function within the larger narrative, the room lit up. There was a theory of TV dramas! More than one person said they would never be able to watch prime-time television in quite the same way again.

Also, of course, the assembled physicists all had a similar question: “Why don’t they make a TV show about me, or someone like me? Those people are all nerds!” I have a theory about that.

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