Close Encounters of Art and Physics : An Artist's View

Description

Close Encounters of Art and Physics is a voyage in time through the abstract ideas harboured in the minds of humans, starting from the graffiti art of cave dwellers and extending to the street art of contemporary men and women. In seeking parallels with science, the author looks far back to the first geometric ideas of our ancestors as well as ahead to the contemporary science of present-day physicists. The parallelism and analogies between these two fields bear witness to a real entanglement in the human brain. The second part of the book contains about 25 colour images showing the author's stunning glass artwork representing ideas such as dark matter, quantum entanglement, cellular automata and many others that are almost impossible to capture in words. Furthermore, many of the physicists who have themselves made major contributions in these fields provide their comments and analysis of the works. The book provides entertaining and informative reading, not only for practicing artists and physicists, but also anyone curious about art and physics. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Rock Paintings: Primordial Graffiti (Laura Pesce)....Pages 3-6 A Sense of the Beauty of Forms (Laura Pesce)....Pages 7-10 Were the Dark Ages Really Dark? (Laura Pesce)....Pages 11-14 Rebirth! (Laura Pesce)....Pages 15-24 The Age of Reason: The Enlightenment (Laura Pesce)....Pages 25-28 Impressive Impressions (Laura Pesce)....Pages 29-33 What You See Is Not What You Get (Laura Pesce)....Pages 35-38 Is Reality Really Real? (Laura Pesce)....Pages 39-48 Abstraction: Pure Thought (Laura Pesce)....Pages 49-56 Timeless Time (Laura Pesce)....Pages 57-61 Does it Belong to the Elite? (Laura Pesce)....Pages 63-69 Front Matter ....Pages 71-72 What Time Is It? (Laura Pesce)....Pages 73-78 A Longer History of Time (Laura Pesce)....Pages 79-85 Just Call Me Jim (Laura Pesce)....Pages 87-91 Quintessence: The Spirit of the World (Laura Pesce)....Pages 93-97 Resolving the Unresolved (Laura Pesce)....Pages 99-105 The Brain Is an Orchestra (Laura Pesce)....Pages 107-113 Let’s Play Chess (Laura Pesce)....Pages 115-119 Are There Real Crystals in the Universe? (Laura Pesce)....Pages 121-123 Brain and Mind (Laura Pesce)....Pages 125-128 In Memory of Tom Kibble (Laura Pesce)....Pages 129-134 Conclusion (Laura Pesce)....Pages 135-135 Back Matter ....Pages 137-138