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Showing posts from September, 2018

Interview with Matt Russo: Science that is inextricable from an artistic process

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--> Matt Russo is a Toronto-native, an astrophysicist, musician and astro-musician. After attending the Etobicoke School for the Arts with an focus on music, he attended the University of Toronto, completing a B.A. in Music, and a B.Sc., M. Sc. and PhD in Astrophysics. During his postdoctoral research at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, he founded SYSTEM SOUND, a science-art outreach project that translates the rhythm and harmony of the cosmos into music and sound He has created a sound-based planetarium show at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics -- where he will be hosting an event as part of Nuit Blanche 2018.  You can find out lots more about him at  https://www.astromattrusso.com/ But more importantly you should our vibrant interview below.... LR: You went to Etobicoke School of the Arts. My son’s teacher last year was such a believer in ESA that she made sure all three of her children went there. None of them are art

A Scientist's Encounters with Novelty and Art: an interview with world-renowned scientist and author Lee Smolin

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photo courtesy of NASA So here we are, my first interview with a scientist. And Lee Smolin, no less. If you don’t know who he is, stop and google his name now. Did you do it? I did this while on my way to interview him. I had read all of his books and had invited him to my shows about Einstein and solar flares, but there it was on the internet – one of the four most famous and important writers of cosmology and physics for the general public. Right up there with Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. No pressure, Lucy. Pretend you didn’t read that and keep walking up to the front door of his house and ring that doorbell. I am so glad I did. Although Lee never describes a particular process he follows in his work, his reminiscences of encounters with artists and their processes are imbued with the creative spark. Not the spark of solution or answer, but the spark of origin, a thing that propels him into a deeper query. It pushes him to ev

Art and Science: Launching in 10, 9, 8 ......

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--> The world is full of interesting people. For almost 15 years I’ve been interviewing artists and finding out about creative process, inspiration and perseverance in that line of work. I’m not bored. But I am ready something a little different. For over a decade I’ve been obsessed with trying to understand the goings-on in the world of theoretical physics, specifically in cosmology and astrophysics. And more tentatively branching out into neuroscience and evolution. Blue Ceiling dance in Dead Reckoning. Sky Fairchild-Waller, Peter Quanz, Elke Schroeder and Lucy Rupert. (Photo by Omer Yukseker) I’ve made several works of choreography with these investigations as their undercurrents and gushing waves. I’ve tried to surf through the embodiment possible in dance: the third man factor, the thought experiments of Einstein, the compulsive brains of solo pilots, the interdependence and adaptations of ecosystems, the uglier animal instincts that are seeded