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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Images from The Elegant Universe
String theory kind of bugs me. Or maybe its just the latest offering from the ever-charismatic string theory guru Brian Greene that I found mildly irksome; the three-part TV series version of his book The Elegant Universe. A good friend gave it to me on tape (thank you friend), but Goodreads has posted a link to the episodes online. String theory is pretty groovy: the idea that the fundamental elements of the universe are not tiny particles at all, but vibrating loops. Maybe I'm just crabby cause of Christmas, but the show kind of turned me off the concept.
The show is a science graphics extravaganza. We are continually bombarded with the invitation to "picture" this and "imagine" that. I began to get the feeling that in any given instance, almost any analogy would do. Instead of falling apples to indicate gravity, how about anvils? Instead of slices of bread to indicate parallel universes, how about an ever expanding playlist of different mp3s? The art direction was very catchy but the visual themes seemed haphazard and I started to doubt the use of eye-candy in wrestling with abstractions.* And by extension I started to doubt string theory itself.
Is it a massive stretch to compare theories with pictures? Theories, like Einstein's theory of relativity, or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, do function as a kind of representation. Like a model, or a diagram, they give us a means of sorting information into a configuration that carries meaning. As a lay person absorbing flashy science for a general audience,I am not required to go through the rigours of proving any theories. That's a problem, because I start to see the theories as interchangeable bits of culture, rather than tested modules of scientific knowledge with evidence attached. I do realize that lot of people do a lot of long boring computations on an ongoing basis just so that we can all adopt one theory over the next. And the same goes for string theory. (And the calculations balance!) But, unlike quarks and neutrinos, it just isn't possible to test empirically for evidence of strings.
I wonder, could we just as easily think of the universe as made up of tiny thumb tacks, tacks that poke into the fabric of space time and attach on pieces of other dimensions, so that the universe piles up like layers on an overstuffed bulletin board? Or maybe the universe is made up of cat hairs, that clump into balls in some places, like under the couch, but float freely as individual strips, carrying all kinds of microscopic information as they settle in your spaghetti sauce, or on the bosom of your best black dress. If we spent five hundred years doing the calculations on such a model, is there a chance that we could get the mathematics to work out? I know I'm out on a limb, but I don't think I'm alone in feeling that string theory, at least in the context of Brian Greene's TV show, is just a tad too self-reflexive. There's another word for that...oh yeah, elegant!
(*This could pose a problem for me, since making art images derived from science ideas is one of my ongoing projects.)
Merry Christmas Monster Teeth
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Timothy Comeau's Top Ten art picks for 2004:
1. David Hoffos at TPW in September
2. The Fuck New York video and it's followup
3. Hive party in June at Studio 99
4. Niagara Falls Artist Program at Mercer Union in December
5. Allyson Mitchell's show at Paul Petro in March
6. Fastwurms with Michael Barker at Zsa Zsa at the end of August (the canon blew smoke!)
7. French bookstores in Montreal
8. Diane Landry at YYZ
9. Instant Coffee's make out party in March
10. Realizing that the new OCAD building was great when I wanted to show it off to a visiting friend from out of town.
Kineko Ivic's top 10 picks in no particular order:
1. Brad Phillips: Silver Springs at Greener Pastures
2. Frieze Art Fair London
3. Tal R at CFA Berlin
4. Erik Parker at Leo Koenig NY
5. Daniel Richter at Power Plant Toronto
6. Hernan Bas in Miami (Design District)
7. New bar for the art crowd, Sweaty Betty's (previously Luft Gallery)
8. Strange and quirky shows at Mind Control Toronto
9. Dana Schutz at Zach Feuer Gallery NY
10. the new MOMA, NY
MK's Top 10 of 2004:
1. Nicolas Fleming's "L'histoire d'un vieux sac" (Story of an old bag) at CDEx, Montreal. A beautiful and honest piece, wherein a painter asks questions about his medium by exploring it in a performative context. My top wish for 2005 is to see more artists extending themselves in this way: experimenting without being sloppy; making radical choices but not being careless; and though being somewhat deliberate, still imparting a warm and human sensibility in the work. (http://michelle.kasprzak.ca/blog/entries/archives/00000058.htm)
2. Being one of the ringleaders of Geostash. A high-tech treasure hunt where artists execute actions developed by other artists for specific urban places. It was an experience full of surprises. (http://www.year01.com/geostash)
3. Two things at the Whitney Biennial: Slater Bradley's single channel video installation "Theory and Observation", and Aïda Ruilova's wonderful roomful of short videos. They were two extremes to the show: Bradley's piece was subtle and meditative; Ruilova's were overtly quirky and slapstick. (http://www.whitney.org/biennial/)
4. "Listening Post" at Ars Electronica. This piece won the "Golden Nica" for Interactive Art at Ars Electronica. Except it wasn't interactive at all. The piece did an excellent job highlighting the awkward categorization of new media work at festivals, and it was also a mesmerizing, well-crafted data-choreography piece. (http://earstudio.com/projects/listeningpost.html)
5. John Kormeling's ferris wheel for cars at the Power Plant. Wheee! (http://michelle.kasprzak.ca/blog/entries/archives/00000038.htm)
6. Istvan Kantor winning the Governor General's award. Proof that the awards have not lost their edge. (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/stories/govgenart030304)
7. The Guggenheim's "Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice" show. This show, that concerned itself with ephemerality and particularly the problem of preserving digital art, was interesting but most of it didn't work. It was somehow comforting that not even the Guggenheim could just wave its magic wand and bring all these wayward pieces into line. Many questions without answers, which is nice to see in a big museum. (http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/emulation/index.html)
8. Caroline Martel's "Le Fantôme de l'Opératrice" (The Phantom of the Operator) at the Toronto International Film Festival. A beautifully wrought film chronicling the fate of the telephone operator. (http://www.artifactproductions.ca/)
9. [murmur]'s new installation in the Annex. More psychogeography by phone from the indefatigable [murmur] collective. (http://www.murmur.info)
10. "Pain Couture" at Fondation Cartier, Paris. A whimsical selection of bread meets fashion by Jean-Paul Gaulthier. It was one of those summer "lite" shows, but hey, I'm at number 10 and I'm allowed to start venturing into questionable shows. At least this show titillated the nose as well as the eye: the smell of freshly baked bread was intoxicating. (http://parisvoice.com/04/summer04/html/art/style.cfm)