“Fluttering wings of Pythagoras’ butterfly, or an artists in the garden of science”

One of the qualities shared by science and art is the fact that they both create models of the world. Initially, there was a common model, underlying such ideas as the Pythagorean concept of the harmony of the world, which is regarded as the most important and beautiful concept created by the human mind and which has become the foundation of the development of our culture. With time, however, the model began to crack; science and art took separate paths. The second half of the 20^th century brought a complete change of this situation and a more intense communication between the two. Yet the process of decreasing the distance between artistic and scientific circles has only just started, giving way to great creative possibilities. It requires a lot of effort and commitment on the part of artists and openness on the part of scientists.

By entering the sphere of mutual relations between science and art, in my artistic activity and theoretical reflection I go back to the beginnings of this union, to the common model, and I ask about the validity of the Pythagorean idea of Harmony in our times. This is the theme of a series of my activities referring to the connections between the microcosm and macrocosm, between musica mundana, i.e. the music of the Universe, and musica humana, i.e. the music of the human body. The series employs a musical adaptation of the Music of the Spheres (celestial bodies) by the father of contemporary astronomy Johannes Kepler, as well as data obtained by means of radio telescopes and other devices used nowadays to explore the outer Space.

At first, I paired these with the microsounds of the cardiovascular system; then I turned to brainwaves. One of my brainwave projects was a multimedia installation Tones and Whispers. To create it, I had to visit the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of London , where research on sound perception is carried out. I had my brain scanned using the fRMI technique while I was listening to the Kepler’s work performed by Barbara Buchholz – a virtuoso on the theremin, an instrument played by radio waves. It is the radio waves that are now the main source of our knowledge about the Universe.

The resulting installation consists of three videos. One of them shows rotating celestial bodies: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, incorporated in Johannes Kepler’s scores. The bodies are surrounded by spheres which reflect particular melodies, animated by the hands of a musician. In the second video, they rotate in the landscape of brain images and remote galaxies. In the third film, a 3D fMRI scan of the brain is shown in the centre of the rotating system. The brain has replaced the Sun, the centre of Kepler’s Universe, which was also central to the Music of the Spheres. Today we know that our Solar System is not the centre of the world. Quite the opposite, we rotate on our small planet around one of a million of stars on the outskirts of our galaxy, one of millions of galaxies racing through the Space, or, strictly speaking, together with the Space. Where should we look for a point of reference, then? One possibility is to focus on the brain, whose function is the mind – the centre of individual sensation and perception of the world. It is the brain that is the source of all ideas and concepts, including the idea of the harmony of the world.

There are a few versions of this installation, under the same or a changed title. One of them, Somnium (The Dream), refers to the last book by Johannes Kepler, which is also the first work of science fiction. The installations were exhibited in a number of places, including the Dana Center , the Science Museum in London , OFB gallery in Monterrey , Mexico , as well as at the exhibition The Time of Stars. Innovations in the Universe presented in the European Patent Office in Berlin and devoted to art and innovation in astrophysics, astronomy and space research. The work won the first prize in the Polish edition of the 2007 Europlanet competition held on the 50^th anniversary of Space Age, in collaboration with the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw and the PAS Astronomical Observatory in Olsztyn . The popularity of these projects shows not only the topicality of the Pythagorean idea, but also our immanent need, emotional as well as intellectual, for deeper connections between ourselves and the world around us.

As astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan writes in his book The Secret Melody: And Man Created the Universe, Nature “is by no means silent… Like some far-off orchestra, it tantalizes us with fragments of a symphony, but the melody linking the bits and snatches of song is missing. The task of science is to unravel the secrets of that hidden melody, so that we can listen to the composition in all its glory.” The Golden Record, our message to distant civilizations carried aboard Voyager spacecrafts, opens with a contemporary interpretation of the Music of the Spheres by Kepler created in Bell Laboratories. The music serves to prove cognitive and creative abilities of Man. But whether or not these sound vibrations reach their recipients, they will keep resonating within the human mind, unlocking ever new areas of creativity.

Kepler used to believe that the Music of the Universe resounded only once, in the moment of creation, and filled the Space with eternal resonances of the universal polyphony. According to the Big Bang theory, it happened around 14 billion years ago. A relatively short time ago (3.7 billion years ago) this universal music was coupled with one more melody encoded in the score of ACGT acids shared by all living creatures on the Earth.

The discovery of a DNA molecule and decoding of the human genome cast a different light on the fundamental questions: “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” It also changed the understanding of the notion of “life”. What is life, then? With this question in mind, I went to India , to the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in New Delhi , at the invitation of KHOJ Artists’ Association to take part in a pilot programme of arts and science. I realised there that the Aristotelian definition of life based on the notion of a living organism is no longer valid. In fact, only DNA is “living”. What we are used to perceiving as a “living organism” (including ourselves) is merely a part of a much bigger habitat of a replicating gene. The essential feature of a gene is that it contains information about its environment and causes this information to be stored and transmitted. Hence, one could say that information is the matter of life. At the biological level, it is genetic information; at the mental level or, more broadly, at the level of culture and civilisation, it comprises notions, ideas or the so-called memes.

The title of the multimedia installation Life Matters, which was created during my stay in ICGEB, is quite a tricky one. It refers to the double sense of the word matter as, on the one hand, the material substance and, on the other hand, something with a meaning. At this point, science exploring the fundamental secrets of life has met humanist traditions of the East and the West. The question concerning harmony has gained a new dimension.

The shared genetic heritage of the animate matter makes us realise the biological unity of life. The harmony of nature, however, does not care much about its elements. Actually, from the global perspective of nature, the existence of single species does not matter. The unity of the animate world hides a ruthless struggle of genes for survival. It is embodied by all kinds of diseases and epidemics plaguing mankind. My source materials for the Life Matters project come from laboratory research on malaria, SARS and AIDS. My choice was by no means accidental. Malaria, caused by plasmodium, kills millions of people every year since the dawn of history. SARS, in turn, is one of the new type epidemics casting a shadow over our future. Lastly, AIDS affects mostly our intimacy and the sexual sphere, which is essential for every species.

Considering the ease with which our cells start to reproduce foreign genetic sequences, it might be concluded that if the mankind is ever wiped off the surface of the earth, it will be after a lost “gene war”. Moreover, just like the extinction of dinosaurs, it would not disrupt the phenomenon of life.

A contemporary idea of harmony falls outside the aesthetic and ethical humanistic categories that evolved in previous eras. The turbulent 1960s brought a different interpretation of the idea. The theory of non-linear dynamics of complex systems, also known as the chaos theory, brought with it a new interpretation of natural phenomena. Seen from this perspective, the Eternal Harmony ceased to represent permanent and inviolable order and laws. It was reduced to a brief moment of synchronisation, temporary adaptation and cooperation of different systems. It might be treated as one of the paradigms of interactivity, which is so characteristic of contemporary culture, and which found its best expression in the theme of the 14^th Dutch Electronic Art Festival in Rotterdam : “Interact or Die”.

Adaptability, a constant adjustment to a dynamically changing environment, is also the fundamental rule of survival and evolution of species and ideas.

Within the last century, our knowledge of the world and of ourselves has expanded tremendously. Today we realise that we are made of the same components as the rest of the Universe. Thus, it is, in a way, optimistic to think that at the atomic level, as part of the universal recycling, we are in fact immortal. What is confusing, however, is the fact that no inherent quality has been found in a replicating gene to differentiate it from inanimate matter. Life turns out to be very context-dependent.

Moreover, there are no grounds to assume that our own lives are somehow special in the evolution of life, or that we occupy a privileged position in the process. The only feature which distinguishes us from the rest of the animate matter is a highly developed awareness of existence. This self-awareness, resulting from creative curiosity in ourselves and in the world around us, expressed in the process of interpreting and transforming the world, is fundamental to our existence and survival.

The insatiable curiosity of the world and the need for its individualised interpretation is central to all my works. Hence, the aim of my art projects is not to illustrate scientific theories and facts, but to interpret them in a personal and creative manner and to explore issues which are important to me. My video Secret Life became an introduction to a long-term project with the provisional title of Proteois. Secret Life is a poetic reference to the secret of life, which we have been trying to solve for years, penetrating distant space areas as well as the closer microcosm of our own matter. Neither of the scales is available to our direct perception, yet they are united in our everyday lives, in our ambitions and dreams. The visual material of the film was illustrated with music by Dave Lawrence based on the materials from Neutrino Mediterranean Observatory, Italy and Whale & Seabird Research Station in New Brunswick, Canada. The film received an honorary mention at the 2009 “Transmediale” New Media Festival in Berlin . It was also presented at WRO Festival in Wrocław, International New Media Art festival in Riga, film festivals in Bangalore, India and São Paulo, Brasil, and elsewhere.

Water, as is stressed in the video, is a prerequisite for each life form we know. There might exist, however, different forms of life, which we have never had a chance to discover. A H₂O particle is the subject of another film, in which the external and internal environment of an organism make up a whole, with water as a potential for life and its evolution.

I have already mentioned that life can be identified with the processes of maintaining and transmitting information, both at the biological and the cultural level. Obviously, it is not the only interpretation. Life is also, to quote Profesor S. Symotiuk, “the way in which space exists, and vice versa; space might be treated as the way in which life exists”.

Proteois in Greek means the first, the fundamental, the frontal. Not without a reason the root of this word can be found in the name of ‘proton’ – an elementary particle, as well as in ‘protein’ – a compound responsible for all processes occurring in living cells. The structure of protein, dynamic and unrepeatable, is composed of chains of amino acids, which are quite common in our Universe. Its folded, globular form brings to mind the mysterious, geometric formations known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. According to superstring theory – the hope of contemporary physics – they contain the extra dimensions of our world, compactified to the subatomic level and hidden from our 3D perception. Exposed to X-rays, a protein molecule shows an arrangement of atoms whose topology might serve as a map of the starry Space.

Hidden Dimension is a title of my other film. Its shows a protein as “a space bubble”, which suggests that our own bodies carry dimensions inaccessible to our perception; we are spaces comprising manifold universes.

The Proteois project comprises films and video animations as well as interactive installations. Its concept originated during my residence in the Centre for Experimental Media Arts at Srishti College of Art, Design and Technology and the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore , India in summer 2009. The title refers to Greek philosophy of nature, which was the first to ask about the hidden rules and laws governing “the existing things” i.e. physis (nature). The latest work of the project is an interactive installation called Molecule, which is being created in collaboration with Wolfgang Spahn. Its theme is the complex and fascinating world of molecular structures. The viewer can manipulate them using balls (representing atoms) scattered around the room. Thus, the installation can be both contemplative and entertaining. It tickles our sense of scale, space and our own dimension, but at the same time touches upon some eternal questions about the fundamental nature and order of the Universe.

To conclude, I would like to refer to the title of this speech: “Fluttering wings of Pythagoras’ butterfly, or an artists in the garden of science”

The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas is a favourite example (repeated after E. Lorenz) of interactions in the theory of complex systems dynamics (deterministic chaos theory). The smallest disturbance within a system (such as a butterfly fluttering its wings) might cause unpredictable changes (such as a tornado in Brazil ). This phenomenon is typical for the whole natural world, including human beings – from their genetic code and social behaviour to cognitive processes, where the tiniest of impulses might inspire new, creative ideas.

Joanna Hoffmann,

prepared for “Wincent’s Pocket” 2010