Jem Finer : Artist in Residence, Astrophysics, Oxford University . . . in the beginning . . . Sometime in early 2003 I wrote to my friend, Janna Levin, and asked her if she might have any idea how I might become artist in residence in an Astrophysics department. Janna is an Astrophysicist so she seemed like a good person to ask. She was very positive and said she'd see what she could think of. A bit of time passed by and then one day she got in touch and said that a colleague of hers in Oxford, Pedro Ferreira, was interested. So I went to visit Pedro and that's how it all started. We talked about the details of the residency, met a few times and agreed that I should sart at the beginning of the 2003 - 2004 academic year and work until the end of the 2005 academic year. At that point the idea is to have some kind of public exhibition. The department very generously offered me space, use of a computer, and welcomed me into their midst but couldn't fund me directly so I made a couple of grant applications of which the ACE one has been accepted. With theirs and the departments support I started on the 8th October, the first day of term. |
| 8th October 2003 | 23rd October 2003 | 30th October 2003 | 3rd November 2003 | 6th November 2003 | 18th November 2003 |
An artist and musician, I work in a diverse range of fields, including music, film, performance and photography. More information at elrino.co.uk |
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This day really was like going back to become the member of an academic institution. I attended a safety lecture in which I learnt about the colours of fire extinguishers and how the EU had screwed up the colour coding. I went around to Janna's place to visit her and her husband, W, and their baby, G. I ate most of their pizza and then went back to the department with Janna where I had my photo taken and a bit later went to an introduction to the department lecture for new students and members of the department. Some time inbetween I looked at images proposed for the walls of the new bit of the department where I will have my desk. I felt a bit bogus being given responsibility for choosing the images they have to live with. I mean just because I'm called artist in residence doesn't mean I have to foist my taste on everyone. Then a little drinks affair to socialise and meet people. Everyone was very welcoming which is nice. The thing is they never asked to have an artist in residence, to have someone come knocking on their doors asking inane questions about cosmology. Some people ask me what I'm going to do and I have to try and explain that while I can't give them a specific answer I have an idea as to how to proceed towards the point at which I can. |
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I'd just finished reading a Scientific American special edition called "The Once and Future Cosmos" I wanted to try and get an overview of what people actually researched in the department and how it interelated. Now on the train I was thinking that it would be good to try and make a map of it all, fit it all together in a diagram. That way I could check I had my facts right. So that was one thing to do. There were a few things I had broadly sketched out in my head that I wanted to see if I could work with. Extra spatial dimensions was one,always good for twisting my head in knots. Another was to see how various bits of data could be visualised using sound. And of course to find out what sounds there are out in the cosmos. I typed astrophysics +sound into google and immediately found the url of a report about an x ray telescope detecting sound waves emanating from a black hole. B flat, 57 octaves below middle C. Spent a bit of time on my map and went to see who I could talk too. I thought that the last thing people would want is to be disturbed in the miiddle of their work but Pedro was quite insistent this is what I should do. Thought I'd start off by trying GB who people had said made simulations. So I went to see him and we arranged to meet the following week. Met some people at tea time in the afternoon who work with Pedro on Cosmic Microwave Background. We talked a bit about my wanting to try and use data to create sound. In the likley event of different possible topologies of the universe sounding rubbish AL had the wonderful idea of reverse engineering topologies from beautiful sounds. |
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Went to see GB. Before he got to show me some of his simulations he told me about modes of vibration in stars. Caused by fluctuations in the equilibrium between gravity pulling inwards and pressure pulling outwards they vibrate in different planes - modes. So they must make a sound. Whether one can hear it or not is another matter. So there's something to follow up, helio seismology, study of pulsations of the sun. He explained how the black hole made a sound. I'd been wondering how you could have sound in a vacuum but of course it's not. The black hole is in the centre of the Perseus cluster, a vast cloud of hot hot gas (density, a few 100 atoms per cubic meter, ie not very dense). Hit the cluster and it will "ring". The black hole does the hitting by spewing out plumes of gas. We worked out that the length of time for one cycle of the low low B flat is around 20 million years ! Watched some beautiful simulations - birth of a star in the early universe - clouds of hydgoren and helium in which the denser areas exert a gravitational pull and gather more gas until they start to collapse into each other forming bigger and bigger clumps until a star is born. In the simulation the new born star looked very fragile and waif like. Looked at some other simulations of clusters. KC talked to me about theology and astrophysics and then about pulsars. I never realised how small they were, that you could fit one within the ring road of Oxford. A super dense spinning ball of iron humming above the spires. I'm wondering whether it's possible to make one. Is it the density or just the magnetised spinning iron bit thats crucial ? |
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Walked around Oxford with Janna and talked about how we could make little universes out of mirrors. We wandered round the Ruskin School of Art (where she's scientist in residence) and back to Astrophysics. She also filled me in on more details about pulsars. Not so sure it will be possible to make one. Now I know that they're neutron stars with an iron core and a density so great that one teaspoon of pulsar matter weighs a billion tons, beaming out a cone of radiation from their poles. It's that beam that creates the pulse, flashing like a lighthouse each time a pole spins past our field of vision. Talked to JD about Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and what form the data took, with a view to an experiment in mapping it to sound. Basic data is made up simple of points on the inside of a sphere and temperature. JD reckoned that for my purposes it was better to use angular power spectrum data. Trying to get my head round what that quite means ! Anyway, she emailed me this graph and it's data which I'll experiment with in SuperCollider. |
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Confusion #1: the assertion that were the universe to start contracting, the arrow of time would be reversed and thus we would see everything running backwards . . . and . . . something contracting viewed backwards appears to expand, so everything would just look the way it does anyway. Confusion #2: trying to make sense of the CMB data. Been talking to D about starting a band within the department.
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CMB: a bit of progress in understanding the data. What I want is to consider the universe as a resonant space and see what it sounds like when given a hefty thwack. I thought that I could use the data in this way but not so sure now. The data I have - if I understand it correctly - is a measure of temperature fluctuations against angular resolution of observation. Temperature fluctuations can be read as amplitude (actually amplitude squared) and angular resolution as wavelength. The wavelength of a particular angular resolution being the length of the section of the circle it describes. As the length of the radius is the age of the universe less 300,000 years that's going to be pretty large. So I'm going to interpret the data as amplitude v frequency, ie an FFT of the snapshot of the universe at the point that the CMB is frozen. I just have to figure out the small detail of how to put it into an IFFT and see what sound comes out. Probably be really boring and rubbish. No matter. According to my logic, that will be the sound signature - or a sound signature - of the CMB. If one reads about the CMB then one discovers that data is interpreted as acoustic phenomana : What we actually see is the pattern of the sound waves that is imprinted on the temperature of the CMB. Compressing a gas heats it up. Letting it expand cools it down. The CMB is locally hotter in regions where the acoustic wave causes compression and cooler where it causes rarefaction. . . . according to the website. Band : there are now several members; a couple of guitars, cello, bass, banjo, vocals. The idea is to keep it to members of the department and use material relating to Astrophysics through its title. Telstar, Satellite of Love, Fly me to the Moon, Starman, The Yellow Moon of Texas, Blue Moon of Kentucky . . . . . |
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The Pulsars, The Astrophysicists, Cygnus X1, The Oxford Pulsars . . . . Little Universes: made the first little universe, a small cube mirrored on the inside. Hillbilly Astronomy: making enquiries into the hows, whys and wherefores of building equipment to make astronomical observations using cheap household materials and jumk. What I have in mind at the minute is to build a large radio telescope, Jodrell Bank style, out of cardboard, tinfoil, radios and tvs. First though I'll start small. Attended a seminar about merging elliptical galaxies which was pretty comprehensible except for some of the maths. |
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