Art and physics collide in this expansive exploration of how knowledge
can be translated across disciplinary communities to activate new
aesthetic and scientific perspectives.
Leaning Out of Windows shares findings from a six-year collaboration
by a group of artists and physicists exploring the connections and
differences between the language they use, the means by which they
develop knowledge, how that knowledge is visualized, and, ultimately,
how they seek to understand the universe. Physicists from TRIUMF,
Canada's particle physics accelerator, presented key concepts in the
physics of Antimatter, Emergence, and In/visible Forces to artists
convened by Emily Carr University of Art + Design; the participants then
generated conversations, process drawings, diagrams, field notes, and
works of art. The "wondrous back-and-forth" of this process allowed both
scientists and artists to, as Koenig and Cutler describe, "lean out of
our respective fields of inquiry and inhabit the infinite spaces of not
knowing."
From this leaning into uncertainty comes a rich array of work towards
furthering the shared project of artists and scientists in shaping
cultural understandings of the universe: Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
reflects on the invisible forces of power; Jess H. Brewer
contemplates emergence, free will, and magic; Mimi Gellman looks at
the resonances between Indigenous Knowledge and physics; Jeff
Derksen finds Hegelian dialectics within the matter-antimatter
process; Sanem Güvenç considers the possibilities of the void;
Nirmal Raj ponders the universe's "special moment of light and
visibility" we happen to inhabit; Sadira Rodrigues eschews the
artificiality of the lab for a "boring berm of dirt"; and Marina Roy
metaphorically turns beams of stable and radioactive gold particles into
art of pigments, oils, liquid plastic, and wood. Combined with
additional essays, diagrams, and artworks, these texts and artworks live
in the intersection of disparate fields that nonetheless share a deep
curiosity of the world and our place within it, and a dedication to
building and sharing knowledges.
