May 25, 2011
Science, video and the Boltzmann Paradox
On May, 11th 2011 I was invited by Tiverton Art Society to give a talk about art, video and the Boltzmann Paradox. The society has more than 200 members and is a very active one. Tiverton is an ancient borough and market town in the county of Devon, and the major town in the Mid Devon. It was a real pleasure to be there and to talk to the audience about quantum physics, my own art and art in general, and to present some of my videos. I even read one of my poems, the one about a physicist of course, the Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr.
I had some concerns before the talk, associated with my accent and random blockages of my memory; especially as I am tired (actually I am in a state of chronic fatigue related to my ME condition). I also wanted to talk about quantum physics, thermodynamics and the Boltzmann Paradox in a language in which I still struggle to express myself in the way I want to. When I talk in English I switch my brain into think-in-English mode, which is the way to master a foreign language. But still too often I am sucked in by antimatter, which tries to destroy my brain, confuse my memory and makes it impossible to have an intellectual, sophisticated chat. I find myself missing words, idioms, sayings, humorous expressions, knowledge of complicated grammatical structures. It is a matter of exercises, persistency and strong will, I know that. I am too old and I am lazy, I guess. J) However, I think everything came out successfully. The audience reaction was lively, and I thought they showed a real enthusiasm. I was talking about myself, my art, my videos, and physics and Boltzmann Creatures of course. I brought two big abstract paintings and a few new ones from the “Peter Pan” series. I was myself, spontaneous and a ‘little crazy’ as usual.
The Brits in general are very nice and polite people. Think about it for a moment; all the foreigners using and murdering their beautiful language and then the Brits listening and smiling and trying to understand the others. It is quite an achievement. They have my full admiration for their patience and calm. Definitely the majority of the audience preferred watching art videos and videos about my art than listening to my talk about quantum physics. (Maybe they were bored with my accent and my English!?) I wanted to talk more about thermodynamics and entropy but it was unanimously decided to watch all three videos about the Boltzmann Creatures, Betelgeuse and Mintaka instead of being educated about the laws of physics. Well, the perception of art proceeds in a completely different way than the understanding of the laws of physics. You have to force and to strain your grey cells to understand what quantum physics is all about. On the other hand it is surprising, to me at least, that we don’t try to understand the laws of physics more. As if the world we live in wasn’t extremely complicated. Just think about it for a second. Everything that surrounds us is related to one or another law of physics.
My talk was recorded. From the long video I chose the most interesting and amusing parts, from my point of view of course. Here is a short video part 1:
Filed under Art, Art and Science, Blog, Devon paintings, Fine Art, Painting, Talk, boltzmann brain, collage, devon, kasia turajczyk, live, video by
