Quantum Cello

How did it get to be the 20th? I don't understand.

So, I was going through my Radio Lab podcasts this weekend (for any of you haven't heard of Radiolab, download it through iTunes. Now. I'll wait.) and realized how amazing this show is. Their little blurb reads, "Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility."

My little blurb reads, "Radiolab takes extraordinary, fundamental ideas and assumptions and rotates everything 180 degrees. Why talk about city planning with architects when you can talk about it with ant specialists and musicians? Why not delve full-tilt into a story about letters found on the side of the road to try and understand forensics and genetics? Art, science, religion, philosophy, mathematics, life. It's all here, waiting to be discovered."

But I especially want to talk about a podcast I listened to this weekend. It's not new - in fact, it came out almost a year ago. But it's beautiful. A cellist named Zoe Keating uses computers to record herself and loops them back through so that she can literally make up an entire cello section with just one instrument. She hits and plucks and bangs the cello to create rhythm, new sounds and extraordinary music. Here is the podcast online. If you just want to listen to the music, that starts at 5:45.

I can't stop listening to these songs. Which is another topic that Radiolab delves into. You should listen to that podcast too. But Zoe Keating first. You'll never hear a cello the same way again.

Musical Minds with Oliver Sacks (whom I love!)

Hey all! A quick little posting about Oliver Sacks. He is a neurologist who is fascinated by the weird and (not-so) wonderful wirings in our brains. My new art company, Thesia Arts, was named as a derivative of Synesthesia - a condition in where your senses are mis-wired in the brain, causing you to hear colors and smell music. People like Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Franz Liszt, Tori Amos, Richard Feynman and Stevie Wonder are reported to have some variation of this disease. (I don't have time to verify if these are true or not, so if you want to do my investigating for me, start here.)

And you know who turned me on to this really creative mind disorder? Oliver Sacks. His books are like poetry to me - they're so amazing.

So, Dr. Sacks wrote this book. Musicophilia. (It's a great book. Get it.) While working with his patients, he realized that a large number of them gravitated toward music in some way. And then he became obsessed by it and how music works inside our brain. So he wrote this book. And then PBS did a special on it through NOVA. And I heard about it through a New York Times article.

So there is the progression of Musicophilia. Book. Article. TV Program. I have nothing more to say, other than: click on one of those links. Oliver Sacks has a beautiful, heartbreaking and very artistic outlook on the science of the brain.

Painting the Moon

Before I go any further - Happy 4th of July!  I'm sitting in a beautiful little cottage by Lake Ontario, far and away from the rigors of New York City.  Which couldn't be better, unless I could take off this stupid leg cast that somehow attached itself to my left leg.  Well, technically I put it there.  And will continue to put it there for three weeks until my torn ligaments in my foot heal.  But that's my latest excuse for not writing for almost two weeks.  I hope you enjoyed it!  ;)

I found this wonderful little article in the New York Times a few weeks back, and thought today would be a perfect time to bring it out.  NASA is, in my mind, one of the greatest feats in the American government and what better day to celebrate it?  Also, I love it when scientists turn artist.

This article chronicles astronaut Alan L. Bean from his days walking on the moon to his current profession as painter.  It has been almost 30 years since Bean was part of NASA, but his experiences there are what drives him to paint the moon, lunar missions, and self-portraits with the Earth in the background.  

He says, “When I left NASA, I made up my mind I was not going to be an astronaut who painted, but an artist who used to be an astronaut.”  It was a slow transition for him; he used to paint just the monochromatic colors of the moon, before slowing realizing that, “People talk about nature being beautiful, and it is, but it’s not harmonized like a painting.  If Monet painted what he saw, we wouldn’t celebrate him today. He painted a little of what he saw but then he painted mostly the way he felt about it.”  Colors are now allowed on the moon.  Beautiful blues and greens that are never actually seen there.

He still uses his scientific background, though, something I admire greatly.  According to the article, "He builds a scale model of every scene he paints, and uses a klieg light to simulate the sun and to get the shadows right. He works out the angle of the light and the positions of the people with mathematical precision. He wants the details to be historically correct."  There's a huge difference between artistic license and sloppiness, and we've allowed scientifically incorrect sloppiness in our art for too long.  How wonderful is it to know that the painting above could be re-created on the moon, should we ever be able to make it there again?

Bean's paintings can be seen at the Smithsonian in July, if you're in DC and want to check it out.  You can also see more of his work at www.alanbeangallery.com.  It's really beautiful work!

The painting above is of Gene Cernan, painted by Alan Bean.