Tuesday, December 27, 2005

A Light in Winter - Einstein, NASA's artist, & more



Ithaca, New York, the home of Cornell University, is staging the Light in Winter festival, a three day cultural festival with a strong science component. Most likely theoretical booms only at this event, but you never know. The highlight ( from a whoosh, splat, and boom perspective) would have to be the staging of Tom Schuch's play about Albert Einstein.

From the Light in Winter festival website:

Einstein: A Stage Portrait was voted Critics Choice, and received awards for writing,directing, and acting. The play brings to life the brilliant, dedicated, and sometimes controversial theoretical physicist, “a much too famous man whose reputation grew so out of proportion.” The setting is 1946, the bomb has dropped, the world has forever changed, and Einstein has invited the audience over to his home to “set the record straight.”

The other activity that piques interest is the performance of the Laurie Anderson (pictured above) work, The End of the Moon. This is a work featuring music for violin and electronics. What seems interesting is that Laurie Anderson is billed as NASA's first "artist in residence." I'm not sure what that means.

Also, Mario Livio, a senior astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University, will discuss his new book, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved. He is billed as "brilliant at discussing science and mathematics in a clear, simple way to show how they relate to our everyday world."

If you attend, please send me an event report, they are always welcome.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Regarding your bewilderment about what it means to be NASA's "artist in residence," apparently Laurie Anderson felt the same way when they offered her the position. We saw her "End of the Moon" solo performance a few months ago and it was great -- she received a standing ovation from the audience. She seems able to bridge arts and science without diminishing either. Incidentally, in addition to being NASA's first artist in residence, she said she is also the last.