Slow Light Shadow Matter

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Slow Light Shadow Matter is a long-term project comprising thirteen short (about four minutes each) computer generated videos (like a book, I refer to them as chapters). Each video is a triptych with a square in the center and two narrow vertical panels on each side. The title refers to two concepts from physics. In 1999 scientists “used a new state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate … to bring light down to the speed of a bicycle and then later to a dead halt.” This is called slow light. Shadow matter refers to a hypothetical material “that interacts with ordinary matter, only by gravity, which means hardly at all.” As of this writing six have been completed. Each video is a collage consisting of a large number of animated 3D components, video, texts, music, and voice composited together into an intentionally dense visual and aural experience. The components are taken from physics, biology, alchemy, and mythology. However, each chapter is additionally inspired by a pairing of an artist and scientist that were/are roughly contemporaries. The pair, in turn, guide the aesthetics and design decisions of each chapter at the same time as the many individual components are reused in different ways and visual formulations. Think of how jazz musicians reimagine identical songs in distinctly variable ways. In fact, the voiceover of these videos recounts a somewhat fictionalized biography based on that of jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. In addition, the musical soundtrack has been created by internationally acclaimed free-improv composer and musician Thollem.

The scientists are almost all physicists who have worked with some aspect of electromagnetic or quantum theory. There are three dissimilar scientists who represent a sub-theme of biology. The work of the artists usually relate to light and/or color. Here too divergent members are included in order to develop other ideas. The connections that are drawn between these historical figures are entirely aesthetic and intuitive.

The scientist/artist pairs are listed here (completed chapters can be seen by clicking titles below):

Prologue (El Greco) (complete)

Isaac Newton/Jan Vermeer (completed, titled Subtil Spirit of Light)
Michael Faraday/William Turner (completed, titled All Poets Are Liars)
James Clerk Maxwell/Claude Monet

Rosalind Franklin/Richard Long

Ernest Rutherford/Paul Cezanne
Niels Bohr/Wassily Kandinsky
David Bohm/Richard Pousette-Dart (completed, titled Time is the Mind of Space)

Albert Hofmann/Pierre Soulages (completed, titled Reality, Another Country)

John S. Bell/Jasper Johns (completed, titled The Mind Makes Measurements)
John Archibald Wheeler/Agnes Martin
Murray Gell-Mann/Jack Whitten

James Lovelock/Ana Mendieta

Learn more about the artist, Dennis Summers, here.