“David Bohm once said that our present language stresses the separation between objects and their independence. He later came to see the world as wholeness and process.” F. David Peat, essay “David Bohm, Paul Cezanne and Creativity,” www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/essays.htm
After working for several years as an art teacher in the public school system where the arts were marginalized and eventually eliminated, I was determined to better understand the physiological need for art and the dynamic ways art connected to all living systems. The more art was discouraged from the educational system, the deeper my questions about it became.
My own artistic process while painting began to guide my teaching in new expanded ways. I began the research, study and practice of art by reading my own images as a topographical structure like a map. And as a result, I began to design curriculum this way as well.
Art may be a fundamental structure of recycled matter in new spatial measurements. It may reflect active processes of things we can and cannot see such as subatomic particles and cosmic arrangements. I want to identify typical and distinctive marks and patterns that visually link to our pre-biotic history and all living processes. This purpose first led me to view my work through the lens of a quantum complex living system.
Quantum, in physics, is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction, as light, on the quantum level is measured or described in terms of photons. Quantum information is still active in the here and now; it is in our cells and all substance that we can identify. The information sought as quantum depends on the form of the object and the structure that we use as a guide. For example, we may seek quantum information using a numerical paradigm. Viewing my painting as a non-linear visual process of emergence, I explore the structure of my painting’s images through a quantum system in living systems.
This process is a long-term effort to create a holistic language proving that art is a living system necessary for humanity.
Brian Greene
STRING THEORY
Professor Brian Greene is the co-founder and director of Columbia’s Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a research center seeking string theory’s implications for theories of cosmology. www.briangreene.org
String Theory describes nature’s four forces (electromagnetism, gravity, weak force and strong force) and all the manifestations of matter and energy, which carry them, by understanding a measurable thread of vibrating strings. String theory unifies general relativity which describes gravity as a force that provides a framework for understanding the universe on the largest scale of stars, galaxies and beyond with quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics provides a framework for understanding electromagnetism as a force of the oldest universe on the smallest scale of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles, such as electrons and quarks. Theorist Brian Greene proposes that general relativity and quantum mechanics unify to form a single set of mathematical expressions, following string theory.
I am researching these ideas with my paintings in a tutorial relationship with string theorist Brian Greene focusing on the following questions:
a. Can vibrating strings be captured in expressions other than mathematics?
b. Can we as creators manifest the various vibrational string patterns in the form of art?
c. Do strings exist in my paintings and, if so, what is their significance?
Stephen C. Harrison
PROTEIN STRUCTURE
Harvard Medical School / Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Stephen C. Harrison: The Laboratory of Structural Cell Biology
Stephen Harrison has made important contributions to structural biology, most notably by determining and analyzing the structures of viruses and viral proteins, by crystallographic analysis of protein/DNA complexes, and by structural studies of protein-kinase switching mechanisms.
Proteins are biological macromolecules present in all biological organisms, made up of elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur. In order to understand the functions of proteins at a molecular level, it is often necessary to determine the three dimensional structure of proteins. This is the topic of the scientific field Structural Biology which employs techniques such as X-ray crystallography Protein spectroscopy, in order to determine the structure of proteins.
Stephen Harrison’s recently initiated long-term project is an effort to work out the molecular organization of a kinetochore – the assembly that links the centromeric DNA of a chromosome to the microtubules of the mitotic spindle. He plans to use x-ray crystallography and electron microscopy to determine three-dimensional structures for these sub complexes and ultimately to reconstruct how they form a functional kinetochore.
My conversations with Stephen Harrison on his current research explores whether there is a genuine link between protein structures and art in two ways:
1. The three dimensional visual organization in patterns which could be read like a crystal.
2. Functional outcome of DNA expressed as art.
Nadrian Seeman
DNA
Nadrian Seeman Department of Chemistry New York University
He obtained his first independent position at SUNY/Albany, where his frustrations with the macromolecular crystallization experiment led him to the campus pub one day in the fall of 1980. There, he realized the similarity between 6-arm DNA branched junctions and the flying fish in the periodic array of Escher’s ‘Depth’ might lead to a rational approach to the organization of matter on the nanometer scale, particularly crystallization. Ever since, he has been trying to implement this approach and its spin-offs, such as nanorobotics and the organization of nanoelectronics; since 1988 he has worked at New York University. When told in the mid-1980’s that he was doing nanotechnology, his response was similar to that of M. Jourdain, the title character of Moliere’s Bourgeois Gentilehomme, who was delighted to discover he had been speaking prose all his life. He has published over 240 papers, and has won the Sidhu Award, the Feynman Prize, the Emerging Technologies Award, the Tulip Award in DNA Computing and the World Technology Network Award in Biotechnology, the Nichols Medal, and the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience in 2010.
Ned Seeman’s laboratory is investigating DNA molecules with unusual motifs and topologies. These include: branched molecules, knots and catenanes. Branched molecules specifically are intermediates in the process of genetic recombination, and the laboratory aims to characterize the structure, dynamics and thermodynamics of these unusual molecules, and the relationship between their structure and their biological function.
My conversations with Nadrian Seeman focus on the dynamics of forming structures and the biological function of making them. Within these dialogues I am looking for possible links between the characteristics of the teachings of our DNA passed on in and human beings. More specifically I am exploring living processes by painting.
We are viewing art as a molecular form of matter exploring a possible relationship between their structure and their biological function with the following questions:
a. How have historical techniques and tools used for microscopy, such as of x-ray Crystallography, Nanotechnology, Electron microscope, influenced how we see?
b. Are the shapes and composition of DNA structures mimicked in art?
c. How are time scales formed?
d. Has DNA always been part of the small to large in the universe?
F. David Peat
F. David Peat is a holistic physicist and author who has carried out research in solid state physics and the foundation of quantum theory. David founded The Pari Center for New Learning with Maureen Doolan. The Center is dedicated to education, learning and research. It fosters an interdisciplinary approach linking science, the arts, ethics and spirituality. It’s philosophy and approach is also that of Gentle Action.
Gentle Action proposes a very different way of looking at the world and one in which an action flows from the whole of a situation rather than being imposed from outside. For many years Peat was associated with physicist and philosopher David Bohm; the two wrote the book: Science, Order, and Creativity together, and Peat later wrote Bohm’s biography, Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm. In the context of this biography, Peat emphasized how Bohm had worked intensely on finding a mathematical expression for his vision of an interconnected, enfolded implicate order, from which an explicate order, the world of classical physics unfolds. Bohm also aimed at re-introducing time as a dynamic entity.
Dr. Peat’s interests expand to include psychology, particularly that of Carl Jung, art and general aspects of culture, including those of Native America. Peat is the author of many books including the biography of David Bohm, with whom Peat collaborated, books on quantum theory and chaos theory, as well as a study of Synchronicity, in addition to numerous essays on these topics.
Research with F. David Peat – “Non-linear systems are the rule rather than the exception in nature and their behavior is rich and varied. The problem lies in our inadequate perception of the world and our lack of any proper relationship to nature. This has become entrenched in our institutions, social values and policies. The world is an organic, living thing, flexible and ever changing yet the institutions we have created to deal with it are rigid and insensitive. What is needed is something radically different that is at least as subtle as the issues and natural systems we face.” F. David Peat.
My work with F. David Peat in Pari Tuscany, with the idea of “Gentle Action” took place in the forms of dialogue, group discussion with visiting scholars and artists, and a collaboration between us under the overall theme of “Emergentology” the process of coming into being. We viewed Painting as a non-linear process; an action of continual transformation a re-organization of dynamics of the small to large, invisible to visible. Painting is a visual process of emergence.
We worked with the following themes while observing my paintings. We approached living systems processes mirroring the physical participation of motion in making art and the theoretical layers of the open system, non-linear process.
DISCUSSION
These four world views of motion Western and Indigenous Science, Consciousness and Motion, Molecular Motion, Adaptation and Motion and their relationship to art.
1. Its organizational relationship to equilibrium.
2. Pattern and its possible past resonance of imagery and light from the small to large.
3. Form in relationship to geometry: how we measure and have measured temporal space.
4. Do solids emerge from momenta or the amount of mass moving?
5. Does motion emerge from solids?
6. Do solids exist on one or more than one plane?
7. Does momenta pass through solids or do they reduce in force, value, amount?
8. What happens when an irresistible force encounters an unmovable object?
9. What gives art its processes and shape?
10. If humans are somewhere in the middle of the age of the universe then what does our cellular memory hold?
11. Does our proto-matter reveal itself in what we make?
12. Can the past exist in a new form presenting itself in art?
Jose Cedillos
Jose Cedillos brings 20 years of teaching Interdisciplinary Studies at the doctoral level to the practice of using art-based concepts in the design and conduct of qualitative research. He uses alla prima creativity in residential seminars to provide “hands-on” experience in aesthetic and visual thinking applicable to the conceptualization and analysis of research data. Teaching graduate students how to recognize creative dynamics for linking diverse knowledge structures, he developed a stepped typology of six designs of interdisciplinary creativity. Dr. Cedillos also maintains a website WWW.TheBricolageWorks.US featuring both my visual and written work.
Jason Blonstein Science Education
jb185@nyu.edu
Urban Master Teacher of Science Education
NYU/Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
Former Co-Founder & Co-Director, Cascades High School, a New Visions school. Teacher of the Year, NYC Alternative High Schools and Programs. Co-Founder, Alternative High Schools and Programs Professional Development Committee. Thirty three years in NYC High Schools and Middle Schools as teacher of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, created courses in Astronomy and Cosmology, Kitchen Chemistry, Microbiology, Physical Foundations of the Living Environment.
Ten years as Urban Master Teacher at NYU/Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Courses in Methods in Teaching Science MS/HS, Recent Advances in Chemistry, Recent Advances in Physics, Student Teaching Seminar, Evaluating Educational Programs. Research in Self Evaluation, Co-teaching, and Evaluating Teacher Quality (DRSTOS-R development and implementation), CRISP (Clinically Rich Integrated Science Program), Mexico Science Curriculum Study.
My work with Jason Blonstein as a Urban Master Teacher of Science Education examines the practice and design of pedagogical holistic learning models. The model follows the ethics of deep ecology, coined by Arne Naess, modeling a world- view of seeing the universe as whole rather than in parts. This learning process will be a gradual overview of the integral existence between our connections to everything living and abiotic in ongoing processes of nature. We will build with a team of teachers in the fields of Painting, Sculpture, Writing, Science and Photography.
I am researching Holistic Educational models in a tutorial relationship with Jason Blonstein focusing on the following questions:
Is creativity the highest standard?
How do we know if we are a good human being, a truthful one, a beautiful one?
How can we know when we become human?
How do we make that judgment?
Does creative capacity, our urge to create art, whatever it means (renderings of ourselves, our environment, our imagination) have anything to do with our judgment?
Can we go back further, in history to discover when and how our planet came to be; when and how life began?
Can our art illuminate that judgment for us?
Can we go further back and uncover the very beginnings of everything, the very matter and energy that some believe to be everything, follow it’s development into the elements of matter we understand, and the manifestations of energy that we sense?
Will our art guide us here, before we arose, before humans, before life, before earth and our sun, before?
Can we understand the time and space we occupy now, their history, and their future?
Can our imaginations join our sense of reason to find truth, beauty, and goodness in our universe?