In the Washington Post, IFF director Margaret Wertheim has an essay on outsider physics, inspired by Ren Weschler’s enchanting new book Waves Passing in the Night about Walter Murch, the legendary Hollywood film-and-sound editor who has his own cosmological theory. Here she draws parallels with outsider art.

Wertheim coined the term “outsider science” in her 2011 book Physics on the Fringe, a sociological study of the mavericks who invent alternative theories of the universe in their backyards and basements. In 2012, she curated an exhibition about this work at the IFF’s former exhibition-space in Los Angeles, celebrating the theories of her book’s hero James Carter, the Hieronymus Bosch of the field. At the IFF we salute Jim and his magical vision of the world.

Details of the Periodic Table, as described by James Carter’s theory of “Circlon Synchronicity.”