IDEAS AT STRATFORD: THE CHALLENGE OF SCIENCE

On Saturday July 23 at the celebrated Stratford Festival in Canada, IFF director Margaret Wertheim will part of a discussion on “The Challenges of Science”. The event is part of the CBC’s Ideas at Stratford series and will be broadcast on the CBC radio program Big Ideas.

About the event:
“Science has given us great gifts, but the social consequences are less clear. We live longer and better, and we know more about ourselves, our world and the cosmos – but to what end? Massey lecturer Neil Turok, Director of Perimeter Institute, discusses the future of scientific research with Mark Kingwell, philosopher and social theorist at the University of Toronto, and Margaret Wertheim, author of a series of books that consider the role of theoretical physics in the cultural landscape of modern Western society.

Event time: July 23, 10:30am-12noon
Place: Studio Theatre, Stratford, Ontario, Canada
Stratford Festival website

IFF Director Margaret Wertheim has been awarded the 2016 Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award by the American Association of Physics Teachers. On July 18, 2016, Margaret will deliver her lecture at the AAPT’s annual meeting in Sacramento. This is the first time since 2006 the award has been given to a woman. Previous honorees include Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randal (2006), Lee Smolin (former director of the Perimeter Institute and the inventor of loop quantum gravity, an alternative to string theory) and Neil de Grasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium).

About the Klopsteg Award
Named for Paul E. Klopsteg, a former President and long-time member of AAPT, the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award recognizes outstanding communication of the excitement of contemporary physics to the general public. The recipient delivers the Klopsteg Lecture at an AAPT Summer Meeting on a topic of current significance.

Description of Margaret’s talk
Of Corals and the Cosmos: A Story of Hyperbolic Space
Throughout the natural world – in corals, cactuses and lettuce leaves – we see swooping, curving and crenelated forms. All these are biological manifestations of hyperbolic geometry, an alternative to the Euclidean geometry we learn about in school. While nature has been playing with permutations of hyperbolic space for hundreds of millions of years, humans spent centuries trying to prove that such forms were impossible. The discovery of hyperbolic geometry in the nineteenth century helped to usher in a revolution in our understanding of space, for such “non-Euclidean geometry” now underlies the general theory of relativity and thus our understanding of the universe. While physicists and astronomers are still trying to discover the geometry of the cosmos, on the Great Barrier Reef the corals making hyperbolic structures are being threatened by global warming and climate change. Bridging the domains of physics, math and culture, this multifaceted lecture will discuss the story of hyperbolic space and its resonances for how we see our world.

Origami Wall Frieze, site specific installation at MASS MoCA, North Adams MA, 2016.

EXPLODE EVERY DAY: An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Wonder 

@ MASS MoCA

Curator Denise Markonish remarks, “a true state of wonder agitates, mesmerizes, and is almost forcible and shocking. It is a sudden intake of breath, a gaping mouth a relinquishing understanding. As commonly used, ‘wonder’ is sometimes mistaken for curiosity, which centers on fact-finding and explanation. In “Explode Every Day,” viewers experience a purer state of wonder, a state poised between knowing and not knowing and defined by an experience of something truly new.”

“Explode Every Day”, co-organized by Markonish and Ohio-based artist Sean Foley, has a title inspired by writer Ray Bradbury’s remark: “You remain invested in your inner child by exploding every day. You don’t worry about the future, you don’t worry about the past—you just explode.”

Krista Tippett, Peabody Award winning host of the NPR series On Being, is doing an event in Los Angeles to celebrate the publication of her new book, Becoming Wise. The book features interviews with, and reflections on the lives and careers of people Tippett has interviewed over the years, including IFF director Margaret Wertheim.

Presented by Book Soup, the event takes place at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Thursday April 21 @ 7:30pm.

Event webpage and to book tickets:

Listen to Margaret’s On Being interview, entitled The Limits and Grandeur of Science.

Christina Simons and Jake Dotson assembling “Fractal Ruin” at the Institute For Figuring, Los Angeles, April 2016.

What can you do with business cards? You can hand them out to colleagues, or you can fold them into cubes.

What can you do with 10,000 business cards? This month the IFF set out to explore that question with 10,000 specially designed fluorescent orange cards embellished with psychedelic swirly patterns. Our inspiration is the pioneering work of Dr. Jeannine Mosely, inventor of business card origami and world-leading practitioner of fractal paper folding.

Business cards designed for the IFF by Cindy Kusuda and Margaret Wertheim.

In the late 1990’s, Mosely famously folded a level three Menger Sponge fractal out of 66,000 business cards, an object that the IFF exhibited at Machine Project in 2006. The Mosely-IFF collaboration continued in 2012 when together we undertook the construction of the more challenging Mosely Snowflake Sponge fractal out of 50,000 cards at USC. That endeavor piqued our interest: what else, besides fractals, could be created using these techniques?

Dr. Jeannine Mosely assembling octants of the “Business Card Menger Sponge” at Machine Project, Los Angeles, 2006. Exhibition curated by the IFF.

Fractals – perfectly regular geometric structures – are self-similar at every scale, thus each level of a fractal has the same architecture. The natural world abounds in fractal forms: clouds, coastlines, forked lightening, ferns and broccoli are all in this class. Yet nothing is nature is perfectly mathematical. What would happen, we wondered, if we followed this organic lead, allowing ourselves to deviate from the geometric ideal?

Detail of “Fractal Ruin” by the Institute For Figuring, revealing degenerate fractal structure.

For the past month we’ve been conducting an experiment, giving ourselves license to go wild. From the simple seeds of Mosely’s cubes we’ve been exploring the genetic potential of fractal architecture loosed into the realm of organicism. Just as living creatures evolve over time, so too our fractal monster has been evolving as it grows; changing, morphing and gradually acquiring a unique deviant glory.

Arrangement of X and Y modules in the mid-section layer of a “Mosely Snowflake Sponge Business Card Origami Fractal Tower” (drawing by Margaret Wertheim).

The resulting object, a Fractal Ruin, will be exhibited at MASS MoCA in the forthcoming exhibition Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomemon of Wonder, opening May 28, 2016.

Also in the exhibition will be a business card origami wall frieze that we’ll grow on-site on the gallery walls.

“Fractal Ruin” sculpture in process at the Institute For Figuring, April 2016.

Fractal Ruin by Margaret Wertheim and the Institute For Figuring has been constructed with design assistance from Christine Wertheim. Folded by Christina Simons, Jake Dotson and Margaret Wertheim.

Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Wonder is co-organized for MASS MoCA by curator Denise Markonish and artist Sean Foley.

Artists in the exhibition include: Pierre Huyghe, Fred Tomaselli, Michael Light, Nina Katchadourian, Tom Friedman, Tristan Duke, Ryan and Trevor Oakes, and the Institute For Figuring.

Nearly complete “Fractal Ruin” at the Institute For Figuring, Los Angeles, April 2016.