Smooth Structures
06 Nov - 30 Dec 2010
SMOOTH STRUCTURES
6 November - 30 December, 2010
“An exotic smooth structure is, roughly speaking, a smooth structure on a topological manifold X which makes the resulting smooth manifold be non-diffeomorphic to the smooth manifold given by some evident ‘standard’ smooth structure on X”.
Smooth Structures is an international group exhibition developed by the Rotterdam based artist collective, Enough Room for Space (ERforS)1 in association with SMART Project Space. The exhibition explores the unexpected intersections between a new dark matter and dark energy hypothesis and its conceptual visualization mediated through art.
Scientists weave incredible stories, invent wild hypothesis and ask difficult questions about the meaning of life. They have insights into the workings of our bodies, minds and environment which challenge the myths we make about our identities and selves. They create visual images and models and of things that are ethically and politically controversial. A great deal of contemporary art requires a similar facility for the making of unusual connections or unpredictable juxtapositions between disparate objects and concepts, a strong sense of paradox, irony, of humour or a way with manipulating the unexpected twists and turns of narrative.
The mathematician Martin Lo, who discovered the Interplanetary Superhighway2, a revolutionary model which changed space travel forever, is currently researching the “Brans’Conjecture” theory with several other scientists. A meeting with Martin Lo for the first time in 2006, whilst on residency at the MSA^ Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles, was very influential for the development and future functioning of the organization Enough Room for Space. Lo invited ERforS to create a visualization of this new hypothesis. Its links with other worldliness suggest underlying meanings beyond the merely visual or verbal and confronts us with the idea of the sublime, though not a simple wonder at the overwhelming beauty of an endless darkness and search for truth, but a desire to control and own it indicative of our confident expansion into space and the persistent need to colonise.
As most astronomers agree, the universe is made from three parts: normal matterenergy, dark matter and dark energy. Normal matter consists of atoms, which form the building stones to stars, planets, human beings and all other things visible in the universe. The exact definition of dark matter and dark energy still remains an unresolved problem for scientists all over the world. Its existence was discovered by Fritz Zwicky in 1933. Its presence is necessary in order to explain various cosmological phenomena. In the concordance-model, which is generally accepted by science and frequently used to describe the universe, 74% of its contents is made from dark energy, for 22% dark matter and 4% is normal matter-energy.
Although there is much scientific research on dark matter and dark energy - for example, the Large Hadron Collider and the NASA Joint Dark Energy Mission - such hypothesis attempt to define actual dark matter, as a substance which can be categorised under the atomic law of physics. The “Brans’ Conjecture” theory however departs from the idea that dark matter is no matter at all, but rather a different way in which reality presents itself. It is created by a topological phenomenon of space time, called exotic
smoothness. In our world (everything we can see around us), an object has one kind of smoothness. In another region of space time or in a different dimension, an object can have multiple kinds of smoothness (exotic) and can appear to have extra forces, embodied by dark matter and dark energy. Nothing new is added, it just appears in a different way. Since the presence and effect of dark matter can only be seen in the 4th dimension and those beyond, the hypothesis introduces a rather simple change in perception, comparable to changing glasses. Some glasses for example, allow you to see objects and people and other glasses allow you to see heat or electrical waves. If we could only develop the right kind of glasses, we could see dark matter and dark energy.
In relation to the “Brans’ Conjecture” theory, artists were invited to create new works for the exhibition Smooth Structures. Since the theory is hypothetical in nature and with many tangents, it was left open for the artists themselves to discern how they would visualise dark matter or dark energy. In order to work with this very abstract given (that 96% of the universe is not accounted for) the artists tackle the problem in a myriad of ways, developing alternative glasses through which one could look at the world or by making them so big that other phenomena became part of the equation.
To put it in theological terms “though art does not belong to the order of revelation” as expressed by Emmanuel Levinas in 1948 3, the arts can help communicate through visualizing, abstracting, storytelling, representing and ceaseless reinterpretation in their own terms, as well as those in science as indications of human achievement and communication as rational discourse and the presentation of empirical evidence, and we can and should accommodate both forms of knowledge.
1 Enough Room for Space (ERforS) is an artist-run organization with a number of aims; to provide a working space for artists alongside the established institutions; to explore critical positions for contemporary art in society; to create room for unexpected relations between official bodies and people working on location; to create a platform where investigations by individual participants in projects can overlap and lead to new collaborations. ERforS tries to act as freely as possible, always putting the context and the idea before the medium, challenging the barriers between different disciplines (artistic, scientific or activist).
2 The Interplanetary Superhighway is a collection of mathematically defined pathways (energy lanes) through the solar system that allows an object or spacecraft to move much faster without using additional fuel or impulse. These energy lanes are the connections between the L-points (named after Lagrange) that are situated around every planet. About five points surrounding each planet mark a tiny zero-gravitation point where a stationed object is equally drawn towards all surrounding planets, creating an absolute standstill. In a similar way Enough Room for Space (ERforS) uses existing relations between different entities (organisation, people and locations) as energy lanes in order to move around the world. ERforS stimulates the connections between different entities and organisations to create temporary L- points through mutual collaboration: a moment of concentration and focus on a certain area or topic. This enables ERforS to organise projects using combined energy and create unusual and non-existing connections between existing organisations and institutions.
3 In 1948, Emmanuel Levinas published an essay in Sartre’s journal Les Temps Modernes, “Reality and
its shadow,” where he made the provocative argument that “Art does not know a particular type of reality; it contrasts with knowledge. It is the very event of obscuring, a descent of the night, an invasion of shadow. To put it in theological terms . . . art does not belong to the order of revelation. Nor does it belong to that of creation, which moves in just the opposite direction.” Because art, for Levinas, is essentially “disengaged” from the world and real being, and also places its objects and subjects into the “non-dialectical fixity” of instants of immobile time (what Levinas termed “the intervals of the meanwhile”), art constitutes a “dimension of evasion.” The artist “exiles himself from the city,” and there is finally “something wicked and egoist and cowardly in artistic enjoyment. There are times when one can be ashamed of it, as of feasting during a plague. Levinas’s argument poses a great challenge to those of us who might want to argue for the ethical value, not only of art itself, but also of artistic criticism. This is not to say that Levinas perceived no value in art whatsoever. On the contrary, he believed that art’s value lay precisely in its status as myth: the immobile statue has to be put into movement and made to speak. Such an enterprise is not the same thing as a simple reconstruction of the original from the copy. Philosophical exegesis will measure the distance that separates myth from real being, and will become conscious of the creative event itself, an event which eludes cognition, which goes from being to being by skipping over theintervals of the meanwhile. In other words, through critical interpretation, the artwork can escape the death of the “eternal instant,” because “criticism . . . integrates the inhuman work of the artist into the human world.”
6 November - 30 December, 2010
“An exotic smooth structure is, roughly speaking, a smooth structure on a topological manifold X which makes the resulting smooth manifold be non-diffeomorphic to the smooth manifold given by some evident ‘standard’ smooth structure on X”.
Smooth Structures is an international group exhibition developed by the Rotterdam based artist collective, Enough Room for Space (ERforS)1 in association with SMART Project Space. The exhibition explores the unexpected intersections between a new dark matter and dark energy hypothesis and its conceptual visualization mediated through art.
Scientists weave incredible stories, invent wild hypothesis and ask difficult questions about the meaning of life. They have insights into the workings of our bodies, minds and environment which challenge the myths we make about our identities and selves. They create visual images and models and of things that are ethically and politically controversial. A great deal of contemporary art requires a similar facility for the making of unusual connections or unpredictable juxtapositions between disparate objects and concepts, a strong sense of paradox, irony, of humour or a way with manipulating the unexpected twists and turns of narrative.
The mathematician Martin Lo, who discovered the Interplanetary Superhighway2, a revolutionary model which changed space travel forever, is currently researching the “Brans’Conjecture” theory with several other scientists. A meeting with Martin Lo for the first time in 2006, whilst on residency at the MSA^ Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles, was very influential for the development and future functioning of the organization Enough Room for Space. Lo invited ERforS to create a visualization of this new hypothesis. Its links with other worldliness suggest underlying meanings beyond the merely visual or verbal and confronts us with the idea of the sublime, though not a simple wonder at the overwhelming beauty of an endless darkness and search for truth, but a desire to control and own it indicative of our confident expansion into space and the persistent need to colonise.
As most astronomers agree, the universe is made from three parts: normal matterenergy, dark matter and dark energy. Normal matter consists of atoms, which form the building stones to stars, planets, human beings and all other things visible in the universe. The exact definition of dark matter and dark energy still remains an unresolved problem for scientists all over the world. Its existence was discovered by Fritz Zwicky in 1933. Its presence is necessary in order to explain various cosmological phenomena. In the concordance-model, which is generally accepted by science and frequently used to describe the universe, 74% of its contents is made from dark energy, for 22% dark matter and 4% is normal matter-energy.
Although there is much scientific research on dark matter and dark energy - for example, the Large Hadron Collider and the NASA Joint Dark Energy Mission - such hypothesis attempt to define actual dark matter, as a substance which can be categorised under the atomic law of physics. The “Brans’ Conjecture” theory however departs from the idea that dark matter is no matter at all, but rather a different way in which reality presents itself. It is created by a topological phenomenon of space time, called exotic
smoothness. In our world (everything we can see around us), an object has one kind of smoothness. In another region of space time or in a different dimension, an object can have multiple kinds of smoothness (exotic) and can appear to have extra forces, embodied by dark matter and dark energy. Nothing new is added, it just appears in a different way. Since the presence and effect of dark matter can only be seen in the 4th dimension and those beyond, the hypothesis introduces a rather simple change in perception, comparable to changing glasses. Some glasses for example, allow you to see objects and people and other glasses allow you to see heat or electrical waves. If we could only develop the right kind of glasses, we could see dark matter and dark energy.
In relation to the “Brans’ Conjecture” theory, artists were invited to create new works for the exhibition Smooth Structures. Since the theory is hypothetical in nature and with many tangents, it was left open for the artists themselves to discern how they would visualise dark matter or dark energy. In order to work with this very abstract given (that 96% of the universe is not accounted for) the artists tackle the problem in a myriad of ways, developing alternative glasses through which one could look at the world or by making them so big that other phenomena became part of the equation.
To put it in theological terms “though art does not belong to the order of revelation” as expressed by Emmanuel Levinas in 1948 3, the arts can help communicate through visualizing, abstracting, storytelling, representing and ceaseless reinterpretation in their own terms, as well as those in science as indications of human achievement and communication as rational discourse and the presentation of empirical evidence, and we can and should accommodate both forms of knowledge.
1 Enough Room for Space (ERforS) is an artist-run organization with a number of aims; to provide a working space for artists alongside the established institutions; to explore critical positions for contemporary art in society; to create room for unexpected relations between official bodies and people working on location; to create a platform where investigations by individual participants in projects can overlap and lead to new collaborations. ERforS tries to act as freely as possible, always putting the context and the idea before the medium, challenging the barriers between different disciplines (artistic, scientific or activist).
2 The Interplanetary Superhighway is a collection of mathematically defined pathways (energy lanes) through the solar system that allows an object or spacecraft to move much faster without using additional fuel or impulse. These energy lanes are the connections between the L-points (named after Lagrange) that are situated around every planet. About five points surrounding each planet mark a tiny zero-gravitation point where a stationed object is equally drawn towards all surrounding planets, creating an absolute standstill. In a similar way Enough Room for Space (ERforS) uses existing relations between different entities (organisation, people and locations) as energy lanes in order to move around the world. ERforS stimulates the connections between different entities and organisations to create temporary L- points through mutual collaboration: a moment of concentration and focus on a certain area or topic. This enables ERforS to organise projects using combined energy and create unusual and non-existing connections between existing organisations and institutions.
3 In 1948, Emmanuel Levinas published an essay in Sartre’s journal Les Temps Modernes, “Reality and
its shadow,” where he made the provocative argument that “Art does not know a particular type of reality; it contrasts with knowledge. It is the very event of obscuring, a descent of the night, an invasion of shadow. To put it in theological terms . . . art does not belong to the order of revelation. Nor does it belong to that of creation, which moves in just the opposite direction.” Because art, for Levinas, is essentially “disengaged” from the world and real being, and also places its objects and subjects into the “non-dialectical fixity” of instants of immobile time (what Levinas termed “the intervals of the meanwhile”), art constitutes a “dimension of evasion.” The artist “exiles himself from the city,” and there is finally “something wicked and egoist and cowardly in artistic enjoyment. There are times when one can be ashamed of it, as of feasting during a plague. Levinas’s argument poses a great challenge to those of us who might want to argue for the ethical value, not only of art itself, but also of artistic criticism. This is not to say that Levinas perceived no value in art whatsoever. On the contrary, he believed that art’s value lay precisely in its status as myth: the immobile statue has to be put into movement and made to speak. Such an enterprise is not the same thing as a simple reconstruction of the original from the copy. Philosophical exegesis will measure the distance that separates myth from real being, and will become conscious of the creative event itself, an event which eludes cognition, which goes from being to being by skipping over theintervals of the meanwhile. In other words, through critical interpretation, the artwork can escape the death of the “eternal instant,” because “criticism . . . integrates the inhuman work of the artist into the human world.”