Communion Of Dreams

I love it! Via Phil Plait and MeFi, a lovely piece of artwork of the video variety: Magnetic Movie. From their site:

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries . Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

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In Magnetic Movie, Semiconductor have taken the magnificent scientific visualisations of the sun and solar winds conducted at the Space Sciences Laboratory and Semiconducted them. Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt of Semiconductor were artists-in-residence at SSL. Combining their in-house lab culture experience with formidable artistic instincts in sound, animation and programming, they have created a magnetic magnum opus in nuce, a tour de force of a massive invisible force brought down to human scale, and a “very most beautiful thing.”

OK, first thing – this is art. Not science. Get that straight. Don’t get hung up on the idea that this is some kind of literal visualization of magnetic force lines as they actually exist. Just enjoy it for what it is – an artistic interpretation of some scientific ideas; a way for those of us who are not scientists to appreciate somewhat better what beauty there is in the universe around us.

Sorry if I sound a bit defensive on this – but read the comments at the BA Blog and at MeFi, and you’ll see that many people just don’t ‘get’ artistic approaches to understanding science.  I ran into this problem with my Paint the Moon project (though many scientists, including Phil Plait, “got” what I was trying to accomplish and enjoyed it for what it was).

Anyway, it is a delightful movie – the representation of magnetic force lines and their behaviour is loosely tied to the sound track of actual scientists discussing how such force lines effect the surface of the sun, our auroras, and more.  As with any work of sophisticated art, it takes a couple of viewings and some consideration to appreciate fully what the artists have done (or were trying to do).  But hey, it’s a Friday, so watch it a couple of times and enjoy.

Jim Downey