Art and Science and Giants

It's all over the nerd blogophere: Today They Might Be Giants (TMBG) released a new album, aimed at kids, full of catchy tunes about science and technology.  Like their theme song to the Big Band Theory sitcom on CBS, the songs are awesome.  I've ordered the album* and was excited to find (via amazon, I haven't received the CD yet) that every song comes with a beautifully animated video. There are several videos from the album available on the web, for example here at Skepchick.  I think the following is the most interestingly animated although it has less science content than the others I've seen.





My other favorite video features paleontologists as rock stars, because to kids they are rock stars.  What kid doesn't want to be one?!? 

My one complaint about the four videos I've seen is that the scientists or future scientists are portrayed by only white guys.  The drivers in the above video are diverse but they aren't designing the cars, they are just driving them. There are six other videos so I'm reserving judgment about the album's depiction of scientists until I see the others. 

In somewhat tenuously related news, the CERN Bulletin is reporting that the laboratory would like to setup an International Artist in Residence program whereby artists of any stripe would be awarded access to CERN, its experiments and its physicists.  In return the artist would share his or her work and interact with the community.  The article is vague on details, but it sounds like it could be a an interesting program. 

Particle physics, and to a certain extent cosmology, requires us to imagine spaces where our everyday experience leaves us no intuition, where the scales involved defy analogy to familiar relationships, and where the fundamental constituents are at once ephemeral and timeless.  I'd guess that artists are drawn to the imagination the field requires and, in my limited and biased experience, it seems to be the case.  I have read quite a few times about artists who have taken either the experiments or the physics as subjects.  I posted one image previously and the video below belongs to this story




ANGEL OF THE HIGGS BOSON from josef Kristofoletti on Vimeo.
ps: I'm going to Charleston in May and looking forward to seeing it in person!

A Berkeley resident, completely unconnected with LBL or the University, read about the Atlas experiment and was inspired to make several paintings of the detector which she presented to us at a group meeting.  She stayed for the whole meeting, and her painting stayed with us for several months (I think we got the better end of the deal).    

This post seems to need a conclusion, but my brain is a little tired today and can't quite pull it together. However, it should go along these lines: Mixing art and science is good.  Imagination ties the the two together.  Artists can help us scientists translate our work for the general public....or something like that. 

Personally, I can't wait for an interpretive dance representing the triumphs and inadequacies of the Standard Model.  It has got to come out of the artist in residence program.  

*You can buy the album with the videos on iTunes.  I have a general policy that if I'm going to buy an album, I'm actually going to buy the album, plastic, cover art and all, so I have to wait for the CD.