Inspired by Speiser and Weyl’s popularisations of group theory, Swiss Concrete artists created works with striking symmetry by establishing basic aesthetic building blocks – units of form and colour – and arranging them using rules that preserve proportion and balance. (9 × 45 cm) ea., secured with magnets unto iron over a base of black Plexiglas, 39 3/8 × 39 3/8 in. Synthetic resin paints on 12 Plexiglas panels, 3 1/2 × 17 3/4 in. Karl Gerstner, Aperspective 1: The Endless Spiral of a Right Angle, 1952–56. In the language of group theory, the body has twofold rotational symmetry about one axis. If the person does a half turn (180 degrees) and then a full turn (360 degrees), the body’s silhouette does not change in these two positions because it has left-right (or ‘mirror’) symmetry. For example, imagine drawing a line down the centre of a person from head to toe, dividing the body into left and right sides. They used the mathematics of group theory to describe symmetry, which is the property of remaining unchanged when certain operations are carried out. Zurich was a place where physicists and mathematicians, including Einstein, Andreas Speiser and Hermann Weyl, gathered to give a unified description of the forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. Gerstner’s work is in the tradition of Swiss Concrete Art, which was founded in Zurich in the 1930s and ’40s by Max Bill, Camille Graeser, Richard Paul Lohse and Verena Loewensberg. Karl Gerstner, a young artist in the 1950s and a leader of this new movement, expressed the impossibility of a single human point of view in the artwork Aperspective: 12 black and white units fixed to magnets, which can be repositioned endlessly within a fixed framework – like light moving through Einstein’s cosmos as a bounded infinity. They’d learned of Einstein’s cosmology from popularisations such as Einstein’s own Relativity: The Special and General Theory, A Popular Exposition (1917). These discoveries found widespread application, even inspiring some artists to create iconic expressions of nature’s symmetry in their art. Scientists further confirmed that the laws of nature, such as the force of gravity and the speed of light, are symmetrical in the sense that they apply equally throughout the Universe. Collection of Esther Grether, Basel, Switzerland Karl Gerstner, Color Spiral Icon 圆5b, 2008. He soon developed the general theory of relativity to give an accurate description of the cosmos from any frame of reference. In 1905, Albert Einstein discovered the symmetry of mass and energy – mass can be converted into energy and vice versa ( E = mc 2). In the 19th century, scientists looked through microscopes and saw that nature’s building blocks (cells, crystals) are arranged in symmetrical patterns and come in left-right pairs. Since antiquity, naturalists have observed bilateral symmetry in plants and animals, as well as symmetrical hexagons in ice and snow. Art, science, and social justice are interlinked in my work.One of the most profound insights of modern science is that nature has a symmetrical structure. “I am interested in enriching the narrative we tell about physics. Physics often alienates people, she continues. “When you are in front of a painting or a sculpture, there are no right or wrong answers, so people can feel more comfortable opening up,” says Mócsy, who previously worked in heavy-ion theory at Brookhaven National Laboratory and now focuses on physics education with an emphasis on the intersection of physics and the arts. And comparing artworks from Eastern and Western cultures elucidates different senses of space and time. Sculptures can be used to talk about mass and space, and from there general relativity. Jackson Pollock’s paintings suggest momentum and energy and fluid dynamics. For her, Joseph Stella’s paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge invite a discussion about the Doppler effect. Ágnes Mócsy is a professor of physics and astronomy at the Pratt Institute, a school in Brooklyn, New York, that emphasizes art, design, and architecture.
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