Art Meets Physics

Catalog description

Art (in its broadest sense, including visual arts, literature, and various types of performance) is meeting science all around us. These interactions go well beyond the use of science as raw material by artists. The advancements in science lead to dramatic changes in our perception of the world clearly reflected in artists’ creations. Just as religious and mythological sources had influenced art before and during the Renaissance, artists are now being moved by the need to capture the complexities and mysteries of the physical universe. In many ways, science and art are profoundly similar. The best of each rises up from the depths of human creativity, in both the arts and science there’s the need for inspiration and hard work, the willingness to experiment and be brave, and the conviction that you are searching for or creating work that says something meaningful about the world or nature. In this course, we will discuss the mutual influence of arts and science (particularly physics) using examples from different art forms and historic periods. The course includes trips to New Orleans Museum of Arts and Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO-Livingston).