Peter Steinberg

Eyes and Ears (and Plants)

Yes it's true: so much is happening that I'm falling behind.  Without writing about it, I've been writing, editing and submitting various physics papers, coordinating my colleagues taking apart PHOBOS, and preparing for my future.  But it doesn't mean I can't try and keep up.

So last night I managed to see an amazing event: the 2nd Annual Benefit Concert for the Film-Maker's Coop at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in the lower east side of NYC.  Even besides the event itself, the Orensanz Foundation is an intense place, a barely-converted synagogue built in 1849 that once served as a sculpture studio and now hosts large cultural events like this.  The Coop itself is an artist-run organization that keeps a large collection of experimental and avant-garde film, classics of which were shown during the evening. 

OK, I say "classics" in an attempt to keep in the spirit of the thing, but the truth is was that this was my real introduction to experimental film.  I admit that I grew up watching experimental video installations with my dad, who was a real afficionado of the stuff, but I can't say I've kept up since 1983 (adolescence does that to a guy).  However, it turns out that an older post on this blog, where I stumbled on an event display of a heavy ion collison from 1986, attracted the attention of the woman who made the poster including said event, and who runs a recurring film series downtown.  She and her colleagues are really interested in the connections between science and film and wanted to collaborate.  And so after accepting her invitation to make some kind of presentation at one of their events in January (I usually accept first, and panic later), I decided I better get educated.  Thus, she suggested I tag along to this benefit, and there I went.  In the meantime, she herself became a blogger - musing about experimental film and beyond: check it out.

So that's how I got there, but I should say a few words about being there, since it was a pretty unbelievable event.  Beyond the space itself, which was vast and ornate, and lit in such a way that it felt like daylight was seeping in late in the evening, it was a heavy-duty lineup of avant-garde musicians (this i could vouch for) and filmmakers (which i took on trust, and verified).  They had Steve Reich and his ensemble drumming polyrhythmically to a Ken Jacobs film which manipulated old footage of trains, creating a flickering, halting, reversing sequence of images.  Then Philip Glass playing solo piano (amazing) to a Harry Smith film (my favorite of the evening, being animations that were colored by hand, frame-by-frame, on the film...).  Todd Reynolds performing solo violin (with computer) to a Bill Morrison film, transforming 100+ year old footage of trains running back and forth over the Brooklyn Bridge.  Elliot Sharp (shown here on the right) accompanying two Jenn Reeves films, frenetic washes of colors and lines.  And so on - there was more than I have the time to describe here - I even left during Lee Ranaldo's piece, since it was a school night.  Anyway, if you want to see more you can check out a small set of (unfortunately-blurry) photos here.

But a funny thing happened on the way home.  First of all, I managed to catch an F train heading up town.  That's pretty funny in itself on a Tuesday night.  Then I bumped into some friends of a friend of mine, neiher of whom I had seen for a while.  Unusual, and not exactly funny, but a nice surprise.  Then we got on the 1 train for the last leg from 96th street uptown: which turned out to be transporting several large, leafy plants to 137th st.  I thought that was odd, and funny, as did most of the passengers.  MTA - take note.

Why is Einstein Dancing?

  "Einstein" @ Jewzapalooza 2005 
  Originally uploaded by entropybound.

OK, so it's not even supposed to be Einstein, but I couldn't resist the chance to hook in today's adventure to the blog (as if I usually need an excuse...).  The occasion was Jewzapalooza, which was part of the New York Jewish Music & Heritage Festival.  A friend of mine from BNL mentioned it last week and I couldn't resist, it being unusually close to my apartment in Riverside Drive.  Quite an event, with a few thousand people out and about despite the mediocre weather.  Clearly was nice enough for "Einstein" here, who didn't miss a chance to jump around to the music, which was provided by a set of young bands that channel traditional forms with more modern equipment.

As I was explaining to someone today, my ear for these musics is not very sophisticated at this point, but the bands represented a nice cross section of music from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, as performed by Americans, Israelis, Londoners, etc.  The bands shown here are Golem, Pharaoh's Daughter, and Oi Va Voi.  Impressive stuff: needs a pretty serious mix of historical knowledge, deep empathy, and unbelievable chops (gets pretty fast when they get excited...). So maybe this is the way forward?

Oh yeah, I also decided to rock a bit in the last few weeks or so (having splurged on a new guitar recently...).  Comments are always welcome, unless they wound my fragile ego.

Up on the Roof

Let's just say I kept busy this weekend.  Before a goodbye party for a colleague of mine down in the Meatpacking District (great evening, due to the people, but still not a huge fan of the neighborhood since it Disneyfied), I managed to swing by the Met to catch the Matisse show before it closed today.  Despite the rain, I also hopped up to the roof to ponder the colorful abstractions of Sol Lewitt.  I've always been in mild awe of his approach: set out the ground rules, and let a crack team of highly-skilled assistants do the hard work.

I was also heartened to see this lady's response to the barrage of colors and lines.  But at the same time it got me a little wistful that the warm weather was starting to come to an end.

Who Knew?

I really need to cruise the local CVS to check out the Weekly World News more often.  I didn't realize they had special World Year coverage.  I'll update this when they post it online (they seem to wait, so as to avoid cannibalizing their paper sales...wait, cannibals??  where?? Let's see if they pick this up for next week...)

But I have to say, they have to be careful when they file stores like this under "Politics".  I think this is the Bush administration's idea of real science.

Einstein's Gift II

 

I hope this very retro sign gives some sense of why I've been so quiet lately.  I mentioned that I'd be a panelist in a discussion this week, as part of an event at the New York Academy of Sciences, and, well, it happened last night.

It was an excellent evening, and ultimately a multimedia tribute to the formerly-little-known Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber.  Of course he's well-known to chemists and some historians, but definitely not to the general public.  And now he has

1. Multiple biographies, including the brand-new "Master Mind" by Daniel Charles (who couldn't make it, but his book was on sale)
2. A play, the abovementioned "Einstein's Gift" by Vern Thiessen, which is about to start at the Acorn Theater in midtown Manhattan.  As I've mentioned (a few times, by now, i know) I did a panel discussion with Epic Theater in May after a staged reading.
3. At least one biographical documentary, which I haven't unearthed yet.
4. An upcoming short dramatic biography, "Haber", directed by Daniel Ragussis.
5. An opera, "Zyklon", performed at CUNY last year.

So it's a full-on Haber Year.  Unfortunately, he's far more difficult to celebrate without serious misgivings than our World Year main man, Albert Einstein.  While he won a Nobel Prize for developing ammonia capture, which revolutionized the production of fertilizer and thus saved thousands of European farmers, he applied his knowledge to the development of chemical weapons, killing thousands of European soldiers.  Of course, Einstein has his difficulties as well, the famous E=mc^2 being the conceptual core of the development of the nuclear weapons.  This is what makes Einstein's Gift, which dwells on these issues in the context of the lives of Einstein and especially Haber, so powerful and relevant.

I'll write more on the discussion later.  Now you should just focus on getting tickets for the upcoming shows (previews starting October 1, and running through October).

Nexus

Some jokes so perfectly distill what's in the air that you worry about their explosive properties (from BoingBoing):

Q: What's George Bush's position on Roe v. Wade?
A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

This really sent a shiver down my spine.

"Einstein's Gift: A Reading and Discussion of Scientific Ethics" (Shameless Plug)

Some longtime readers may remember that I somehow stumbled into participating on a post-show panel for the Vern Theissen's excellent play Einstein's Gift.  I had an excellent time in May and I feel very honored to have been asked to participate in another discussion next week at the New York Academy of Sciences, following a reading of several scenes from the play.  Admission is free, but tickets are limited - click on the link for details.

To Kill A Nano

I have no idea why I find this so entertaining, but this review of the iPod nano at arstechnica had me laughing out loud at my desk.  The evaluation of the nano under normal conditions was nothing special, but the fun started when they decided to just try and destroy the thing, to see where it would give up the iPod ghost.  And lo and behold, they couldn't kill it by running over it with a Passat.  Only after the full battery of tests could they finally render it non-functional by throwing it 40 feet into the air.  Until that point, the music never stopped.

Now why can't all gadgets be designed like this (spoken like a true klutz)?

Bad to the Bone?

Via slashdot, I bumped into this interesting opinion piece in the Guardian by Ben Goldacre.

Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I've been collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I'm ready to present my theory.

It is my hypothesis that in their choice of stories, and the way they cover them, the media create a parody of science, for their own means. They then attack this parody as if they were critiquing science. This week we take the gloves off and do some serious typing.

I've had my frustration with science journalism as well, especially when I know the subject matter intimately, but I also realize it's a tough job to communicate things to "normal" people that we can barely communicate to someone who sits downstairs from me (OK, i sit in a chemistry department, but it's no easier with physicists!).  And yet, condescension never works: I've often found people like hearing things they've never heard before, since then it inspires them to ask more questions.  Funny, that.

Any comments on this?

A Day in Palermo

So my attempts to catch up with the recent Italy trip have failed.  Too much stuff to do now (papers, meetings, sleeping...) to write too much.  Instead, here are some memories of a day spent in Palermo, Sicily with a few colleagues I met in the Erice school.  Palermo was quite an intense place, but was rewarding to explore, especially all of these incredible churches.  Take this one, the Capella Palatine, incorporating a wide range of artchitectural and visual influences, with a whole lot of gold leaf.