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Distributed for Scheidegger & Spiess

Christian Waldvogel. Unknown

The Orders of Randomness

With Essays by Christian Waldvogel and Daniel Morgenthaler and Conversations with Jack van Loon, Ben Moore, Jakob Pernthaler und Jean-Pierre de Vera

Distributed for Scheidegger & Spiess

Christian Waldvogel. Unknown

The Orders of Randomness

With Essays by Christian Waldvogel and Daniel Morgenthaler and Conversations with Jack van Loon, Ben Moore, Jakob Pernthaler und Jean-Pierre de Vera

Christian Waldvogel’s work in conceptual and visual art uses a wide range of media to present the earth within the solar system, mankind within its world, and new imaginations. For an exhibition at Helmhaus Zürich, he created a three-part installation using candles, cyanobacteria, and nutrient fluid. In the first part, melting candles form globular planets over the course of the show. Through a 1,615-square-foot pool filled with nutrient fluid that serves as a habitat for cyanobacteria, the section part represents the earliest forms of life on earth. In the third part, Waldvogel places his planets within a self-conceived solar system.
           
Waldvogel’s story of genesis and the beginning of life on earth has been transformed into Christian Waldvogel. Unknown. Following an equally random order, Waldvogel discusses the chapters of this universal narrative with a range of experts—a cosmologist and astrophysicist, a cell biologist and gravitational researcher, a microbiologist, and an exobiologist working in planetary research—to reveal an unusual perspective on how the earth may have come into existence. Finally, the exhibition’s curator, Daniel Morgenthaler, asks what art can tell science. With nearly 150 color and black-and-white images, this book offers a new look at how art and science contribute to our view of both the world and the universe.

168 pages | 59 color plates, 84 halftones | 5 x 7 1/2 | © 2014

Art: Art--General Studies


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Table of Contents

Introduction
 
1
 
Disoriented
 
A Discussion with Jack van Loon
 
Construction of a Random Positioning Machine
 
Giordano Bruno and the Homogeneity of the Universe
 
The Universe
 
Werner Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle
 
Construction of a Bipolar Lightbox
 
A Discussion with Ben Moore
 
Tycho Brahe and the Study of the Universe with the Naked Eye
 
Construction of an Armillary Sphere
 
A Discussion with Ben Moore (continued)
 
Life
 
A Discussion with Jean-Pierre de Vera
 
The Pioneers
 
A Discussion with Jakob Pernthaler
 
Map of the Entire (Visible) Universe
 
Construction of a Cyanobacteria Culture with Cleanroom, Airlock, and Visitor Area
 
2
 
Antecedents
 
Random Planet Production Machine
 
Planetarium
 
Über den Anschaulichen Inhalt der Quanten-Theoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik. / Le Berceau du Temps
 
3
 
The Possibility of an Earth
Essay by Daniel Morgenthaler
 
Appendix
 
Sources and Illustrations
 
About the Authors
 
Acknowledgements
 
Imprint

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