Category Archives: Quantum Physics

Going to smaller and smaller distance scales reveals more fundamental views of nature, which means ... [+] if we can understand and describe the smallest scales, we can build our way to an understanding of the largest ones.

Of all the revolutionary ideas that science has entertained, perhaps the most bizarre and counterintuitive one is the notion of quantum mechanics. Previously, scientists had assumed that the Universe was deterministic, in the sense that the laws of physics would enable you to predict with perfect accuracy how any system would evolve into the future. We assumed that our reductionist approach to the Universe where we searched for the smallest constituents of reality and worked to understand their properties would lead us to the ultimate knowledge of things. If we could know what things were made of and could determine the rules that governed them, nothing, at least in principle, would be beyond our ability to predict.

This assumption was quickly shown not to be true when it comes to the quantum Universe. When you reduce whats real to its smallest components, you find that you can divide all forms of matter and energy into indivisible parts: quanta. However, these quanta no longer behaves in a deterministic fashion, but only in a probabilistic one. Even with that addition, however, another problem still remains: the effects that these quanta cause on one another. Our classical notions of fields and forces fail to capture the real effects of the quantum mechanical Universe, demonstrating the need for them to be somehow quantized, too. Quantum mechanics isnt sufficient to explain the Universe; for that, quantum field theory is needed. This is why.

Schematic animation of a continuous beam of light being dispersed by a prism. Note how the wave ... [+] nature of light is both consistent with and a deeper explanation of the fact that white light can be broken up into differing colors. However, radiation doesn't occur continuously at all wavelengths and frequencies, but is quantized into individual energy packets: photons.

Its possible to imagine a Universe where nothing at all was quantum, and where there was no need for anything beyond the physics of the mid-to-late 19th century. You could divide matter into smaller and smaller chunks as much as you like, with no limit. At no point would you ever encounter a fundamental, indivisible building block; you could reduce matter down into arbitrarily small pieces, and if you had a sharp or strong enough divider at your disposal, you could always break it down even further.

In the early 20th century, however, this idea was shown to be incompatible with reality. Radiation from heated objects doesnt get emitted at all frequencies, but rather is quantized into individual packets each containing a specific amount of energy. Electrons can only be ionized by light whose wavelength is shorter (or frequency is higher) than a certain threshold. And particles emitted in radioactive decays, when fired at a thin piece of gold foil, would occasionally ricochet back in the opposite direction, as though there were hard chunks of matter in there that those particles couldnt pass through.

If atoms had been made of continuous structures, then all the particles fired at a thin sheet of ... [+] gold would be expected to pass right through it. The fact that hard recoils were seen quite frequently, even causing some particles to bounce back from their original direction, helped illustrate that there was a hard, dense nucleus inherent to each atom.

The overwhelming conclusion was that matter and energy couldnt be continuous, but rather were divisible into discrete entities: quanta. The original idea of quantum physics was born with this realization that the Universe couldnt be entirely classical, but rather could be reduced into indivisible bits which appeared to play by their own, sometimes bizarre, rules. The more we experimented, the more of this unusual behavior we uncovered, including:

These discoveries didnt just pose philosophical problems, but physical ones as well. For example, theres an inherent uncertainty relationship between the position and the momentum of any quantum of matter or energy. The better you measure one, the more inherently uncertain the other one becomes. In other words, positions and momenta cant be considered to be solely a physical property of matter, but they must be treated as quantum mechanical operators, yielding only a probability distribution of outcomes.

Trajectories of a particle in a box (also called an infinite square well) in classical mechanics (A) ... [+] and quantum mechanics (B-F). In (A), the particle moves at constant velocity, bouncing back and forth. In (B-F), wavefunction solutions to the Time-Dependent Schrodinger Equation are shown for the same geometry and potential. The horizontal axis is position, the vertical axis is the real part (blue) or imaginary part (red) of the wavefunction. (B,C,D) are stationary states (energy eigenstates), which come from solutions to the Time-Independent Schrodinger Equation. (E,F) are non-stationary states, solutions to the Time-Dependent Schrodinger equation. Note that these solutions are not invariant under relativistic transformations; they are only valid in one particular frame of reference.

Why would this be a problem?

Because these two quantities, measurable at any instant in time that we so choose, have a time-dependence. The positions that you measure or the momenta that you infer a particle possesses will change and evolve with time.

That would be fine on its own, but then theres another concept that comes to us from special relativity: the notion of time is different for different observers, so the laws of physics that we apply to systems must remain relativistically invariant. After all, the laws of physics shouldnt change just because youre moving at a different speed, in a different direction, or are at a different location from where you were before.

As originally formulated, quantum physics was not a relativistically invariant theory; its predictions were different for different observers. It took years of developments before the first relativistically invariant version of quantum mechanics was discovered, which didnt happen until the late 1920s.

Different frames of reference, including different positions and motions, would see different laws ... [+] of physics (and would disagree on reality) if a theory is not relativistically invariant. The fact that we have a symmetry under 'boosts,' or velocity transformations, tells us we have a conserved quantity: linear momentum. This is much more difficult to comprehend when momentum isn't simply a quantity associated with a particle, but is rather a quantum mechanical operator.

If we thought the predictions of the original quantum physics were weird, with their indeterminism and fundamental uncertainties, a whole slew of novel predictions emerged from this relativistically invariant version. They included:

Later on, those negative energy states were identified with an equal-and-opposite set of quanta that were shown to exist: antimatter counterparts to the known particles. It was a great leap forward to have a relativistic equation that described the earliest known fundamental particles, such as the electron, positron, muon, and more.

However, it couldnt explain everything. Radioactive decay was still a mystery. The photon had the wrong particle properties, and this theory could explain electron-electron interactions but not photon-photon interactions. Clearly, a major component of the story was still missing.

Electrons exhibit wave properties as well as particle properties, and can be used to construct ... [+] images or probe particle sizes just as well as light can. Here, you can see the results of an experiment where electrons are fired one-at-a-time through a double-slit. Once enough electrons are fired, the interference pattern can clearly be seen.

Heres one way to think about it: imagine an electron traveling through a double slit. If you dont measure which slit the electron goes through and for these purposes, assume that we dont it behaves as a wave: part of it goes through both slits, and those two components interfere to produce a wave pattern. The electron is somehow interfering with itself along its journey, and we see the results of that interference when we detect the electrons at the end of the experiment. Even if we send those electrons one-at-a-time through the double slit, that interference property remains; its inherent to the quantum mechanical nature of this physical system.

Now ask yourself a question about that electron: what happens to its electric field as it goes through the slits?

Previously, quantum mechanics had replaced our notions of quantities like the position and momentum of particles which had previously been simply quantities with values with what we call quantum mechanical operators. These mathematical functions operate on quantum wavefunctions, and produce a probabilistic set of outcomes for what you might observe. When you make an observation, which really just means when you cause that quantum to interact with another quantum whose effects you then detect, you only recover a single value.

If you have a point charge and a metal conductor nearby, it's an exercise in classical physics alone ... [+] to calculate the electric field and its strength at every point in space. In quantum mechanics, we discuss how particles respond to that electric field, but the field itself is not quantized as well. This seems to be the biggest flaw in the formulation of quantum mechanics.

But what do you do when you have a quantum thats generating a field, and that quantum itself is behaving as a decentralized, non-localized wave? This is a very different scenario than what weve considered in either classical physics or in quantum physics so far. You cant simply treat the electric field generated by this wave-like, spread-out electron as coming from a single point, and obeying the classical laws of Maxwells equations. If you were to put another charged particle down, such as a second electron, it would have to respond to whatever weird sort of quantum-behavior this quantum wave was causing.

Normally, in our older, classical treatment, fields push on particles that are located at certain positions and change each particles momentum. But if the particles position and momentum are inherently uncertain, and if the particle(s) that generate the fields are themselves uncertain in position and momentum, then the fields themselves cannot be treated in this fashion: as though theyre some sort of static background that the quantum effects of the other particles are superimposed atop.

If we do, were short-changing ourselves, inherently missing out on the quantum-ness of the underlying fields.

Visualization of a quantum field theory calculation showing virtual particles in the quantum vacuum. ... [+] Whether space (or time) itself is discrete or continuous is not yet decided, as is the question of whether gravity is quantized at all, or particles, as we know them today, are fundamental or not. But if we hope for a fundamental theory of everything, it must include quantized fields.

This was the enormous advance of quantum field theory, which didnt just promote certain physical properties to being quantum operators, but promoted the fields themselves to being quantum operators. (This is also where the idea of second quantization comes from: because not just the matter and energy are quantized, but the fields as well.) All of a sudden, treating the fields as quantum mechanical operators enabled an enormous number of phenomena that had already been observed to finally be explained, including:

With quantum field theory, all of these phenomena now made sense, and many other related ones could now be predicted, including the very exciting modern disagreement between the experimental results for the muons magnetic moment and two different theoretical methods of calculating it: a non-perturbative one, which agrees with experiment, and a perturbative one, which doesnt.

The Muon g-2 electromagnet at Fermilab, ready to receive a beam of muon particles. This experiment ... [+] began in 2017 and continues to take data, having reduced the uncertainties in the experimental values significantly. Theoretically, we can compute the expected value perturbatively, through summing Feynman diagrams, getting a value that disagrees with the experimental results. The non-perturbative calculations, via Lattice QCD, seem to agree, however, deepening the puzzle.

One of the key things that comes along with quantum field theory that simply wouldnt exist in normal quantum mechanics is the potential to have field-field interactions, not just particle-particle or particle-field interactions. Most of us can accept that particles will interact with other particles, because were used to two things colliding with one another: a ball smashing against a wall is a particle-particle interaction. Most of us can also accept that particles and fields interact, like when you move a magnet close to a metallic object, the field attracts the metal.

Although it might defy your intuition, the quantum Universe doesnt really pay any mind to what our experience of the macroscopic Universe is. Its much less intuitive to think about field-field interactions, but physically, theyre just as important. Without it, you couldnt have:

When a nucleus experiences a double neutron decay, two electrons and two neutrinos get emitted ... [+] conventionally. If neutrinos obey this see-saw mechanism and are Majorana particles, neutrinoless double beta decay should be possible. Experiments are actively looking for this.

The Universe, at a fundamental level, isnt just made of quantized packets of matter and energy, but the fields that permeate the Universe are inherently quantum as well. Its why practically every physicist fully expects that, at some level, gravitation must be quantized as well. General Relativity, our current theory of gravity, functions in the same way that an old-style classical field does: it curves the backdrop of space, and then quantum interactions occur in that curved space. Without a quantized gravitational field, however, we can be certain were overlooking quantum gravitational effects that ought to exist, even if we arent certain of what all of them are.

In the end, weve learned that quantum mechanics is fundamentally flawed on its own. Thats not because of anything weird or spooky that it brought along with it, but because it wasnt quite weird enough to account for the physical phenomena that actually occur in reality. Particles do indeed have inherently quantum properties, but so do fields: all of them relativistically invariant. Even without a current quantum theory of gravity, its all but certain that every aspect of the Universe, particles and fields alike, are themselves quantum in nature. What that means for reality, exactly, is something were still trying to puzzle out.

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This Is Why Quantum Mechanics Isn't Enough To Explain The Universe - Forbes

1905 is referred to as the "miracle year" by physicists. In that one year, Albert Einstein published four papers that laid the foundations of modern physics.

One of the major breakthroughs proposed by Einstein in 1905 was the quantum theory of light, which posited that light is made up of small particles, known as photons, and these quantum particles have the ability to show wave-like properties.

From laser technology to television screens, there are many inventions that would have never been possible without the knowledge imparted through Einstein's theory. It not only transformed the domain of quantum mechanics but also influenced various other branches of science.

Scientists began to explore the various properties of light from as early as the 17th century, in order to understand its behavior, motion, and origin of light and develop ways to use this knowledge.

Proposed by Sir Isaac Newton, this theory argued againstChristiaan Huygens' theory, which stated that light was made of waves, by suggesting that thegeometric nature of reflection and refraction of light could only be explainedif light were made up of particles. He referred to these particles as corpuscles. Newton proposed thatevery time light rays strike a surface, corpuscles are reflected back, andthat the density of a medium affects the velocity of light.

Contrary to Newton, Dutch Mathematician Christiaan Huygens argued that light is made up of waves that propagate in a perpendicular fashion with respect to the direction of light. He further explained that every point that a luminous disturbance meets turns into a source of the wave itself. A new wave is then determined by the sum of the secondary waves, that result from the disturbance. Huygens' principle was introduced in 1678 to explain the reflection and refraction caused by light rays.

Many years later, in 1801, British scientist Thomas Young conducted his 'double-slit experiment', which validated Huygens findings on the wave-like behavior of light.

In Youngs experiment, a beam of light from a single source was split into two beams, and the two beams were then recombined and superimposed onto a screen, resulting ina pattern of light and dark fringes onthe screen.Young concluded that the fringes resulted from the fact that when the beams recombined, their peaks and troughs were not in phase. When two peaks coincide they reinforce each other, and a line of light results; when a peak and a trough coincide they cancel each other, and a dark line results.

The formation of the resultant wave or interference pattern by the superimposition of two waves was referred to as interference.

The double-slit experiment produced evidence contrary to Newtons corpuscular theory, and it was the first practical proof of the wave theory of light. Thomas Young mentioned the experiment in Lecture 39 of his famous book A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts.

In the years that followed, French engineer August Fresnels findings on diffraction, the phenomena due to which light spreads when passed through a narrow aperture, also confirmed the relevance of the double-slit experiment.

James Clerk Maxwell formulated the theory that electric and magnetic fields propagate with the speed of light, and concluded that light is an electromagnetic (EM) wave. He also predicted the presence of the numerous EM waves that form the electromagnetic spectrum.

According to Maxwells wave theory of light:

= c/

where, = frequencyc = speed of light = wavelength

Later, in 1886, Heinrich Hertz built a spark-gas transmittercomposed of induction coil and a Leyden jar (a capacitor) to create electromagnetic waves, and a spark gap between two brass spheres to detect them. Using this apparatus, he detected radio waves (which also traveled at the speed of light). Hertzs experiment proved the existence of EM waves proposed by Maxwell.

In 1900, Max Planck postulated that energy of light is emitted in the form of small packets of energy called quanta; and that the energy of each quanta is directlyproportional to its frequency.Planck won the Nobel prize in 1918 for his work, which also set the stage for the development of quantum mechanics.

The notion that like matter, light also exists in the form of both particle and wave was further explained by Einstein and Louis De Broglie.

The emission of photoelectrons from a metal surface when light strikes the metal is called the photoelectric effect. The electrons released during this process are called photoelectrons and their emission is influenced by the frequency of the incident beam of light.

The photoelectric effect was first proposed in 1887 by Heinrich Hertz, who observed the occurrence of electric charge in a cathode ray tube when UV light hit the cathode. In 1897, physicist J.J. Thomson performed a cathode-ray tube experiment, which led to the discovery ofelectrons.Thomson also proposed the plum pudding model of the atom, in which negatively-charged electrons were embedded like raisins within a positively-charged "plum pudding".

The photoelectric effect was explained in detail by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he proposed that light is made of tiny particles called photons (previously called quanta), with the energy of a photon given as

E E = h (Plancks equation) orE = hc/

here,E = energy of a photonh = Plancks constant (6.626 10-34 m2 kg/s) = frequency of incident light = wavelength of lightc = speed of light in vacuum

The minimum amount of energy required by an electron to leave the metal surface is referred to as threshold energy, and the minimum value of frequency of light that is sufficient to cause the photoemission of an electron is called threshold frequency.

= hth

= hc/th

here, = threshold energyth = threshold frequencyth = threshold wavelength

The photoelectric effect follows the law of conservation of energy which states that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. The energy of a photon is equal to the sum total of energy required to emit an electron and the kinetic energy of the emitted electron.

h= W + E

here,

h = Plank constant = frequency of the incident photon.W = work function (the minimum photon energy required to liberate an electron from a substance)E = maximum kinetic energy of ejected electrons (1/2 mv).

The photoelectric effect not only validated the particle nature of light but also strengthened the possibility of photons acting as a wave (since Einsteins equation involved both frequency and wavelength). In 1921, Albert Einstein was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics for his exceptional work on the photoelectric effect and the quantum theory of light.

De Broglie put forward the idea that light exhibits wave-like properties such as frequency and wavelength, and dual nature is not a special case but the fundamental nature of light energy.

He combined Einsteins special theory of relativity with Plancks equation for energy to reveal the wave nature of light in the year 1924.

E = mc2

E = h

mc2 = h

mc = h/c = p

here,p = momentum

Now, we know that frequency and wavelength share an inverse relationship, and

=c/f

p = h/

= h/p = h/mv

here, = De Broglie wavelengthv = velocity of particle

In his theory, De Broglie explained that = h/mv demonstrate the wave nature of particles. He came to the conclusion that if a wave can show particle behavior then a particle (photon) is also able to exhibit the properties of a wave.

More than 100 years have passed since the quantum theory of light got introduced to us, but even today this theory is so relevant that many modern-day discoveries and inventions are found to be based upon its underlying knowledge.

From cosmology to holograms, our understanding of light has changed the world in numerous ways.

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The Quantum Theory of Light Transformed Physics as We Know It - Interesting Engineering

Youre probably quite familiar with the basic states of mattersolid, liquid, gasthat fill everyday life on Earth.

But those three different sorts of matter that each look and act differently arent the whole of the universefar from it. Scientists have discovered (or created) dozens of more exotic states of matter, often bearing mystical and fanciful names: superfluids, Bose-Einstein condensates, and neutron-degenerate matter, to name a few.

In the last few years, physicists around the world have been constructing another state of matter: a time crystal. If that seems like B-movie technobabble, its technobabble no longer. Using a quantum computer, a few researchers have created a time crystal that, they think, firmly establishes time crystals in the world of physics.

The researchers havent yet formally published their research, but last month, they posted a preprint (a scientific paper that has yet-to-be peer-edited) on the website ArXiV.

So what exactly is a time crystal? It might sound like the critical component that makes a time machine tick, some sort of futuristic power source, or perhaps an artifact of a lost alien civilization. But, to scientists, a time crystal is actually something more subtle: a curiosity of the laws of physics.

What defines any bog-standard crystalsuch as a diamond, an emerald, or even an ice cubeis that the crystals atoms are somehow arranged in repeating patterns in space. Theres three dimensions of spaceand a fourth dimension, time. So physicists wondered if a crystals atoms could be arranged in repeating patterns in time.

In practice, that works something like this. You create a crystal whose atoms start in one state. If you blast that crystal with a finely tuned laser, those atoms might flip into another stateand then flip backand then flip againand so forth, all without actually absorbing any energy from the laser.

If you step back, what youve just created is a state of matter thats perpetually in motion, indefinitely, without taking in any energy.

Thats no small feat. It beats against one of classical physics most sacred tenets: the second law of thermodynamics. That law states that the amount of entropy, or disorder, always tends to increase. Think of it like a vase, teetering at the edge of a table. The universe wants to push that vase over and make it shatter across the floor. To piece it back together, you have to put in the energy.

Time crystals are actually a rather new idea, having first been theorized by Nobel-winning physicist Franck Wilczek in 2012. Not all physicists accepted that theory at the time, with some claiming that the second law of thermodynamics would rear its legalistic head.

Naturally, determined researchers found loopholes. In 2016, physicists at the University of Maryland managed to bodge together a crude time crystal from a collection of ytterbium atoms. Other groups have created time crystals inside diamonds.

[Related: In photos: a rare glimpse inside the heart of a quantum computer]

But these latest time-crystal-tinkerers did something different. They turned to Google and used a quantum computer: a device that takes advantage of the quirks of quantum mechanics, the seemingly mystical sort of physics that guides the universe at the tiniest scales. Instead of using bits of silicon like everyday, classical computers, quantum computers operate directly with atoms or particles. That allows physicists to do experiments which can be agonizingly difficult with traditional computers, since quantum physicswhich allows particles to be multiple things at one and for particles to interact at seemingly impossible distancesgets quite esoteric.

The ability to simulate the rulesbecomes so much harder with traditional computers, says Gabriel Perdue, a quantum computer researcher at Fermilab, a national lab in suburban Chicago that focuses on high-end particle physics.

But, by arranging particles in a quantum computers processor, its possible to literally study systems of tiny particles as if they are building blocks. Thats a powerful ability, and its not something youll see much in the non-quantum world.

We dont compute, you know, how far a baseball goesby building miniature baseball players and doing simulations, says Perdue. But doing something quite similar on a very small scale, he says, is what the researchers used Googles quantum computer to do to make their time crystal.

In this case, physicists could take atoms, rearrange them, then pulse them with a laser to drive a time crystal. That setup has allowed researchers to create a time crystal thats bigger than any time crystal before it. While many previous time crystals were short-lasting and unravelled within a few back-and-forth flip cycles, the scientists behind this latest time crystal effort are marvelling at the stability of what theyve created.

The thing that is most exciting here, for me, says Perdue, its a demonstration of using a quantum computer to really simulate a quantum physics system and study it in a way that is really novel and exciting.

So, could these time crystals indeed lead to a new wave of nascent time machines?

Probably not. But they might help make quantum computers become more robust. Engineers have struggled for years to create something that could serve as memory in quantum computers; some equivalent to the silicon that underpins traditional computers. Time crystals, physicists think, could serve that purpose.

And this experiment, Perdue says, is also a demonstration of the power of quantum computers to do science. The same platform that makes it easy for you to simulate some cool algorithm, he says, works just as well, and I would argue even better, for simulating these kinds of systems.

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What the heck is a time crystal, and why are physicists obsessed with them? - Popular Science

Quantum information plays a vital role in connecting several branches of physics. Specifically, the theory of quantum error correction, which explains how to protect and recover quantum information in quantum computers and other complex interacting systems, now becomes fundamental to the modern understanding of quantum gravity.

Anatoly Dymarsky, Associate Professor at the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology (CEST), said,Normally, information stored in physical systems is localized. Say, a computer file occupies a particular small area of the hard drive. By error we mean any unforeseen or undesired interaction which scrambles information over an extended area.

In our example, pieces of the computer file would be scattered over different hard drive areas. Error-correcting codes are mathematical protocols that allow collecting these pieces together to recover the original information. They are in heavy use in data storage and communication systems. Quantum error-correcting codes play a similar role in cases when the quantum nature of the physical system is important.

In a rather unexpected twist, scientists realized not too long ago that quantum gravitythe theory describing quantum dynamics of space and timeoperates similar mathematical protocols to exchange information between different parts of space. The locality of information within quantum gravity remains one of the few open fundamental problems in theoretical physics. That is why the appearance of well-studied mathematical structures such as quantum error-correcting codes is intriguing.

Yet the role of codes was only understood schematically, and the explicit mechanism behind the locality of information remains elusive.

In a new study, scientists have discovered a new connection between quantum information and quantum field theory. The study offers clear evidence of the growing role of quantum information theory across various areas of physics.

In the study from Skoltech and the University of Kentucky, scientists established a novel connection between quantum error-correcting codes and two-dimensional conformal field theories. By describing interactions of quantum particles, they have offered standard theoretical tools to describe many different phenomena, from fundamental elementary particles to quasi-particles emerging in quantum materials.

Dymarsky concludes,Now we have a new playground to study the role of quantum error-correcting codes in the context of quantum field theory. We hope this is a first step in understanding how locality of information works and what hides behind all this beautiful mathematics.

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Quantum information and quantum field theory: Study found a new connection between them - Tech Explorist

Had it not been for his secondary school caretaker, physicist-turned-novelist Femi Fadugba might never have gone on to study material sciences and quantum computing at Oxford University. I dont usually tell people this story because it sounds like something out of a movie, he says, laughing, on a video call from Peckham, south London. He gave me a Quantum Physics for Dummies book when I was 11. It was only a couple of years ago that I found his phone number and called him up. He told me that he had a PhD and was really into physics, but just wasnt able to pursue it.

Similarly, had it not been for his career in quantum physics, Fadugba might never have written his debut sci-fi novel, The Upper World a book about time travel set in Peckham and deeply informed by the study of atoms, matter, energy and relativity. I decided I wanted to write this book because Id have conversations with people who would ask me to explain quantum physics. Theyd always be super fascinated and wanted me to recommend a book, but I couldnt find one that I could put my hand on my heart and say: Youll dig this.

So he set out to do exactly what Toni Morrison had asked of anyone frustrated by the lack of diverse stories in the landscape of literature: If theres a book that you want to read, but it hasnt been written yet, then you must write it.

The Upper World is a uniquely thrilling, heart-wrenching young adult novel that follows two teenage protagonists. Esso and Rhia exist in different time periods, 2020 and 2035 respectively, but are connected by a life-changing event a bullet heading for an alleyway and set to cause irreversible harm. When Esso is hit by a car, he is transported to a mysterious place where he discovers that he can see into the past and the future. He then seeks to change the course of this tragic event, which somehow involves Rhia a girl living in foster care who is desperate to learn the truth about her parents.

Peckham is full of people who look like me. People from somewhere else, but also from here, says Fadugba. His eyes light up whenever he talks about the neighbourhood. Ive seen two decades of change in Peckham, so I felt comfortable trying to project another couple of decades. I also just really like this place.

Now aged 34, Fadugba, who was born in Togo, moved to England from the US in 1997, when he was nine years old. He spent much of his childhood moving between a boarding school in Somerset and various African countries with his parents, when his father was working as an interpreter for the UN. But the summers and half terms at his aunts house in a Peckham estate had the biggest impact on him. As a Nigerian, there arent many places in the world, including Nigeria and including most of England, where I feel so at home.

The idea of feeling at home is something Fadugba struggled with when it came to his career in science, however. In addition to Oxford, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and taught science I published in PRL [a peer-reviewed scientific journal], which is where Einstein published. I was at the peak of my career. But at the same time, something about writing equations for my whole life seemed too abstract and removed from real life problems.

He eventually left academia and went into the energy sector, working full time at a solar finance company. He didnt start reading fiction until his late 20s (naming Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Stephen King and Orson Scott Card as particular favourites) but something clicked, and he decided to teach himself how to write. I had a couple of chats that convinced me that writing was something you could learn and didnt have to be born with. That was the switch for me. He still had the urge to communicate scientific ideas and theories, but wanted to do that through fiction rather than academia.

Perhaps thats why The Upper World, despite its humour, is also enjoyably educational. Theories relating to time and space are woven into the narrative. The appendix is full of equations relevant to the plot, such as the speed of light and the Pythagorean theorem. But deep down, the novel is about grief, loss and hope. I was dealing with a similar situation to what Esso goes through, in terms of losing someone before their time, because of some madness. The part in the book where someone gets shot: there are kids and adults who are dealing with this in real life. I felt a responsibility to explore what that meant.

An important part of the novel is its investigation into the concept of free will. As the two teenagers fight to change the future, the psychological and sociological influences on a persons destiny are a central part of the narrative. For the black community in the UK, so much of the tension is fundamentally about free will. Are our people in the position that theyre in because they made bad decisions or was it actually [out of their control]? Its tough. I do think we are a product of our environment, but at the same time, if Im standing in front of a kid who is in a shit situation, thats not a helpful thing to say. We have an obligation to explore both sides, instead of making the false choice that only one of them is true.

What makes The Upper World so groundbreaking is how it straddles multiple realities and truths. Its geeky but cool, otherworldly but also very south London, a genre-defying book for which Penguin Random House Childrens won the rights after a crazy 15-way auction. It also grabbed the heart of Daniel Kaluuya: the Oscar-winning actor will not only star in the Netflix film adaptation, he will also co-produce it.

My book leaked to Hollywood, says Fadugba in disbelief, speaking of the whirlwind that ensued in June 2020, straight after he sent his manuscript to publishers. I still dont know how that happened, but apparently, it happens. A bunch of studios got hold of it the big ones. Jordan Peeles Monkeypaw Productions and Brad Pitts Plan B Entertainment. You can circle a month around the period where I got my book deal and I got the Netflix deal. It was exciting and also very hard to process. Even now, I still talk about it as if it happened to someone else.

A big reason why the mammoth successes have yet to sink in is because they came at a personally difficult time. In early 2020, Fadugba had been living with his wife in Kenya when the countrys president tweeted that they would be shutting the borders due to the pandemic. I packed up my life in two days and went to my aunts house [in Peckham]. My wife is American and had to go back to her family. I spent a whole year in my aunts spare bedroom, separated from my wife, while the world went down. The couple finally reunited in June 2021.

It has all been incredibly stressful, Fadugba tells me. The gradient of change was insane. But hes grateful, of course. I can see how visibly excited he is speaking about his new life. He humbly smiles while talking about the fact that he will be executive producer on the Netflix film. Its a strong team, he says. Eric Newman [the producer of Narcos, Children of Men and Bright] has the experience of making sick films and shows. Daniel knows how to navigate both worlds. Hes from ends, but hes also an Oscar-winning actor.

I ask him if hes nervous about whether the adaptation will be as good as the book. My agent put me in touch with Nick Hornby, who has had the experience of having his books adapted into films, and he gave me a metaphor. If you design ankara suits and then someone buys it and turns it into a bikini, that bikini could go on to sell more than your suit. Even though the Netflix team has been really faithful to the vision, you have to let it breathe in whatever direction it needs to.

So what does Fadugba see when he looks into his own future? Im currently writing a film with a couple of mates, and a well-known rapper called CS. Hes also working on the sequel to The Upper World, which will focus on quantum mechanics and the multiverse. But, he says, my biggest purpose has always been about education. I dont mean that necessarily in terms of getting all kids into Stem [science, technology, engineering and mathematics]. I think its more about getting kids to explore all the different parts of their mind. Theres no reason why Peckham couldnt be the theoretical physics capital of the world I mean, there are reasons, but there are no good reasons.

His plan is to find a way to use music, virtual reality and gaming to facilitate maths and physics education. Looking at what he has achieved so far, with his physics career and his first ever attempt at writing fiction, very little seems impossible. I was born in a civil war. There have been too many times that things could have gone left, he says, referring to everything from his familys immigration struggles to his time spent in Rwanda, to living in a council flat and seeing all kinds of shit go on. When I think about the stuff that has happened to me, I think to myself: I was given this [gift]. Enjoy yourself, take care of your mental health. But use it.

An edited extract from The Upper World

After the collision, I expect to turn and see a pumpkin-coloured bench stued with people waiting for the 78, 381, 63 or 363. And, on the other side of the road, I expect a barbershop, followed by a Western Union, then a pub, then a corner shop selling fufu and Oyster-card top-ups the same rota of shops that repeats itself across Narm, interrupted only by the odd pound shop or chain cafe.

I expect to see a Range Rover with a dent in its front end and Im ready to go ballistic on the driver, threaten to sue him, punch him, both. I expect no, I hope to see a little boy, sitting safely on the pavement, in roughly the same shape and condition Id met him.

Instead I can barely see my own hands. Darkness has swallowed them. And inside the darkness are echoes: half-familiar screams and hushed voices, each one loud enough for me to hear, but not clear enough to make out the words. My mind draws its own imaginary lines in the dark, filling it with demonic creatures with jagged teeth and talons. Scenario A, I think, this is a dream, and Im alive. Scenario B: Im dead, and this is either heaven or hell.

A bead of sweat tumbles down my forehead. Above the echoes, I can hear my heart pounding and my breaths getting shorter. In all the Sunday school lessons I remember, not one mentioned heaven looking like a barren wasteland filled with screams. Not to mention the scorching heat. Please let this be scenario A.

See the rest here:

Femi Fadugba: Theres no reason why Peckham couldnt be the theoretical physics capital of the world - The Guardian

Do I understand quantum mechanics?

Well, no. I only recently came to understand something about the first word of the mathematical discipline we call quantum mechanics. It is defined as dealing with the mathematical description of the motion and interaction of subatomic particles, incorporating the concepts of quantization of energy, wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principle, and the correspondence principle, according to something called Oxford Languages, which can be reached via Google.

My understanding is underwhelming. I understand what a quantum leap is not.

I now understand that a single electron does not whiz around a single atomic nucleus in a single perfectly round circle.

That is what I first learned about atoms. It was back in 1958, in sixth grade, as I recall. Science in 1958 was nowhere near what science is today. To us serious 1958 science students, atoms were clots of protons and/or neutrons, surrounded by neatly circular orbiting electrons.

Today, I am told that electrons do not follow bicycle-wheel circular orbits. Instead, electrons pop up here and there at predictable distances from the nuclei of atoms, nuclei being those clots of protons and/or neutrons.

Electrons get from here to there by traversing, invisibly, some teeny tiny distance called a quantum. How do they traverse this distance? Why, they leap, giving rise to our use of the term quantum leap.

That is what I just now learned this year. It constitutes the sum total of my knowledge of quantum mechanics and, for that matter, atomic physics. I have sons who are engineers and other children who are more recently educated. They understand such stuff. I am just learning about it.

For this knowledge, I am indebted to Bill Bryson.

Brysons A Walk in the Woods, gave millions of Americans the irrevocable impression that he is a doppelganger of Robert Redford, because that selfsame Handsomest Man of the Twentieth Century portrayed Bryson in the movie about his mostly successful and mainly hilarious attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, mostly for the hell of it.

But A Walk in the Woods did not teach me about quantum mechanics, though it did reinforce my predisposition to give the exercising that goes with cross-country hiking to my brain, as in reading about it, rather than to my arthritic knees, hips and assorted other joints.

A Short History of Just About Everything, also by Bryson and by now more than two decades old, explained the quantum clearly enough for me to claim its leap as my own for purposes of smart-alecky windbaggery, which I call conversation.

The book is a tour de force. It starts with the Big Bang, principally because all matter and energy that is, was or will be got its start with the Big Bang. I knew about that, but I knew zilch about the astronomy, cosmology, paleontology, taxonomy and dozens of other scientific disciplines that end in y. Bryson says he too did not know these things. Unlike me, he set out to learn about them by talking to experts and then translating their lingo into folksy, fun-to-read English.

The book ends with a depressing whimper. It notes that humans got here by an awe-inspiring series of billions upon billions of happenings, any one of which could have left us no more advanced than newts. Then it tells us that if the megavolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park does erupt, humans in our neck of the woods will likely be vaporized within nanoseconds.

Even if not, Bryson says, we are despoiling our only inhabitable planet at cataclysm-inducing clip.

But until that cataclysm is induced, we can revel in the knowledge that electrons leap, that great scientists often are petty and churlish people, that cells contain billions of ... things ... we didnt even dream existed back in 1958.

Brysons book, in sum, has quantumed my scientific knowledge by leaps and bounds, though what practical benefit that has at my age is puzzling. It took Darwin decades to perfect his theory of natural selection. Septuagenarians are unlikely to be sentient for decades.

Yet I am smiling broadly as I type these words, because gaining knowledge, even in subatomic quantities, is something worth smiling about.

I also gained knowledge, however evanescent, about trilobites and dinosaurs, dodos (the birds as well as the politicians) and gravity.

So there is something else to be said for our having disconnected our televisions satellite feed, besides the obvious blessing of having missed all of last years political advertising.

We fill that void by viewing sunsets, chasing chickens, chatting with friends and family, enjoying the company of dogs and, of course, reading books.

It is a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents.

I understood that. I really did for a nanosecond.

Denny Bonavita is a former editor/publisher at newspapers in DuBois, Brookville, New Bethlehem and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: notniceman9@gmail.com

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Reading a book can warp one's mind | Columns | thecourierexpress.com - The Courier-Express

Admission to our graduate programs is done through the Graduate Recruitment and Admissions Committee which is made up of several faculty representing the departmental research areas. All candidates are evaluated on:

Candidates are advised to apply directly to the program best suited to their long-term academic goals. Students interested in pursuing research or academic careers should apply to the Ph.D. program even if they intend to get an M.S. degree as an intermediate degree. Those students that seek advance preparation beyond their undergraduate training for educational or industrial careers should apply to one of the M.S. programs.

Students applying to the Ph.D. program are not expected to have an M.S. degree and typically do not. Ph.D. candidates may opt to receive one of the M.S. degrees enroute towards the Ph.D. as an intermediate degree but there is not a requirement. Students who hold a master's degree upon entering the Ph.D. program may apply for transfer credit of their masters courses towards the Ph.D. program requirements.

NOTE: We regret that we are unable to evaluate any individuals probability of admission prior to formal application beyond the information already presented here.

In exceptional circumstances, a student who does not meet the criteria for regular admission may be granted conditional admission. The Department will specify the conditions a student must meet to achieve regular status and will advise the student accordingly. The student must fulfill the conditions within two sessions of registration in the Graduate College, or face dismissal. Admission in this special category is reserved for cases where there are strong indications for success in the program, despite weaknesses in certain parts of the application.

To apply online, go to theUI Graduate and Professional Admissionswebsite.

After you submit your application, you will receive email instructions on how to establish your HawkID and password in order to access your Admissions Profile on MyUI, our online portal for students. All supporting materials can and should be uploaded through your Admissions Profile. If your academic program requires letters of recommendation, you will be asked to provide the contact information of your recommenders on your Profile. The recommender will then receive an email from the Office of Admissions instructing them on how to upload a recommendation letter and/or recommendation form.

Applicants for admission to the graduate program must meet the admission requirements of the Graduate College; see theManual of Rules and Regulations of the Graduate Collegeon the Graduate College website.

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Graduate Admissions Process | Physics and Astronomy - The University of Iowa - Iowa Now

A lot of us know what it felt like being stuck inside during the pandemic: We were bored, and almost always on the internet. Writer Leigh Stein's new book of poems is a sort of time capsule that captures this experience.

"I'm someone who has always pushed back against the idea that the internet is not real life," Stein says. "So I see our lives on social media as just as real as the lives that I lead when I'm grocery shopping."

The book is called What To Miss When, and though Stein has been busy she published two novels and a memoir over the last few years this is the first book of poems she has written in almost a decade.

It took work getting the poems out.

"There was a period where I was getting concerned about how much wine I was drinking and I didn't know how to stop it or change it," she says. "I felt like I was in this bad pattern. I couldn't get out of [it]. I didn't know what to do."

So about two weeks before we all went into lockdown, Stein decided to stop drinking for 30 days just to see what would happen. "And like a miracle, my poetry came back to me for the first time in ten years."

Leigh Stein Brian Jacks hide caption

It's now 18 months later, and Stein is drinking again, but just about a third of what she used to. Her experiment made her reconsider the habit of going out and always drinking with certain friends. And she realized that by not drinking, she wasn't giving something up, but rather getting back a part of herself she had really missed.

"It was almost like there was a room in my brain and I had lost the key to open the door to the room," she says. "And then I found the key."

During lockdown, poems started flowing out of Stein to the point where she was writing a poem a day. And the book that resulted from, as Stein puts it, is about a "certain laptop class of Americans" during the pandemic.

"We were all extremely online," she says. "We were fortunate enough to be able to work from home [and] we were watching a lot of drama unfold on social media."

The framing device for What to Miss When is actually a 14th century book about the plague: Boccaccio's The Decameron. And though she'd never read it before lockdown, she found it has "eerie parallels" to our current pandemic.

"The wealthy who could afford to flee Florence fled," she says, talking about the classic. "And the people who couldn't afford to have their second country home or their villa stayed in the cities and drank to escape their fear of death."

The people who fled to their villa in The Decameron would share stories and medieval fables with each other to pass the time. So Stein included our own pop culture moments in her book to highlight the stories we told each other during the pandemic.

"We were all having the same kind of pop culture experience because of what was available for us to stream," she says, talking about her descriptions of viral shows like Tiger King or Love is Blind. "And then we were all tweeting about what we were streaming."

Poems about stress cleaning and Zoom yoga and nighttime beauty routines live next to poems about movies that look at distortions in time, like Groundhog Day.

One poem, called "Everywhere You Look A Spectacle" references Palm Springs a film from last July in which two characters played by Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are stuck in a time loop.

In many ways, Stein's examination of her own drinking patterns was also a deeper look into our cultural obsession with social media. In reference to the film's time loop, the speaker ends the Palm Springs poem with a note to self:

Cristin Milioti had to teach herself

quantum physics on YouTube to escape

the rom com's repetition glitch.

All I have to do is sign off.

All I have to do is sign off.

All I have to do is sign off.

This story was edited for radio by Reena Advani and adapted for the web by Petra Mayer and Jeevika Verma.

Continued here:

Interview: 'What To Miss When,' By Leigh Stein - NPR

The Boston Latino International Film Festival (BLIFF)today announced that it will once again be showcasing the diverse voices originating in U.S.-based-Latinx communities and in the Americas and beyond through film this year from September 24 October 3, 2021.

This years festival will be hosted virtually and film offerings will include Q&As with filmmakers.

This year, BLIFF will present nine films including Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmels documentary feature,Los Hermanos/The Brothers, as well as local filmmaker Monica CohensDreams of Chonta. BLIFF is also excited to be bringing two narrative features to the festival this year,Women is LosersandPerfume de Gardenias, among other films that aim to break Latinx stereotypes and bring cultures and communities together.

BLIFF all access and individual passes will be on sale in September on a soon-to-be-announced date, according to organizers. A complete schedule of BLIFF events, screenings, and tickets will be available soon atbliff.org.

COVID has made us redefine how we live, work, and play, says Sabrina Avils, Boston Latino International Film Festival director in a statement. Thats certainly true for events like ours. Most festivals, including ours, planned a hybrid, partial in-person event in 2021. But the recent rise of new infections forces us to change that. BLIFF has decided we must protect our audience, act conservatively, and present a compressed version of the festival virtually. That said, we are proud to offer a thoughtful and, we believe, well-curated film selection in 2021films that were showcased at A-list festivals like Sundance, Tribeca, South by Southwest, and others. It is important to stick to our mission, and host a smaller festival that continues to feature provocative films that celebrate our culture and community.

Confirmed films to be screened at BLIFF include:

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It Directed by Mariem Prez Riera

RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT illuminates the humor and the grace of Moreno, as well as lesser-known struggles faced on her path to stardom, including pernicious Hollywood sexism and abuse, a toxic relationship with Marlon Brando, and serious depression a year before she emerged an Oscar winner. Morenos talent and resilience triumphed over adversity, as she broke barriers, fought for representation and forged the path for new generations of artists.

My Darling Supermarket Directed by Tali Yankelevich

Grocery store employees, todays essential workers, get star treatment inMy Darling Supermarket(made prior to the pandemic). Set within a bright, colorfulsupermercadoin So Paulo, Brazil, this charming, funny documentary glides through a seemingly endless array of vibrantly designed shelves and displays, but its the stores employees who take center stage. Rodrigo (in bread) discusses quantum physics and parallel universes; Santo (a forklift operator) builds video game cities; a security officer tracks possible shoplifters on closed circuit TVs (Two suspects near the condensed milk!); Ivan (a baker) is into Manga cosplay; and then theres the artist who lovingly paints the prices. A panoply of individuals with fears, hopes, and questions about their place in the universe are celebrated in a quirky portrait that juxtaposes their idiosyncrasies with the assumed mundanity of bringing food to our table Film Forum

Los Hermanos/The Brothers Directed by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider

Virtuoso Afro-Cuban-born brothersviolinist Ilmar and pianist Aldolive on opposite sides of a geopolitical chasm a half-century wide. Tracking their parallel lives in New York and Havana, their poignant reunion, and their momentous first performances together,Los Hermanos/The Brothersoffers a nuanced, often startling view of estranged nations through the lens of music and family.

Featuring an electrifying, genre-bending score, composed by Cuban Aldo Lpez-Gaviln, performed with his American brother, Ilmar, and with guest appearances by maestro Joshua Bell and the Harlem Quartet.

Fruits of Labor(Co-presentation with Bright Lights Film Series) Directed by Emily Cohen Ibaez

*Free Screening Event*

Ashley Solis is a high school senior who must divide her time between school and supporting her

family as a second-generation Mexican American. Located in a California working class town,

the harshness of agricultural labor in the strawberry fields shares a stark contrast with the

beautiful nature and relationship to her spiritual ancestral upbringing. Director Emily Cohen

Ibez documents Ashleys life guided by the spirit world through her hardships and joys in

modern America.

Dreams of Chonta Directed by Monica Cohen

DREAMS OF CHONTA follows the story of Diego Obregon, an Afro-Colombian musician who came to the United States 16 years ago in search of his dreams. He made the ultimate sacrifice by leaving his family behind and living a solitary life.

This is not just another immigrant story focused on terror, inequity and policy; this is a story about the hopes and dreams of an artist, the only ambassador of his music and his culture in NYC. People have never been this close to the life of an undocumented immigrant whos struggles go beyond himself and his family to create a bridge between 2 worlds. This story honors the wealth and the ripples of change that immigration creates.

Women is Losers Directed by Lissette Feliciano

In 1960s San Francisco, bright and talented Catholic school girl Celina Guerrera (Lorenza Izzo) survives a difficult home life by following the rules. That is until an indiscretion creates a series of devastating consequences. As Celina faces the compounded obstacles of being young and alone, she sets out to rise above the oppression of poverty and invest in a future that sets new precedents for the time. Inspired by real women and the Janis Joplin song of the same title, WOMEN IS LOSERS world premiered at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, where it finished as one of the most-watched of the festival.

Missing in Brooks County Directed by Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss

70 miles north of the Mexican-US border lies Brooks County, Texas a haunted, inhospitable

place where thousands of immigrants have gone missing or died over the past decade. Missing in Brooks County follows the journey of two families who arrive in Brooks County to look for their loved ones, only to find a mystery that deepens at every turn. Stuck between the jurisdiction of border agents, local law enforcement, and cartels, the county is a barren landscape designed as a deterrent to illegal crossings. Despite this tactical designation, the municipality has never been provided the resources to process the remains of the hundreds of undocumented immigrants who succumb to dehydration and exposure each year. Missing in Brooks County is a potent reminder that these deaths are more than a statisticeach represents a living human being, loved by their family, now lost.

Perfume de Gardenias Directed by Gisela Rosario Ramos a.k.a. Macha Coln

Perfume de Gardenias, is the debut film from the renowned queer Afro-Puerto Rican singer, multi-disciplinary artist, and filmmaker Macha Coln.

The dark comedy that captures the idiosyncrasies and spirit of a nation adept at creating novel strategies for laughter in the face of adversity, tells the story of Isabel played by veteran theater and television actress Luz Mara Rondn in her first movie-starring role an elderly woman living in a middle-class neighborhood in Puerto Rico, who has just become a widow after having cared for her husband until his last breaths. However, her recent loss becomes a blessing when she crafts a beautiful custom-made funeral for him that catches the attention of Toa (Sharon Riley), a pious but domineering woman who involves herself in local funerals.

On the Divide Directed by Maya Cueva and Leah Galant

ON THE DIVIDE follows the story of three Latinx people living in McAllen, Texas who, despite their views, are connected by the most unexpected of places: the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border. As threats to the clinic and their personal safety mount, our three characters are forced to make decisions they never could have imagined.

For more information on the film festival, visitbliff.org.

About the Boston Latino International Film Festival

Since its inception in 2001, the Boston Latino International Film Festival (BLIFF) has been committed to using the power of film to break stereotypes, bring cultures and communities together and reveal the complex issues that affect the Latinx community in the United States, Latin America and Spain.

BLIFF is sponsored in part by ArtsEmerson, BASE, Bright Lights Film Series, Boston Cultural Council, El Planeta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Original post:

The Boston Latino International Film Festival will be held virtually September 24 October 3 - What'sUpNewp

In his first solo exhibition, Everlasting Stranger, at Seattles Henry Art Gallery, New Yorkbased choreographer, performer, and writer Will Rawls charts complex relations among gesture, language, and image. In the performances that anchor the exhibition, four dancers methodically move letter tiles hung on a gallery wall to spell out abstract phrases while shifting within the frame of an automated camera that takes a photograph every few seconds. From a stone rotunda at the entrance to the exhibition, an audio track of excerpts recited from Guyanese writer Wilson Harriss 1987 surrealist novel The Infinite Rehearsal plays and echoes through the halls of the exhibition. Further on, pixelated wall paintings, black geometric sculptural forms, and looped stop-motion animationsof the dance flank the performance space. Across six galleries, the installation plays with ruptures and compressions of time. Below, Rawls discusses the role of the glitch in his work, and the seen and unseen labor of dance. Everlasting Stranger is on view through August 15.

AURORA SAN MIGUEL Exhibitions make things highly visible to an audience. Throughout the show, however, you also attempt to obscure certain elements: missing frames in the projected stop-motion videos create glitches while the live performers movementsinto and out of view of the camera also point to a type of glitch.

WILL RAWLS The glitch is the moment when you recognize a break in the flow of technology. Humans like to explore technology partly to see it fail to fully mimic or represent human life. Representation is a faulty human inventionthis is always the starting point for my work. I insist on this faultiness in Everlasting Stranger. Ive also wondered how to explore dance documentation that acknowledges its failure to capture the live dance, and becomes an artwork itself. Stop-motion animation is a super-durational form of filmmaking that can reflect the time it takes to create a dance. Stop-motion is intensively photographic, requiring eight hundred photos for roughly one-and-a-half minutes of animation. This amplifies the capture of the body and alludes to photographys legacy of distorting representations of Black and brown people. Dance is a dynamic counterpoint because it eludes language and image. When you watch the stop-motion pieces, you can sense the gestures that are missing between frames, and so the kinetics that you do see on the screen are structured by those missing gestures.

SAN MIGUEL The exhibition makes apparent the intense labor involved in both the performances and their recording. I was particularly struck by the audible clicks of the camera as a type of metronome for the dancers. Between clicks there is a measure of intent in each of their moves.

RAWLS I wanted to foreground dances relation to music and to marked time. I also wanted to present the human labor of becoming a moving image, the duress of being captured on camera. The dancers and I discussed the interval, or what transpires between shutter clickssensation, thought, and choiceas things that the camera cant quite capture but that the live audience sees and feels. The interval between photographs is a space of play.

SAN MIGUEL What happens to the photos and videos after the exhibition, and what is their function as documents of this slowness? Video can easily become another mechanism for speed and reductionism.

RAWLS Im attached to the films and videos of Kara Walker and William Kentridge, who both, albeit differently, deal with animations complex relationships to text, race, gesture, and history. I feel that both artists address history in a glitchy way, using technologies that belie their infidelity to what theyre representing. Ill take about 20,000 photos of the performance over the course of the exhibitionstill deciding where these will go next.

SAN MIGUEL On New Yorks High Line in 2018, in your Uncle Rebus performance, you worked with similar techniquesdeconstructing and reconstructing movable letter tiles into isolated phrases. I am curious about your choices of language and their source text that comes up in the performance and, in the form of sonic excerpts, before you enter the gallery space.

RAWLS The Infinite Rehearsal is a surrealist novel about a childs fever dream in which author Wilson Harris examines the genealogy of identity as a problem of quantum physics. I distilled the novel into a set of stanzas that the performers spell, line by line, using oversize letters. The performers dont have enough letters to fully spell the phrases and are prompted to replace letters with punctuation. One of my favorite lines from the text is Come and live with me before the world ends. This appears in the performance as: BE4 / THA / WRLD ENDS. In the process of spelling, the wall becomes a space of emergence for syllables, phonetics, typos, dialects, even stammers between sentences. Deleuze describes stuttering as language growing from the inside out; that disruption of normative language attracts me. Im drawn to the moment when a dialect emerges fromor, rather, againsta standard English narrative or any kind of master text. As a Caribbean author, Harris writes about consciously crafting language as a political form of self-study, imagination, and expression. I see parallels between his work on creolization and the Black American oral tradition. That was my starting point for deconstructing language and movable type in Uncle Rebus, where I intervened in Brer Rabbit tales to render the narration perhaps more opaque but also more personal and fluid. These projects have been a meaningful way to expose how dancers thinking manifests in language, over time.

Read more here:

Choreographer Will Rawls on Opacity and the Glitch - ARTnews