Scaling the Cosmos: Global Human Positioning Night Sky Laboratory, a spectacular public experiment across the skyline, visible from space, illuminating the landscape on planet earth. Scaling the Cosmos will inspire wonder in audiences across the Bay Area while uplifting under recognized contributions to science by women and championing the importance of scientific literacy.
To realize this project, we will point a laser from atop the Salesforce Tower toward Mt. Tamalpais (14 miles away stretching across the San Francisco Bay and two counties), recreating Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau’s historic 1849 experiment calculating and measuring the speed of light. The experiment will also honor astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who made one of the most important astrophysics discoveries of the 20th century: the radio pulsar. Spelletich will transmit simple Morse Code, audio (soundsand stories, poems), messages to other life forms/Extraterrestrial Intelligence and other codified data through laser light to communicate messages addressing our existence in the cosmos alongside observations from the public. We would conduct our Art & Science Light Projection Experiments for one month of Thursdays.
Sample messages include: Be Here Now; As is the Microcosm So is the Macrocosm; C = 3×108 (the speed of light). Scaling the Cosmos will be a remarkable public event that makes tangible the obscure measurement of light, placing control of this wondrous technology and powerful communication tool in the hands of the public.
Fizzeau’s historic 172 year old experiment eventually allowed us to use the speed of a light wave as the length standard to determine the scale of the cosmos. Using contemporary and original 1800’s technology from lasers, light sensors, and satellite positioning, we will recreate this historic experiment. This is big picture science and art looking at deep time and space.
Bell Burnell’s discovery, which she made as a graduate student, eventually earned the Nobel Prize in 1974. It could one day form the basis of a “galactic positioning system” for navigating outside our solar system. But Bell Burnell didn’t collect the Nobel. Instead, the award went to her supervisor at the University of Cambridge, Antony Hewish. She is now rightly recognized as the pioneer who made this breakthrough discovery and an inspiration to those addressing gender-bias in science.
The project is also inspired by Spelletich’s observations of the Eiffel Tower — how it was used, and eventually saved, because it became a locus for cutting edge scientific experiments and optical communication from fiber optics to Morse code. Scaling the Cosmos activates the newest addition to the San Francisco skyline, the Salesforce Tower, with a call for public science that echoes the Eiffel Tower experiments in Paris.
AUDIENCE AND INTERACTIVITY
Scaling the Cosmos will span across two counties and be visible across the Bay Area, reaching millions of people. In the lineage of the Bay Lights, San Jose Semaphore, Pi in the Sky, and other large-scale public art projects originating from ZERO1 over the past twenty years, Scaling the Cosmos will be accessible to viewers across a large geographic area at no cost. The beam of light will inspire awe in viewers of all ages, inviting them to rediscover the wonder of science.
The online presence of the project will solicit input from audiences and guide their open-ended inquiry into the history of science. We will give a live feed as we measure the speed of light and measure the exact distance from sky scraper to mountain. The project website will also host a series of interdisciplinary talks by artists, scientists, and philosophers that will expand on the history of science and contemporary understandings of science and culture.
Scaling the Cosmos is part of a series of works by Spelletich that celebrate the scientific method and reference foundational scientific discoveries with an emphasis on marginalized scientists. Spelletich recreates historic gravity, light, and sound wave experiments that allowed us to understand the scope and scale of our planet, our solar system, to know our beginnings and our place among the stars and the expansive entirety of the cosmos. These recreations and interpretations celebrate the scientific method and reference foundational scientific discoveries. With them, Spelletich aspires to inspire social engagement, both inside the gallery and to the outside world. Spelletich’s creations carry us back in time, to when the sciences and the arts were one, to the fundamentals of how the universe works, how we observe the cosmos, and how we determine humanity’s place within it.
In the contemporary context of politicization and polarization around science, Spelletich is working to celebrate science through art. With the firm assertion that science is real, Spelletich confronts flat earthers, climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and a resurgent eugenics movement with an aesthetic invitation to join in the collective practice of understanding the world around us.
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In which I experiment with the Burnell Galactic Positioning System at the Edge of the San Francisco Bay. Experimenting with space, light and sound on the edge of the precipice for 8 Minutes
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NOTES:
Notes:
Salesforce to Mt. Tam. DISTANCE 14 MILES.
DIY Science
DIY Scientist
Maps and mapping
Scale of the universe
Native American signal fires
There is a long tradition of native people in the Great Basin use signal fires on major peaks to quickly transmit news across the basins (valleys).
During the great surveys of the 19th century of the Bay Area to Nevada (some of the same peaks used by native Americans), from which to project light with mirrors to triangulate parallels of latitude). John Muir and Kit Carson guided Frémont during the first exploration of the Sierra Nevada range in California. (They were advised by Native people, as well).
The scale of our comprehension
Cosmic Perspective
Contemplating our Sense of Place
The Vastness of Space and the Immensity of Time
Deep Time, Deep Thinking, Geologic Time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time
science, that characteristically human endeavor
Revealing a deep mystery Touching Our Sense Of Wonder and Awe
Exploring the Structure of the Cosmos
Between Scale and Eternity
Jocelyn Burnell is still alive.
Astronaut William Anders said that although the astronauts went on their mission to explore the moon, what they really discovered was the planet Earth. He added: “I think it’s important for people to understand they are just going around on one of the smaller grains of sand on one of the spiral arms of this kind of puny galaxy […] it [Earth] is insignificant, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippolyte_Fizeau
https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/the-monument/eiffel-tower-and-science
https://www.eutouring.com/eiffel_tower_communications.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_communication
July 1849: Fizeau publishes results of speed of light experiment
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201007/physicshistory.cfm
The speed of light is one of the most well-established values in physics, traveling at over 186,000 miles a second, can be measured so accurately that the meter is now defined in terms of it. But before the 17th century, most scientists, including such giants as Johannes Kepler and Rene Descartes, considered the speed of light to be infinite, able to travel any distance instantaneously. Galileo Galilei was among the first to question this assumption and attempt to measure the speed of light experimentally.
Zooming Out Scaling The Universe:
https://youtu.be/MchU28e2YUs
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science” – Albert Einstein
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
-George Orwell
James Hutton (1726–1797);[2][3] his “system of the habitable Earth
Darwin
Silent spring
The experiential nature of the experience of deep time has also greatly influenced the work of Joanna Macy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Macy
She is an international spokesperson for anti-nuclear causes, peace, justice, and environmentalism,[1] most renowned for her book Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World and the Great Turning initiative, which deals with the transformation from, as she terms it, an industrial growth society to what she considers to be a more sustainable civilization. She has created a theoretical framework for personal and social change, and a workshop methodology for its application. Her work addresses psychological and spiritual issues, Buddhist thought, and contemporary science. She currently lives in Berkeley, Ca.
Korten’s 2006 book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community argues that the development of empires about 5,000 years ago initiated unequal distribution of power and social benefits to the small portion of the population that controlled them. He also argues that corporations are modern versions of empire, both being social organizations based on hierarchies, chauvinism, and domination through violence.
The Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Berry (1914–2009) explored spiritual implications of the concept of deep time. Berry proposes that a deep understanding of the history and functioning of the evolving universe is a necessary inspiration and guide for our own effective functioning as individuals and as a species.
How do we save what is left of the planet? How do we save humankind? The sciences and the arts are the key.
