INFINITE LIGO DREAMS
The School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Cardiff commissioned me in 2016 to create this oil painting to commemorate the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) – one of the most important discoveries in the history of physics.
Through careful consultation with the university’s scientists - Professor Mark Hannam, a member of the LIGO team, along with Dr Chris North, Dr Edward Fauchon-Jones and Dr Jason Charles Roger – I spent several months immersing myself in the world of gravitational waves, striving to find a way to represent the discovery in a visual medium.
Over 100 years ago Albert Einstein through his theory of relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves, speculating that ripples in spacetime would propagate through the universe at the speed of light. For the past 25 years scientists have been refining the tools to detect them, and finally succeeded this year by picking up a distortion in spacetime using a pair of 4km long tubes set at right angles which bounce laser beams off mirrors
I was inspired by the sheer overwhelming immensity of the discovery of gravitational waves, and after discussing the ideas and the research with the team at Cardiff, I thought it would be fantastic to create an artwork that celebrated this momentous event in human history. I was above all, inspired by the idea that we all warp. When working on the painting, I tried to imagine the data as visible waves, and then placed structures – such as binary black holes and neutron stars – into a busy universe.
The canvas hangs in the Physics Department here in Cardiff, and reproductions are available here below the video. To view of my artwork got the Gallery page.
Through careful consultation with the university’s scientists - Professor Mark Hannam, a member of the LIGO team, along with Dr Chris North, Dr Edward Fauchon-Jones and Dr Jason Charles Roger – I spent several months immersing myself in the world of gravitational waves, striving to find a way to represent the discovery in a visual medium.
Over 100 years ago Albert Einstein through his theory of relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves, speculating that ripples in spacetime would propagate through the universe at the speed of light. For the past 25 years scientists have been refining the tools to detect them, and finally succeeded this year by picking up a distortion in spacetime using a pair of 4km long tubes set at right angles which bounce laser beams off mirrors
I was inspired by the sheer overwhelming immensity of the discovery of gravitational waves, and after discussing the ideas and the research with the team at Cardiff, I thought it would be fantastic to create an artwork that celebrated this momentous event in human history. I was above all, inspired by the idea that we all warp. When working on the painting, I tried to imagine the data as visible waves, and then placed structures – such as binary black holes and neutron stars – into a busy universe.
The canvas hangs in the Physics Department here in Cardiff, and reproductions are available here below the video. To view of my artwork got the Gallery page.
