Week 6 – no comment
I have to leave you. Again. Soon.
Posts from the ‘Science’ category
Week 5 – no comment
With brand new captions
Astronomer Johannes Kepler: birth town Weil der Stadt
Above/featured: Johannes Kepler memorial at Marktplatz in Weil der Stadt. Photo, 21 Jul 2024 (P15).
I first heard the name “Kepler” way back in high school. I had no idea “Kepler” would embody a winding trail of education, knowledge, a “first life” (career), and a deep lifelong appreciation of science. Thankfully, what’s transformed has been a “second life” opened to another world with more questions, some of which have led to unexpected places. Perhaps, the cost is a solitary quest for answers, but ultimately, my motivation has always been clear: it’s because I need to know.
In the same way Kepler, like many others before and after, looked up at night and asked a simple question: “why do stars and planets appear and move as they do in the sky?”
To the here and now, my questions begin and land on our own planet.
For example, where was Kepler born? Where is this place? Are there any traces in those spaces?
But first, who was Kepler?
Vienna Albertina: Brigitte Kowanz, light is what she saw
Above/featured: “Light is what we see”, 1994/2019. (A part of Speed of Light/4m with the digits 6-3 appears at the right edge.)
Austrian artist Brigitte Kowanz (1957–2022) held an enduring fascination for light. Light wasn’t simply the medium through which information propagated. Light itself was also a tool and mould for illumination, reflection, and even introspection. There’s something in her light-based artworks which allude not only to her philosophy and worldview, but also to her clear interest for science. Her works also anticipate and explore timely themes, including what it means to live in an information-rich society that fully embraces digital habitats and virtual spaces. There’s a spirit of fun and “lightness” mixed with a serious appreciation for the history of technology with her frequent use of Morse code. To me, Kowanz’s body of work is a wonderful manifestation of the 1964 statement by Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is the message.”
I arranged my 2025 stay in Vienna to coincide with the final week of the Francesca Woodman exhibition and the beginning of an exhibition on Brigitte Kowanz, both held at the Albertina gallery-museum. Since Kowanz’s passing in 2022, the first major solo exhibition was a retrospective of her work titled “Light is what we see”. The Albertina has fast become a favourite, having seen an exhibition of photographer Gregory Crewdson’s work in the summer of 2024.
The strange and familiar (BA11)
(nerding out at SETI)
I hadn’t seen J and J in almost 13 years.
The last time took place in La Serena, Chile at the end of 2011. Not only was it goodbye to Gemini South and Chile after 5 years, I said farewell to astronomy after almost 20 years.
But time is a tricky thing, and the moment had arrived: I had another promise to keep.
Fast forward to 2024, and I’m in the Bay Area. After reaching out a number of weeks ago, it’s wonderful to see them again after many years. They’ve kindly invited me to the SETI Institute where they work. I split from day-to-day science, but science never left, because I’m nerding out in a big way at the home of a big scientific effort: the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
I made all photos above with an iPhone15 on 8 Nov 2024 (travel day 11 in the Bay Area). This post composed with Jetpack for iOS appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com.
Fotoeins Fotografie 