Consider Bookhling

Brief post amidst a mild snowstorm nursing a mug of hot chocolate:

The prominent particle physicist/cosmologist Lisa Randall is apparently hard at work writing an opera with the artist Matthew Ritchie, according to a detailed interview on the Boston Globe. The opera is an hour-long piece between two performers with the title of “Hypermusic Prologue: A projective opera in seven planes”, obviously having to do with the physicist’s expertise in the field of physics.

I have mixed feelings about this, since I hope this to be a good musical piece as well as something that’s scientifically meaningful. Though I must say I do welcome the increasing exposure of ‘artscience’ in increasingly mainstream spotlight. I’ll certainly try to watch it when it comes out, though at the moment it seems they are not planning on bringing it stateside. 

A colleague of mine jokingly pointed out that the mediums of science and opera both share a similarity in being hard to comprehend. I certainly hope this work will end up being simply beautiful in artistic standpoint instead of becoming an intellectual tryst of one of the most educated people on the planet. 

P.S. I attended the ITP 2008 winter show yesterday, held at the NYU school of arts. It was amazing. I felt like a child in a toy store, except that these toys remixed melodies and mixed cocktails. I took bunch of cellphone pictures which are admittedly grainy. I’ll post them up with description of the event soon.