NEWSLETTER Issue no. 14

October 2015

Contents Editorial Summer Meeting Review Physics at the Fringe The Big Draw Festival Science and the Arts The 2015 Early Career Physics Communicator Award New Committee Members Editorial John Dore – Newsletter Editor The Physics Communication Group was started in 2009 to develop a way of presenting Physics concepts to the public as a part of the remit of the Institute of Physics. Our main activities have been organised through the annual summer meeting, where various distinguished speakers have presented their ideas on a range of different topics, and also the annual November meeting that hosts the Early Career Physics Communicator Award final. These activities have been reported in a series of newsletters, along with other information and sent electronically to all members of the group.

However, since we started, there has been a significant change in the way general communications in society have developed. The increasing use of social

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media provides a more rapid and wider exchange of information and, in recognising these changes we have decided to re-consider how future newsletters should be distributed and what material they should include. It has always been a somewhat centralised publication, although we have always encouraged members to send in their own stories. As a result, we are now intending to make the newsletter a rather more ‘interactive’ publication, so that we can report the interesting ‘happenings’ in your part of the world.

I have been editing the newsletter for four years and am now about to pass on the job to two new members of the committee who plan to produce a more regular edition that will hopefully include some of the news from your area.

Further information about our new committee members can be found below along with their contact details for submitting items for inclusion in future newsletters.

Summer Meeting Review Adapted from an article on the IOP Blog: www.iop.org/news/15/jun/page_65847.html Our 2015 annual summer meeting was titled ‘Physics in Public Spaces’ and sought to bring people together to discuss how physics can be effectively communicated in public spaces, drawing on experiences of successful physics communication in museums, galleries and observatories and also investigating the links between science and the arts.

The first speaker was Prof. Arthur I. Miller who is Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London. His presentation surveyed the developing relationship between artists and scientists over the past century, noting how new technologies had often driven the emergence of new art forms. While art inspired by or exploring scientific themes was expanding, ‘artsci’, a movement that makes no distinction between art and science, was “wider in scope and more extreme”, he said. Using algorithms to make computer-generated drawings in imitation of Mondrian, or music in imitation of Bach, works had been created that many found difficult to distinguish from those by the original artists.

Prof. Arthur I. Miller

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Asked if a future computer might ever be able to create a work like Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto (written as the composer recovered from a nervous breakdown), Prof. Miller replied: “Why not?”. Echoing his book Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art, Prof. Miller contended that art, science and technology were becoming fused.

Prof. Peter Hobson, Professor of Experimental Particle Physics at Brunel University London, and artist Jayne Wilton described their collaboration on a project to represent breath. Wilton uses visual media and sound to capture the trace of breath as it moves across a surface (www.jaynewilton.com). Prof. Hobson said: “I saw Jayne’s show at the Beldam Gallery and I was particularly struck by her techniques. I thought I could assist by offering some techniques that I didn’t see being used, and we met up occasionally over the next couple of years. We applied for a Leverhulme Fellowship and she got it.”

In particular, Prof. Hobson provided Wilton with a range of optical techniques, such as Schlieren and digital holography. Wilton said that meeting practitioners of another discipline can be like an irritating grain from which a pearl can be generated.

Marek Kukula, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, described its successes with the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition and with science-fiction themed events, which appealed to the public beyond science enthusiasts. The audience for an event with poet Simon Barraclough, for example, was “98% from ‘the poetry crowd’,” he said, while a three-month exhibition on developments in photography that had been driven by astronomy drew 70,000 people.”There was pressure to make it a ‘kiddy-friendly’ and ‘family-friendly’ exhibition, but we resisted that. We aimed it at young adults,” he said.

The Science Museum was also focusing more effort on reaching an audience other than schoolchildren, its fellow of modern science, Harry Cliff, explained. The museum receives around

Prof. Peter Hobson

Marek Kukula

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three million visitors a year and its work with school groups had reached “saturation point”, he said. The only way to grow its audience beyond that was to develop its work with adults, and it had also sought to re-establish its reputation as a place to go and learn about serious science, he said.

Originally brought in to develop its Collider! exhibition (www.iop.org/news/13/sep/page_61240.html), which opened in November 2013, he said the challenges included overcoming a general fear of hard science and doing justice to a place such as CERN where the scientific artefacts were

“spectacular but enormous”, while trying to give these meaning and not just treating them as props. Solutions included recreating a 1960s/70s office corridor from CERN and making a scripted drama of a private meeting that was held just before the announcement of the Higgs boson’s discovery.

The IOP’s chief executive, Prof. Paul Hardaker, described some of the Institute’s emerging ideas for public outreach and engagement and how these might be reflected in its new home in London’s King’s Cross. He said the IOP’s strategy for 2015-19 included a commitment to increase participation in outreach activities from the current 100,000 a year to one million, with a greater focus on the 16-19 age group.

Prof. Hardaker described how discussion about public engagement had moved from a deficit model in which the emphasis was on helping the public to understand science, to one of dialogue with the public. Although the internet was important in this, it would be a mistake to see it as a panacea, he said, and around 80% of people still relied on television or radio for their information about science. “Internet-based engagement is not particularly effective: it polarises views, reinforces stereotypes and reduces the diversity of thinking,” he said.

This did not mean that there was no role for the internet in trying to close the communications gap between scientists and society, he said, and the IOP was involved in reaching schoolchildren with non-curriculum based outreach activities, which had to start in primary schools.

The IOP also needed to engage in interaction in cultural spaces, and the new building in King’s Cross would play a key part in this. The site had been chosen partly because of its nearness to organisations such as the University of the Arts and Nature Macmillan, and the refurbished building would offer more

Harry Cliff

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opportunities to draw people in – they could, for example, walk in off the street to a reception and downstairs to a gallery, lecture theatre and exhibition space. The building would have a physics-themed cafe and, it was hoped, some spaces for physics-based companies. There would also be flexible meeting rooms on the top floor and there were plans to hold around four exhibitions per year.

The footfall on the adjacent Caledonian Road was of people who were close to the IOP’s target demographic, Prof. Hardaker said, but the Institute also wanted the building to be used by the IOP’s existing members and its plan was to have rooms available for members to hire at a subsidised rate. Although the IOP’s strategy and its ideas for the new building were ambitious, it believed these were achievable through working with partners and charitable foundations, and encouraging discussions had taken place so far, he said.

Coffee break discussions

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Physics at the Fringe Sam Illingworth The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (www.edfringe.com) is the world’s largest arts festival, and the calendar highlight for many comedians, thespians and spoken word performers. It is not normally associated with physicists, but at this year’s Fringe there were many excellent examples of physics being communicated to a wide variety of audiences. From stand-up about particle physics to a musical comedy about the life of Marie Curie, the 2015 edition of the Fringe was full to bursting with exemplars of physics communication in action.

Not wanting to miss out on all of this physics-related fun, I was also involved in taking a show to this year’s Fringe, performing Peer Reviewed Poetry for a very limited run (two nights) as part of PBH’s Free Fringe (http://freefringe.org.uk/edinburgh-fringe-festival/peer-reviewed-poetry/all). In this show, professional poet Dan Simpson (https://dansimpsonpoet.wordpress.com) and I looked at the historical spat between poets and scientists in regards to who was better at communicating the true aspect of nature. This was done by mining a rather large back catalogue of ‘scientific’ poems written by poets, and ‘artistic’ poems written by scientists, including notable entries from James Clerk Maxwell and Erasmus Darwin. We are in the process of developing this show as a tour, and so I won’t give away the ending, but it is fair to say I end up somewhat softening my original hypothesis that: “science is objectively perfect and poetry is subjectively irrelevant.”

Peer Reviewed Poetry: an example of physics communication in action

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Whilst I was up in Edinburgh, I also made sure that I visited a number of other science-related shows, both for entertainment and to pick up a few pointers. My personal highlights included: the series of innovative talks organised by the Edinburgh Skeptics (http://www.edinburghskeptics.co.uk); the comedy / experiment / musical extravaganza that is The Festival of the Spoken Nerd (http://festivalofthespokennerd.com); and the free-styling brilliance of Dr Heather Berlin (neuroscientist) and Baba Brinkman (rapper), as they investigated the neurological effects of rap, in their show ‘Off the Top’ (https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/off-the-top).

All of these performances served to connect science with society in an effective and engaging manner, and helped to dispel the misnomer that scientists are poor communicators. I am already looking forward to Fringe 2016, and to the plethora of ideas that I intend to liberally ‘borrow’ from the top-class acts that I had the privilege to see.

The Big Draw Festival Steven Simpson The Big Draw festival can be a beautifully simple way to communicate physics to new audiences by utilising the links between science and art. The Royal Society recently hosted a Big Draw event for the second year running, but this time it was carefully themed on a 350 year old book and involved a much bigger programme of activities, involving many individuals and organisations working with the Royal Society.

Starting in the year 2000, the Big Draw was initially a 1-day celebration of drawing, with 180 organisations taking part. Since then, the Big Draw has exploded to the point where 2014 saw a record year with 1800 events from 1000 organisation throughout the entire month of October. The key message of the festival is that 'drawing can bring excitement and fresh thinking to any context' - any context, like science.

The recent Royal Society Big Draw event called Seeing Closer, on 17 October 2015, celebrated the 350th anniversary of Robert Hooke's Micrographia (https://royalsociety.org/events/2015/10/big-draw). Often referred to as the first popular science book, Micrographia was Hooke's observations of the world through lenses, so Seeing Closer was a free day exploring the science behind making observations of the microscopic world, through art and imagery related to Micrographia.

“We felt this was a wonderful event for sparking the curiosity and creativity of young people”

- a family visiting Seeing Closer

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The day included so many activities that listing them all would take a lot of room, so here are some highlights: drop in microscopy workshops run by The Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge; hands on children's activities explaining how lenses work by Little House of Science; crash courses in scientific illustration from Mell Fisher; lectures on Hooke and microscopy; and a build your own microscope workshop. The latter workshop was the one I was running all day, making microscopes from cardboard, a tiny lens and a smartphone. This demonstration of how simple science can be was really popular and there was an inspiringly diverse range of people taking part.

The number of visitors at the Royal Society Big Draw event was almost double the previous year, and a surprising amount of feedback wanted more activities, despite an expanded programme. If you want to be involved with a Big Draw event, you could either contact the people at Big Draw to get started on hosting your own event, or you could join up with an organisation that already hosts one, like the Royal Society. If you want to know more about the event or say about your own experience of combining physics and art, please get in touch (Steven.Simpson@royalsociety.org). You could also explore #sciart on Twitter.

Science and the Arts John Dore – Newsletter Editor There has been much more interest in the inter-relations of science and the arts in recent times, apart from our own focus at the Annual Meeting. A number of events, books and articles have appeared. We present a brief digest of some activities for your interest but you may know of others, so let us know and we can include them in the next newsletter.

Events:

Light and Dark Matters at Tate Modern

www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/eventseries/light-and-dark-matters

Over twenty four hours at Tate Modern leading artists, scientists, philosophers, theorists and the public come together to debate, share and uncover our contemporary experience of light, dark and dark matter.

“He [son] is having so much fun he asks why we have to leave and if he can sleep here”

- a parent visiting Seeing Closer

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What are the many forms of light and dark that surround us? How do we harness this energy and what do we imagine for the future? Explore these questions and more through sunrise and sunset walks, talks and discussions and collaborative workshops.

Part of the International Year of Light in collaboration with the Institute of Physics.

Images:

Art in Science

A computer-generated picture of diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA); the colours in the fractal pattern represent the probability of the next atom arriving at that position.

Articles:

The Future of Science…Is Art?

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_future_of_science_is_art

To answer our most fundamental questions, science needs to find a place for the arts.

DLA image courtesy of Gene Stanley

“The great living composer, G. Ligeti has written that ‘fractals are the most complex ornaments ever, in all the arts, like the Book of Kells and the Alhambra. They provide exactly what I want to discover in my own music: a kind of ‘organic development’.”

- Mandelbrot

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When two tribes meet: collaborations between artists and scientists

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/aug/21/collaborations-between-artists-and-scientists

Science and art are often considered opposites – so what happens when top practitioners in each field collaborate?

From STEM to STEAM: Science and Art Go Hand-in-Hand

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/from-stem-to-steam-science-and-the-arts-go-hand-in-hand

Though many see art and science as somewhat at odds, the fact is that they have long existed and developed collaboratively.

Books:

Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art – by Arthur I Miller

www.amazon.co.uk/Arthur-I-Miller/e/B001IXQ46W/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

Art + Science Now: How scientific research and technological innovation are becoming key to 21st-century aesthetics – by Stephen Wilson

www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Science-Now-technological-21st-century/dp/0500289956/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Artscience – by David Edwards

www.amazon.co.uk/Artscience-David-Edwards/dp/0674034643/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Strange and Charmed: Science and the Contemporary Visual Arts Paperback – by Sian Ede (Editor), A. S. Byatt (Preface)

www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Charmed-Science-Contemporary-Visual/dp/090331987X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445505299&sr=1-1

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Art and Science – by Sîan Ede

www.amazon.co.uk/ebooks/dp/B00OKXLVBA/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445505299&sr=1-2

The 2015 Early Career Physics Communicator Award A date for your diary! The submissions are in and the short-listing is underway to select the finalists for this year’s Early Career Physics Communicator Award. The award event is to be held on Monday 23rd November at the IOP Portland Place with our guest judge and keynote speaker Mark Miodownik: www.markmiodownik.net.

If you have not yet picked up a copy, Mark’s book Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape our Man-made World won the Physics World Book of the Year for 2014 and has been getting lots of attention, including from Bill Gates: www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Stuff-Matters?WT.mc_id=07_23_2015_StuffMatters_BG-TW_&WT.tsrc=BGTW

Registration details and information about attending the award event will be circulated to the Physics Communicators Group membership very soon and we hope to see you at the event.

New Committee Members Following a call for nominations earlier in the year we are pleased to announce that following our 2015 annual summer meeting we have added three new members to our committee, two of them introduce themselves below:

Steven Simpson

I grew up in a seaside town in North Yorkshire where, from an early age, I was fascinated with some of the most scientifically challenging questions known to civilisation, such as: ‘Why does my sand castle keep collapsing?!’

Mark Miodownik

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Equipped with this honest fascination, I eventually ventured away from the seaside and completed an M.Phys. in Mathematics and Physics combined from the University of York.

Now I’m the Outreach Officer at the Royal Society where I work to help scientifically inspire young people by working with

schools and colleges across the UK. Regarding the communication of science (and physics), I’m particularly keen on the potential to connect with new people by using creative methods to embed science into everyday life. Whilst a member of the committee, I hope to connect with and support the great physics communicators out there and also the upcoming stars. You can find and connect with me on Twitter (@scienceunnamed).

Sam Illingworth

Sam is a lecturer in Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). After receiving an MPhys in Physics with Space Science & Technology and a PhD in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Leicester, he went to Japan for a couple of years on a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation to study the relationship between theatre and science. Upon his return he undertook a postdoc at the University of Manchester, where he made measurements of greenhouse gases using aircraft, satellites and drones, before taking up his current position at MMU.

Steven (right) in action at the Big Draw, demonstrating the tiny lens to the microscope builders

(see the article above for further details about this event)

Sam drinking a coffee in the ‘Evil Eye’ pub in York

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Sam’s current research interests involve investigating the links between science & poetry, and developing effective communication strategies for scientists via theatrical technique. Sam also enjoys performing and writing poetry, some of which can be read on his website (http://www.samillingworth.com), and is quite fond of writing about himself in the third person. You can also find him on Twitter (@samillingworth).

Feedback

The committee welcomes comments on the activities described above and suggestions for other activities. Please contact the Secretary Chris Sinclair directly (christopher.sinclair@ucl.ac.uk) or through MyIOP (http://my.iop.org).

The Group’s webpage is: http://pcom.iop.org.

The Group’s Twitter handle is: @IOPPhysComm

Newsletter Do you have any news that could be included in our next newsletter? If you would like to include something in future editions of this newsletter please send copy to Steven Simpson (Steven.Simpson@royalsociety.org) or Sam Illingworth (S.Illingworth@mmu.ac.uk).

Joining the Group To join the group please log onto MyIOP (http://my.iop.org), navigate to the relevant Network for the Group and select Sign up for this network. Alternatively please contact the membership department. All groups are free to join, however to join a group you must first be a member of the Institute. Details of how to join the Institute can be found at www.iop.org.

This newsletter is also available on the web and in larger print sizes. The contents of this newsletter do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Institute of Physics, except where explicitly stated. The Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, W1B 1NT, UK. Tel: 020 7470 4800 Fax: 020 7470 4848