small worlds

[devi]

Popping in briefly from the spin cycle that is life at the moment to say: if you're in Oxford before the 6th of April, go check out the Small Worlds exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science - and thanks to ar_gemlad for pointing me at it. Hundreds of weird, beautiful, mesmerising images from their collection of microscope slides, with poems, animations and other stuff inspired by them. Glimpses of a strange land not far away. The poems have clunky moments, but just as many where they hit spots I'd never managed to articulate by myself in all my thinking about Big Things and Tiny Things these last six months or so.

From a poem called "The Voice of Scale":

I am the immensity not only of the sky
But of the vertiginous gap between immense and tiny;
I am the nebula's terror when it thinks of the atom.

Yes. YES! Exactly.

Comments

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

A very wise man once said You are the centre of the universe, and you are utterly insignificant.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Exactly! In fact, there's a poem at the exhibition called "The Centre of Everything" which says pretty much that.

There's a great peace and sense of perspective that comes with realising just how tiny you are.

[vardebedian.livejournal.com]

That's just wonderful. Do you have the whole thing?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

All the poems are on the website - I think in audio form. They're by a guy called Will Holloway.

The poems include other wonderful stuff like an imaginary world where tardigrades evolved to sentience and built starships. I love tardigrades.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

They're on Broad Sheet (http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/about/index.htm?broadsheet) number 6, as well as audio files on the Small Worlds website.

I saw this and thought of You

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Poke

Re: I saw this and thought of You

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

You're the second person to point me at that. I should really take the hint.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I always assumed that atoms were nebulae, just on a different scale.

In fact, a neat and self-contained theory of the nature of the universe might be that the whole of it is completely contained within its tiniest part, a snake eating its own tail.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

That's a theory that crops up in fractal theory, kabbalah, high ceremonial magic... all over the place. "As above, so below."

And yeah, I get a big kick out of the fact that atoms look like tiny solar systems.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

But not just "as above, so below", but actually "above==below". Like Feynman's madcap theory that every electron in the universe might be the same electron, zigzagging through time. Every view of the universe might be the same view, but from closer or further away. If I learned one thing from "Life of Pi", it's "talk as much rubbish as you like, as long as it makes for a better story".

You should watch Hungarian film "Hukkle" (Hiccup) if you ever get a chance by the way. It's a rural murder mystery without dialogue, seemingly told from the point of view of an alien eye incapable of discriminating between the humanly "important/unimportant". There are lots of extended shots of bees and frogs and things. I think you'd like it.