An Exploration of Language and the Cosmos
A deep dive into ANAT Synapse 2023 resident Alicia Sometimes' project, "Astro-Poetic Compositions."
Astro-Poetic Compositions (1) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
"Astro-Poetic Compositions" is a collaboration between prominent astrophysicist Professor Tamara Davis (AM) and artist Alicia Sometimes exploring distance, mapping, composition and the measurement of the universe through the practices of language and symbolism.
This collaboration seeks to understand how language both constructs and impedes scientific knowledge.
Backreaction - Astro-Poetic Compositions (2) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
Backreaction
Dr Leonardo Giani, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Physics at the University of Queensland was working on many things during Sometimes' residency, one focusing on Laniakea. Sometimes was fascinated with the language around Giani’s study and also the concept of "backreaction."
Backreaction - Astro-Poetic Compositions (2) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
Giani explains: "Our galaxy, the Milky Way, belongs to a supercluster of galaxies known as Laniakea. The main goal of [this] project is to estimate its gravitational backreaction or, in other words, to understand how (if at all) the latter influences our Cosmological inference."
Backreaction - Astro-Poetic Compositions (2) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
The work that goes into understanding the influences on cosmological interference intrigues Sometimes – how scientists explore type Ia Supernovae (SN~Ia) and Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF) of early-type massive galaxies amongst other things.
Backreaction - Astro-Poetic Compositions (2) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
The sound piece (with accompanying video) played around with the idea of "backreaction" and interference where many sounds were introduced into the piece as they kept changing and morphing.
Backreaction - Astro-Poetic Compositions (2) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
The more one sound bounced around, it had an effect on everything else. The idea that background noise, emanating sounds and perturbations can change everything.
Movement - Astro-Poetic Compositions (4) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
Distribution
Reading and listening to Prof Tamara Davis and her team's work on dark energy was one of many reasons Sometimes' creative pieces are on a path exploring distribution: of words, galaxy clusters, shapes and how we navigate spaces.
Sometimes has been focusing on dark energy but that is a broad church of many, many things: velocities, superclusters, distances, compositions, scales, lensing and so much more.
Distribution - Astro-Poetic Compositions (3) (2023) by Alicia SometimesAustralian Network for Art and Technology
Movement
Dark energy is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe. Most of Sometimes' poetic work was looking at how language has many definitions. What does ‘expansion’ mean exactly?
Words such as: exotic, stochastic, tightness, smoothness, puffy, flow-path, tension, scalar, resonance, eccentricities. The poet and the scientist often have different interpretations.
Words shifting. Often she had to use words standing in for something else. Like the jellyfish. Moving in space.
Alicia completed her ANAT Synapse residency in 2023. Read about the other 2023 ANAT Synapse resident, Ross Manning, here.
Image & Video Credits:
1. Astro-Poetic Compositions (2023), Alicia Sometimes.
2. Backreaction (2023), Alicia Sometimes.
3. Distribution (2023), Alicia Sometimes.
4. Movement (2023), Alicia Sometimes.
5. Alicia Sometimes photograph, courtesy of the artist.
