roger malina presents arguments for our transition to a data culture which is data rich but meaning poor-presented at the Bogota Planetarium May 14 2016

2. The Dark Universe
Making Science Intimate in the New Data Culture
Roger F Malina
Astrophysicist
Art Journal Editor
Art-Science Researcher

3. The Narrative This Afternoon
• Why many astronomers are unhappy today
•The discovery of dark matter in the universe
• The realization that human beings are very badly
designed to understand the universe.
• How this idea applies to other understandings
• The coming data culture
•Soon your cell phone will know as much as you do
• How artists can help make data intimate
• The new “Leonardo”s

4. Some Confessions
• My Disturbed Childhood
• My Disturbed Career and Professional Life
• My Beliefs
• I am a positivist, scientific realist
• I am an Atheist
• But I believe that science is only one valid way of knowing
• That the ethics of curiosity determines the direction and content
of current science at a given time
• That we must combine ‘ways of knowing”– eg art and science
• We must embed science in our communities – open science

5. My Disturbed Childhood
Frank Malina, …….Kinetic Artist
• ,
• .

6. Frank Malina, Research Engineer

7. A student project !!
90 km in 1946
The First Successful high
altitude rocket

8. Frank Malina
research engineer
● My father led the team that
launched the first object into
outer space
● 1949 Reached 400 Kilometers
as second stage to captured V2
● Co founder and first director
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, co
founder Aerojet General

9. My Father was an art-science Hybrid

10. Second Generation
Rocketeer
I led the NASA team that
build the Extreme
Ultraviolet Observatory
1992

11. Third Generation Rocketeer: Yuri Malina 2008

12. My Disturbed Career
•Physics and Optics
•Astrophysics
• Editor of Art Publication “Leonardo’ since 1982
•Art-Science Researcher
•Today I lead a research lab that creates both art
and science at the same time
•Astronomers, Neurobiologists, Geoscientists
•Composers, Artists, Sound Artists….and secret
poets

13. We are creating Data
Stethoscopes
and Data Forests
• https://drive.google.com/drive/folder
s/0B3O03gcq-sQeeGsxU29ZUlRhUzA

14. Visual and
Aural
Mathematics
see Michele Emmer,
Visual Mind
Also
Linda Henderson 4th
Dimension in Art
Leonardo Books 14

15. My Career in Science
– Director NASA EUVE Astronomy
Observatory
– Director Observatory Marseille
Provence
– Telescope Development
– Data Analysis….BIG DATA
– Satellite Operations
– Cosmology Group

16. *
The Leonardo
Organisations
• My Career in Art
• Promoting and documenting the
interactions of the arts, sciences and
new technologies.
• Scientists deeply engaged in the arts
and humanities
• Artists Seeking to appropriate science
and technology for cultural purposes
• Scholars studying the interaction of
the arts, sciences and technology

17. Hybrid teams

18. Why many astronomers are
unhappy and embarrassed
today

20. Big Data Transition in Astronomy
From one galaxy at a time To 450 million at a time

21. What happened to Astronomy after
it entered the big data era ?
• We discovered that 95% of
the content of the universe is
dark
• It emits no light of any kind
• It is of an un-known nature
–Dark Matter
–Dark Energy

22. • We have moved from a world of data
scarcity to a world of data plenty
• 1992: Historian Daniel Boorstin:
• 150 years ago:
• Meaning rich and data poor
• Today :
• Data rich and meaning poor.
• « Epistemological Inversion »
• Cf Copernican Revolution
• A new Phenomenology
• New data experts will be artists,
designers and humanists

23. We underestimate how our nature
impacts what we know and can know
• Einstein:
•“The universe of ideas is
just as independent of the
nature of our experience as
clothes are of the form of the
human body”
• Varela:
•All knowledge is conditioned
by the structure of the
knower
• Stelarc and his “third arm”:

24. Modern Science Doesnt Make Common Sense
• Most knowledge about our
world now comes through
scientific instruments and data
not directly to the senses
• Most of the world is’nt on
human “scales”
• Our intuition, languages,
metaphors, are built training on
the wrong data
• analogous change in culture ?

25. Arrhenius 1896
On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in
the Air upon the Temperature of the
Ground

26. 26
By the 1970s CO2 increase measured

27. Katherine Morizaki: Inside Outside Handbag

29. Are we becoming a data culture ?
• The Stone Age
• The Bronze Age
• The Iron Age
•Will the Antropocene be the data age
?
• We can only study the universe with
big data
•We only know about climate change
because of big data

30. A Data Culture ?
Big Data Raises Many Cultural questions
• In Astronomy we know that most of
the content of the universe is dark
• Does not emit light of any kind
• By analogy
• As we Enter a Data Culture, much
knowledge will not be accessible to
our senses
• The crucial role of art science
hybridity to translate data to
sensory experience
• Artists Making Data Intimate
• Artists
• Making Science Intimate
• Big Data poses problems
– Many important things in our
societies are not yet in big data
– Many things will never be in big
data
– DARK CULTURE ? That can never
be in data

31. one antarctic night
robotic astronomical telescope in antarctica

33. Making
Science
Intimate:
Artist
Marcel-li in
Zero Gravity

34. A comment on Professional Hybrids:
……………………………………. T shaped and “Pi” Shaped
•

35. Contemporary Hybrids
Francois-Joseph Lapointe
PhD Molecular Biology and Phd
Dance
Carl Djerassi
PhD Organic Chemistry,
Novelist/Playwright

36. Hybrid Collaborations
• String Theorist Lisa Randall
• Collaboration with Composer
Hector Parra and Multi-media
artist Matthew Richie
• Hypermusic; A Projective Opera
in Seven Planes
• Premiered Centre Pompidou
• « Translating the world of
theoretical physics in a way that
appeals to scientists »

37. A final idea: The danger of framing metaphors

38. In the Tree of Knowledge
The Two Cultures Metaphor

39. Changing our Metaphors as we enter the Data Culture

40. Art Science
Collaboration to
Make Science
and Data Intimate
and make the
careers of hybrid
professionals
possible

41. Thank You and See you in Space