ROBBERT DIJKGRAAF
Sandberg Institute | Robbert Dijkgraaf (1960)
Robbert Dijkgraaf has been Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Amsterdam since 1992. He studied physics and mathematics in Utrecht, and (after an intermezzo of a year studying painting at the Rietveld Academy) obtained his doctorate in 1989 under Gerard 't Hooft. At the end of 2003 he received the prestigious Spinoza Prize.
His research group at the University of Amsterdam investigates string theory, quantum gravity and possible interfaces between mathematics and particle physics. Dijkgraaf is an internationally prominent scientist in this field.
Dijkgraaf sees the Sandberg Institute, his Free Space, as a place that has very much in common with the Zuidas and concerns itself with developments in the arts at a high quality level. He describes the Sandberg Institute as a good meeting place where people are extraordinarily open-minded; he says it's a little jewel.
He gave three lectures for students and the public that attracted tremendous interest. The lectures – on ‘time’, ‘nothing’ and ‘colour’ respectively – created quite a stir. He notices that a relatively large number of young artists are inspired by different areas of science, but while they may have heard the bell toll, they don't exactly know where the clapper is. Dijkgraaf wants to help them go further. What also strikes him is that many art students look through a filter as it were: what they mostly pick up are the things they think they can use for themselves. In other words, they don't very quickly step out of their own patterns. The further a subject is removed from an artist, the less he will want to get to work on it. For scientists, it's exactly the other way around.
Art, Science and Astonishment
Robbert Dijkgraaf
What is the relationship between art and science? This question can be posed and answered on many different levels: abstract, historic, academic. There are so many correspondences, differences and parallels, enough to write a bookcase full of deliberations and opinions. But I was struck by a very direct practical correspondence when I was first given a tour around the Sandburg Institute, a postdoctoral art programme affiliated with the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.
I had been warned that this institute might not answer to my traditional image of an art academy. The Sandberg Institute is located in a former cloister. There’s not an easel, charcoal sketch or pedestal in sight. Hardly any painting or any other conventional form of art is done. Most of the students work with modern media such as installations, video or computer animations. Or they are interested in conceptual art, and use their studio as a production house. The students come from all over the world, by the way: China, Russia, Israel, Eastern Europe. And so all discussions and lectures are conducted in English. The library contains scarcely any art books, certainly not of the traditional sort – the Internet is much more important. And the students maintain irregular schedules. At any moment of the day or night you can see them working.
It struck me at once that this institute and my own institute for theoretical physics at the University of Amsterdam are as like as two peas in a pod. The same rundown architecture, messy rooms, international mix of students and teachers, dependence on modern communication techniques. When I walk through the halls there I see the same young people staring at computer screens day and night. And what is more conceptual than pondering the fundamental laws of the cosmos? Would an alien being that landed totally unprepared upon the earth be able to tell the difference between a young artist and a theoretical physicist? Are the mathematical scribbles on the blackboards of my physics students so very different from the sketches of the young artists?
Even though there is a practical affinity, in the public mind there is an enormous gulf between the domains of art and science. As for the role of science in our society, people immediately point to its great social benefits. Innovation, the motor of the economy – those are the fashionable phrases. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine life without the achievements that science has produced in the last few centuries. We would literally fall back into the dark days of the Middle Ages – without light, without transport, without communication, without healthcare, without entertainment. The spectacular success of science and the resulting techniques are the mainstays of our society. Science and technique have established themselves in our lives down to the smallest detail – from the greenhouse effect to the SARS epidemic, from the hole in the ozone layer to elections.
On the other side, there is the dramatic loss of interest in delving into these fields any further. And not only in the Netherlands, although we are in the forefront among European countries in this respect. And interest is diminishing on all fronts – in participating in industry and research, and, more importantly, in working as a teacher at every sort of level to make others enthusiastic for the profession. A negative spiral whose consequences will be considerable.
You might wonder if the exact sciences aren’t going the way of technique itself. Our computers are becoming more and more powerful, but the complex software, all those bothersome and difficult details, those endless series of codes are conveniently hidden from our sight. Nowadays chips are designed by other chips who in turn design yet other chips, etc. etc. The modern user doesn't want to know anything about this, and would rather click on a nicely designed icon than go into the details. The zeros and ones are all neatly plastered beneath the electronic wallpaper. Who wants to learn computer programming anymore when you have Microsoft at your disposal? Are the exact sciences going underground? Are equations becoming the hieroglyphics of our times?
Yet there are aspects of science that are scarcely considered and that perhaps can arouse interest: creativity, astonishment, universality, emotion. For me, these are at the core of what science is all about. Astonishment about the world around us, how it is shaped by nature and mankind. The universality of the ideas through which mankind tries to understand the world. The creativity that is necessary in order to reach that understanding. And, finally, the emotion that ensues from this process.
In essence, mankind is a (possibly unique) mechanism in which a small part of nature, namely that collection of molecules and their interactions out of which we are all composed, reflects upon the universe itself. A little piece of the immeasurable universe that goes in for introspection. Just as a child gradually explores its surroundings and crawls out of the protective shell in which it is born, our understanding of the world around us is also growing.
For instance, in 1800 the British-German astronomer Sir Frederick William Herschell tried to investigate the temperature of different colours of light. He used a prism to split a ray of sunlight into the colours of the rainbow and held a thermometer in the different colours. He found that the violet light at one end of the spectrum was the coldest and the red light at the other end the hottest. That a tremendous discovery in itself. But then he did something which only a madman or a genius would do: he held a thermometer next to the red light, where there was nothing at all to be seen. And to his astonishment it was even hotter there! Herschell had discovered infrared light – a splendid metaphor for the role of science as eye-opener.
Where can this raw emotion of scientific discoveries be very directly experienced? Here, to my way of thinking, lies a unique possibility for an interplay between art and science: like the scientist, the artist tries to reflect a personal impression of reality as purely as possible. So I would like to propose the following challenge: Is it possible in modern art to represent the world of ideas that modern science has unlocked? Is it possible to translate that amazement into form and share it with others in this way? Can I ‘experience’ the immensity of the universe or the inconceivable amount of information stored in human DNA through an artwork? Is it possible to use the newest insights about space and time, or the bizarre laws that rule the world of elementary particles, as a source of inspiration? This is the challenge that I want to give to the students of the Sandberg Institute.
