From Zero to Infinity - Portfolio 5

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Event Horizon, 2021

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

Quantum mechanics doesn't get along easily with any other major theory of physics, including the general theory of relativity. It functions in its own quirky kind of reality to mysteriously integrate with the rest of physics. Albert Einstein recognized this when he famously quipped that "God does not play dice with the universe", which wasn't a reference to a personal god or an affirmation of destiny, but rather a metaphoric expression of his discomfort with how bizarre

quantum mechanics is as a theory. General relativity holds that the constituent informational content comprising our universe—what we call "matter" and "energy"—cannot be accelerated beyond the speed of light. But in some way or other this is precisely what seems to occur where space-time is thought to fall apart at an indeterminate spherical boundary surrounding a black hole. This teleological Rubicon of sorts precludes any event on one side from affecting any observer on the other side. The so-called event horizon is an ephemeral quantum membrane that enshrouds a domain where the mass of a black hole is squashed into an infinitely dense locus of infinitesimally small volume and space-time gets so extremely distorted near this singularity that it extends the hole into the future. Here exists a physically illogical continuum of non-discrete

apparent states in which cause doesn't necessarily precede effect and the past won't necessarily determine the future even though time travel becomes possible. The event horizon is our protection against obliteration into infinite nothingness by such unknowable physics.

Corona, 2021

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

“God does not throw dice.” This was Albert Einstein’s insistent mantra in response to Werner Heisenberg’s proposition that, at the quantum level, existence is essentially a statistical process. But even chaos has structure, chance tending to parse itself out into discrete packets of probability. These packets determine fundamental sub-atomic interactions that define atomic patterns that in turn assemble into molecular configurations that seek organization into ordered recurrences of increasing complexity and scale. Physical existence at every level has thus been encoded into quantized packages: simple binary “decisions” aggregate into higher orders of “information”; electrons shifting from one discrete energy level to another give rise to the regular crystalline lattice units of a rock or the “code of life” embedded in a strand of DNA; reassembly of matter into different configurations releases units of energy that define the rhythms of existence we know as time. Falling into this game with no choice but to play, it is we who are left to throw the dice.

A Natural Dynamic, 2019

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

The ripples in water disturbed by a falling pebble. A wind-whipped plant stalk’s circular inscription in the sand. The oval entrance of a burrowing animal’s tunnel. The lunar and solar discs. The human psyche’s antediluvian experience with these and countless other natural circles

very likely played a crucial role in attuning the mind to innately respond to the symmetry, economy and complementarities that inform the deep design of the cosmos. The circle inspired the invention of the wheel, which inspired the invention of interlocking gears, these serving as the foundational technology making most modern machinery possible. In mathematics, study of the circle gave rise to geometry and calculus, and celestial mechanics. Most ancient philosophers and medieval scholars of early science, particularly geometry and astrology and astronomy, held that something intrinsically “divine” or “perfect” was to be found in circles — so much so that for millennia the heavens, both physical and metaphysical, were modeled as mis en scènes of

compounded circles. Even when publication of Newton’s Principia Mathematica yanked our concept of physical laws from Platonic and Pythagorean static perfection into the vibrancy of constant change through time, daring us to imagine ever-expanding vistas of possibilities, our collective primordial fascination with the straightforward but powerful metaphysical statement expressed by the circle was left largely intact. Having grown sophisticated enough to calculate that seemingly elliptic planetary orbits actually course along much more complicated helical paths if they are considered within the frame of the total volume of the known universe, our

deliberations generally still have their origins in the venerable circle.

Gravity, 2019

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

Gravity expresses itself as an attractive “force” that is attenuated in direct proportion to the square of the distance from a given mass. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is in a very real sense a theory of gravity, positing that it happens when mass and space interact, mass telling space-time how to curve and space-time telling mass how to move. Despite experimental confirmations of his prediction that gravity behaves as a wave-like disturbance in space-time that can alter even the trajectory of light — the bending of starlight demonstrated first in 1919 followed almost a century later with the observation of gravity waves — our understanding of gravity beyond its phenomenology hasn’t changed all that much since Isaac Newton first asked why things fall

toward the earth. We still don’t know whether it is a particle-wave duality akin to light, and physicists continue their struggle to fit gravity into a Grand Unified Theory of forces. What we do have is a lot of experience in perceiving and being subject to its physical effects, “falling” or being “dragged” or “pulled” or “tugged” in relation to “fields” or “wells” or “strings”. These vectors completely infiltrate all of space, the paths of their inexorable convergence toward every

center of mass constantly tugged and warped and intertwined in response to the intricate universal ballet of all matter.

Butterfly Effect, 2020

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

The butterfly effect is a chaos theory notion that describes the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which small changes in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The term is closely associated with the meteorological modeling work of Edward Lorenz, which showed that a tornado’s exact time of formation and exact path taken could be profoundly influenced by minor atmospheric perturbations that occurred weeks earlier. Initial condition data rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner failed to reproduce the results of runs with non-rounded initial condition data, such very small changes in initial conditions leading to significantly different outcomes. Systems in this model are only predictive up to a specific future, beyond which reducing the error in the initial conditions won’t increase predictability so long as the error isn’t set at zero. The idea that small causes may lead to large effects in general and more specifically in weather was recognized earlier by French mathematician/engineer Henri Poincaré and American mathematician/philosopher Norbert Wiener, but what came to be known as the Lorenz Attractor bestowed this concept with more quantitative power. The function suggested that deterministic and non-deterministic systems

could be observationally indistinguishable from one another in terms of predictability. This argument led quantum physicists to more confidently challenge the idea that our universe is deterministic. It is undeniably fitting that graphical representation of this effect bears a striking resemblance to a pair of butterfly wings.

Energy Made Visible, 2020

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

Isaac Newton poured unflinching attention into an astonishing range of concerns over a six decade intellectual career, though little is known about what motivated him or informed his sense of self. Analyzing the diversity of his interests is further compounded by the distinct contrasts in the way Newton approached his work within each subject. His most celebrated efforts in optics

and orbital mechanics fall under the mantle of modern physics, seen even in his time as coupled. Still, physics embraced two differing “Newtonian” conventions from his Opticks and Principia: meticulous empirical experimentation through the former and a pivoting out of the latter upon the

fulcrum of mathematical theory. Harboring a deep distrust of the hypothetical method — putting forth a supposition that reaches beyond known phenomena and testing it by deducing observable conclusions from it — Newton insisted that theoretical elements be resolved by specific phenomena, to effectively constrain provisional aspects of theory to inductive generalizations borne out of those particular facts. It’s not a metaphoric stretch to venture that, in the process of satisfying curiosity, he viewed coming to understand what you see as being what you truly get more as an art than dry intellectual interrogation. Indeed, fascinating parallels to Newton’s legacy emerged in the visual arts more than 250 years later in the life and work of abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, and both enjoyed the distinction of still being in their prime while coming to be widely acknowledged as masters of presenting energy made visible.

Ark, 2019

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

The fable of Noah’s Ark relates the preservation and perpetuation of life on Earth. Humankind has for several millennia shown itself capable of creating numerous new strains and even a few new species of plants and animals through cross-breeding, and more recently taken its first steps into manipulation of bacterial and viral genetic material to bring about new unicellular forms of life. We have a long way to go before we can juggle more complex genomes to recreate endangered or extinct genomes, let alone viable novel multi-cellular life forms. But would this be a wise course to take? Scientists widely recognize a real danger in short-circuiting natural

evolutionary processes to favor the exegesis of life forms incapable of arising or surviving on their own, or worse yet, those lacking any natural constraints on their adaptive capacity. How ironic it would be if our genetic tinkering were to someday bring about the reality of sharing the world with organisms drawn straight from the bestiaries of fantastic and mythical creatures that were long ago only imagined.

Extinction,  2019

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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The universe is built on fundamentally simple and predictable principles, but it’s still a risky place in which to live because so much is left to chance. It got its start 13.8 billion years ago, the Milky Way Galaxy forming roughly 400 million years later and residual dust and gas from the galaxy’s birth of our Sun 4.8 billion years afterwards eventually coalescing over the next few hundred million years into several planetary masses. A few of these molten blobs ended up orbiting about their maternal star in a zone fortuitously bestowed with a convergence of myriad conditions that fostered the formation of complex organic molecules. We’re still trying to sort out exactly why over the following 2.5 billion years Earth emerged as the system’s primary incubator of biological diversity, but we do know that sundry adolescent Solar mood swings along with plenty of catastrophic asteroid and meteor strikes, massive volcanic eruptions and natural climate shifts kept the situation iffy over another couple billion years. Indeed, the last 500 million years saw five mass extinction episodes that wiped out 70% to 96% of extant species. A recent new epoch of sharply accelerating biological annihilations has eliminated as much as half the planet’s biodiversity. Alarmingly, this latest round appears to have been triggered by less than 300 years’ worth of activities by the very species that brought the predicament to light. Extinction is already part of the primordial calculus of existence; there doesn’t seem to be a pressing need for plugging

in additional equations designed to “recalibrate” the prevailing cosmic wisdom.

Push, 2020

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

With a few strokes of the pen, Albert Einstein gleaned what it means to be in his masterfully laconic and eternally memorable equation, E = mc2. Energy and mass are distinctly different albeit inter-convertible manifestations of the same aspect of existence: disturbances coaxing probabilities into coherent patterns that characterize quantum through Newtonian circumstances throughout the universe. All matter is quantized into the molecular, which is quantized into the

atomic, which is quantized into the sub-atomic, which is quantized into the unimaginably minuscule but insistent spatial-temporal spans of influence exerted by discrete hubs of charge and spin states. Just as the alchemist’s principal pursuit to understand the process of transmutation by which a given expression of matter could be fused or reunited with its divine or original form ran the risk of becoming knotted in unduly attending to the “thingness” of chemical products, so too might the physicist’s quest to amalgamate the fundamental forces of nature into a Grand Unified Theory be diverted along overly complicated paths toward a more elementary truth. Perhaps the

ceaseless cosmic choreography between matter, space and time is best explained by formless disturbances pushing one another into condensations of still more stopgap turmoil.

The Particle, 2019

Victor Raphael & Clayton Spada

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Pigment inks on watercolor paper (inkjet print)

The discovery of the Higgs boson through a series of experiments concluded on 4 July, 2012 has been heralded as one of the most significant scientific achievements, not only for its elaboration of the final missing piece into the standard model of fundamental particles and forces to which physicists have turned for explaining the basis of material existence, but also as an impressive

demonstration of the predictive prowess of inductive thinking. The existence of this particle was hypothesized more than 40 years previous, its properties laid out in exquisite detail — right down to the rates it should decay into various combinations of other particles. The standard model isn’t the last word on fundamental physics, as it doesn’t encompass the force of gravity, but lacking

similar predictions to test next, particle physicists now wonder if they’ve played their best hand with the so-called “god particle”. The standard model might be all the inner workings of the universe that nature is disposed to divulge. They needn’t worry, for every question answered is yet another particle of knowledge which inspires the next question.