My most favourite example is the work by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797):
“The Alchemist Discovering Phosphorus or The Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers Stone”.
Joseph Wright of Derby in his painting (1771) “The Alchemist in search of philosopher’s stone” portrays an alchemist bowing down to his work. It captures the moment of the discovery of phosphorus in 1669 by the German Alchemist Hennig Brand. An alchemist overwhelmed by the results of his experiment.
What he sees is not he made! He extracted phosphorus in his alembic, but what he sees is light. Did Derby know which Phosphorus? Red? White? Black? Did he ever see phosphorus? I assume not. Light carries information. How was Derby able to paint the glow of phosphorus? Alchemy inspired the artist and amplified the art.
What could his mind be struggling with? Is it light or is it matter? Or light and matter? It is both. It is the duality resulted in life.
Is it why Derby named a simple alchemist’s work as philosopher’s stone? Because it is the beginning of the universe, of life, the light. A source of light is a source of life.
Let us take another example: John Rand (1801-1873), a painter and an inventor who was struggling to prevent his colours from drying invented and patented (1841) a first tube. This was even admired by August Renoir later saying that his invention enabled artists to go into the nature and mimic the nature. The result was the era of impressionism.
Digital Art on Polymers
I create my works digitally and then bring onto the surface of a transparent polymer (www.trupti.art). What are the digital works made of? Light!
Chemists identify individual chemical in a mixture of substances, mostly colourless, by chromatography where each substance can be identified by its specific colour depending upon at which wavelength it absorbs light.
My works are an attempt to do this. I call it a Transmission Chromatography.
Light is energy, but energy is colourless. A ray of light, a beam of energy if chromatographed becomes a spectrum of colours and make energy visible, perceptible and palpable. What is a light spectrum? It is energy made visible.
The relentless passage of light collides with matter and solidifies. So a struggle starts between light and matter Photons are clusters of particles containing energy. An interaction of photons travelling from an artwork to the neurons transfers the energy to the viewer.
The material – transparent polymeric colourless material struggles between light and matter. Material melts, dissolves and we see resurgence of transparent coloured polymeric material. Matter dissolves in light givers transparency. Intellect dissolves in emotion gives transparency.
We see colour. A phase of Conjuctio? Matter’s victory over Light. The bond between Light and Matter gives colour.
And the next progression into transition phase evolves to Solutio:
Is it a victory of light over matter? At the end it is the complete coalescence, amalgamation of light and matter resulting in transmutation. Energy becomes localized in the matter. Light without matter is invisible.
The printing becomes a concentrated energy with gravitational force.
However, gravity alone – like Black holes – the source of highest energy in the universe with highest gravitational force are without aura.
Because it only absorbs everything and does not reflect or transmit light, energy. Aura results from emitting, reflecting or transmitting. It is all about giving. Colour is a balanced absorption, reflection or transmission of energy making an artwork a source of bundled energy.
Is there any chemistry in music?
I was going through a guide to how to learn playing piano. Although, I do not have the faintest idea how to read music notes. At a first glance, I thought it looks like a polymer chain of e.g. Polyethylene.
Then I thought, let me try to find out what the basic of the music notes is.
It is the seven letters: c, d, e, f, g, a, h
I thought the letters sound familiar to me, but could not unscramble what it is and it kept me busy for a while. After a few days of struggle, it was my Eureka! It is the one letter code of 7 (out of 20) amino acids, the ultimate monomers of life and the first molecules found in primordial soup.
A = Alanine, C = Cysteine, D = Aspartic acid, E = Glutamic acid,
F = Phenylalanine, G = Glycine, H = Histidine
Music notes are the backbones of a composition and the genius sequencing of it what make a composition a perfect melody for human ears; an optimal combination of amino acids synthesize proteins.Amino acids are the backbones of proteins and appear in the genetic code.
An Italian Monk and Bishop von Arezzo, Guido von Arezzo (992-1050 AD) is considered the original inventor of music notes. But what was most amazing to me was, what he said 800 years before a French chemist Henri Braconnot isolated Glycine (a simplest amino acid) from hydrolysed gelatine in 1820, for the first time: „Art is mimicking nature”.
What can we call this? Prediction, prophecy? Our today’s scientific knowledge does not allow us to formulate such expression and it is a simple coincidence to draw a parallel, though an interesting one.
If we continue to play with the phenomenon, it can be extrapolated to another similarity. From the centre of a piano it is divided into two mirror imaged frequency scale, i.e. pitch. Left the Bass clef for the low tones and right for higher, the Soprano.
Most of the amino acids are chiral and have one or more chiral centre. Chiral what? Chiral, a Greek word for hand (cheir) describe the property of molecules that a molecule with a chiral centre exist as two stereoisomers which are mirror images of each other.
And if by applying some more imagination even the mathematics of frequency (Hz) ladder can be applied. The four Pythagorean hammers are also based on the weight of individual hammer and their relation to each other. Chemical molecules have their own molecular weight, i.e. a sum of atomic weight of all atoms a molecule is made of, in grammes. Surprisingly, the molecular weight of amino acids Cysteine: 12, Aspartic acid: 133, Glutamic acid: 147 and Phenylalanine: 165 are in increasing order and follow the same mathematical relation as shown below:
Frequency in (Hz) compared to Molecular Weight (g) of Amino acids
C = 264 C/C = 1 C = Cysteine 121 C/C = 1
D = 297 D/C = 1.1 D = Aspartic acid 133 D/C = 1.1
E = 330 E/C = 1.2 E = Glutamic acid 147 E/C = 1.2
F = 352 F/C = 1.3 F = Phenylalanine 165 F/C = 1.3
However, it shows again how like-minded artists and scientists approach the nature and seek simplest explanation of complex facts.
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