Monday, September 8, 2008

How physics influenced the development of surrealism

I have long argued that all, not just most, of the artistic world should be patentable. The formal arguments aside, based on the growing science and engineering of art and entertainment, I firmly believe that one of the largest, most successful engineering-design product company in the world is Disney, and I mean for all of their products. Part of my argument is based on the numerous links back and forth between art and science, links too deep and numerous for a patentability line to be drawn - i.e., scientists are artist who use numbers instead of paint or notes. One such deep link, noted in a variety of books and theses, is between physics and surrealism. A new book published by Yale University Press titled "Surrealism, Art and Modern Science" by Gavin Parkinson, furthers the documentation of this linkage. One of Parkinson's arguments is that some of the founders of surrealism, including Salvador Dali, were inspired by the poetic attempts by astrophysicist Arthur Eddington to explain Einstein's relativity to the public, leading to such works as the very famous timeclock-melting "Persistence of Memory".

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