2023-2024 Fall

Prof: Christopher G. Tully

This course offers a bird’s eye view of 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. We will trace the history of the Universe from the earliest initial conditions that we can tangibly infer based on the physics of what we observe in the Universe today. Students will be asked to develop a short film clip describing the cosmic history starting with weekly short essay assignments on elements of cosmic history. No prerequisites in math or physics are required. This course is about learning something meaningful about the physics that governs the early period of the Universe and being able to convey that understanding to others.

Making Quantum Research Films

The research filmmaking exercises provide the students with concrete immersive experiences on which might form their choices for future research, augment the students’ experience and provide the highest level of assisted learning. Cognitive competence for quantum thinking can be educated by finding new strategies of representation and expression via 360-degree, immersive filmmaking from an environmental perspective in a radical break with the classic single fixed-point of view and tangible-object fetishism habitual to the mind. Making quantum research films enable students to use their imagination counterintuitively, so that the mind can adjust to the extreme conditions of quantum systems of non-tangible relationality and to non-directional spatial-temporal conceptions.

Quantum Physics Image Bank

Tully and Kiss also collaborate on assembling a moving image repertoire (a collection of digital video clips). Such an archive of short clips of telescopic or simulated images should serve as a moving image-dictionary for quantum physics while the filmmaking exercises in architectonic rhetoric and dramaturgy will teach how to string the vocabulary units together syntactically. The quantum physics image bank will also archive the students’ short research films.