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The Science-Art Festival was held in Murwillumbah, NSW over seven
nights between March 5 and April 2, 2000. The Festival featured seminars,
art exhibitions, an open forum, and "A Concert, Song, Dance, Extravaganza
portraying Science-Art." The aim of the Festival and of its presenters,
the Science-Art Research Centre, was "to develop a dialogue in the
community to promote unity between science and art."
The Science-Art Research Centre of Australia Inc, based in Uki, northern
New South Wales, is responsible for the discovery of Creative Physics,
a new science
of "fundamental physics principles" developed from the "Classical
Epicurean Science for ethical ends", which acts to balance Newtonian physics.
Remarkably, this balancing of physical sciences is achieved without any recourse
to the major discoveries of the past 100 years, and exists without the need to
account for the theories of relativity or quantum mechanics.
Creative Physics is rooted in the conviction that the two cultures of art
and science must be reunited, after centuries of being artificially separated
by
the teachings of the Christian church. In its present state, modern physics is
a flawed and incomplete system because it fails to incorporate human emotion
and creativity. Similarly, life science is incompatible with the linear geometry
of most modern technology. On the other hand, a new discovery such as fractal
geometry "represents the expression of the life force in our world." The
Centre seeks to promote the development of these "ethical geometries".
In ancient Greece these geometries were embodied in formulations such as the
golden mean, which could explain internal and external worlds alike. As the Centre
explains it: "The geometries of musical harmonics were used to explain how
atomic movement generated feelings of creative thought whilst other geometries
were used to explain that the properties of the material atom could destroy civilization." Through
these means Creative Physics seeks to identify the physical laws that govern
universal creativity.
It is the aim of the Centre to demonstrate how Creative Physics forms the fundamental
principles that underlie and unite fields of research as diverse as life sciences,
physics, the science-art synergy, ethical legal science, ethical economic development
and community design. In 1995 the Science-Art Research Centre was awarded the
status of an Approved Research Institute by the Australian government.
The Centre's founder is the artist Robert Pope, who has a background in oil and
mineral exploration in outback Australia in the 1960s. For over thirty years
he has worked to develop the tenets of ancient Greek art philosophy into a framework
for a discipline of science that allows for human creativity, and to convey scientific
principles through art.
In 1988, Pope was appointed Artist-in-Residence to the Faculty of Medicine
at the University of Sydney to work on the campus alongside a team of cancer
researchers.
The result of this collaboration was the proposal of a theory that the propagation
of cancer cells was influenced by a universal low-level energy field, linking
electromagnetic and gravitational forces. Creative Physics later developed this
theory to establish that all natural phenomena is permeated with a background
field of life-sustaining energy, whose properties concentrate into atomic substance
and form the basis of consciousness. The field is in turn influenced by "energetic
vibrational patterns" - whether they be physical, mental or emotional -
forming in effect a feedback between alterations of consciousness and their plastic
manifestations.
In 1994 Pope's work was validated when the Centre announced the discovery
of
new physics laws governing optimum (human) biological growth and development,
published in a book the Centre is proud to say was "internationally declaimed".
In the following years, an international team of scientists discovered "a
vast new biological science and technology", as had been predicted by Pope
is his modifications to Leonardo da Vinci's "Theory of Knowledge".
Recent advances in biomedical nanotechnology are claimed by the Centre as corroborating
Pope's new science of medicine, based upon the ancient Greek concepts of good
and evil.
Professor Barry Ninham of the Australian National University has written
that
Pope's work "encompassed a revolution of thought as important to science
and society as the Copernican and Newtonian revolutions." Robert Pope received
an Outstanding People of the 20th Century Award from the International
Biographical Centre in Cambridge, England in 1998.
As part of the Science-Art Festival, a seminar was held on the topic of "Symbols
of Our Age". After the speakers gave their presentations and videos, members
of the audience were invited to come up with ideas for new symbols to guide humanity
into the 21st Century. The concepts covered were wellbeing, sustainability,
unity, culture, democracy and morality. After discussion of these concepts and
drafting of appropriate symbolic shapes, the final symbols were selected by popular
vote and were recorded with accompanying text, to be used by the artists who
intended to participate in the Festival's subsequent art exhibition. According
to the seminar publicity, "the symbols and text will be the first to be
entered into the official registration book of Symbols of the 21st Century".
These symbols are available for viewing online at the Centre's website, at http://www.science-art.com.au/.
It is also possible to order through the website the Centre's books, pamphlets,
CD-ROMS and artworks, including some fine Australian bush landscapes.
***
Ben Harper is a writer hailing from Melbourne who was in Italy at the
time of this issue.
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