“Astronomy” a Collaborative Multimedia Project by Pery Burge and Tullio DeSantis
Text and Audio by Tullio DeSantis, Imagery by Pery Burge, 2012
Astronomy is the middle section of a three-part series (Cosmology, Astronomy, and Biology). This collaboration involves combining my text and sound (audio and music) with the creative imagery of Pery Burge, artist in residence in the Thermofluids lab in the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter, in the UK. We will be creating some new music, sound, and image work again soon.We hope you like Astronomy. It is our place in space*(The full text is below)*Astronomy
Before the beginning, In the
beginning. After the beginning.
An inscrutable instant between nothing and something
A time before the existence of duration
A space before the age of space
A soundless bang…
A Bang that no one hears! A
soundless cataclysm in the most cavernous gaping void the most imaginative
among us can ever imagine..we name it “creation of the universe”
Singularity – phase transition –
inflation
Planck’s ineffable epoch, from
absolute zero to Planck’s time
One to the minus 43rd
power of a second…
Quantum gravity waves, that
uncanny instant of true space and real time
Microsecond epochs, many of them
Cosmos happens
Quadrillions of instantaneous
wavicles
Spinning electromagnetic flux
Waving particles
Particulate waves
Supersymmetrical profundities of
plasma
Quantum probabalistic epoch after epoch
Quintillions of interaction events
A superheated intensification of an inestimable and durable future
Quarks hadrons leptons photons
Instants of neucleosynthesis
There comes to be a swirling
primeval system
Electron proton nuclear atomic
entities
Elemental Hydrogen
Some – thing from no – thing
Proton electron – electron proton
Stark facts of energetic matter
The phenomenal proof of material
truth
Most abundant Atomic H
Neutrons, protons, deuterium,
helium
Hydrogen mists and cosmic fogbanks
Fill the void – the void filled
with substance
A hundred thousand matter years
Of gravity
Inexorable gyres
Mixing pure hot masses in cold
empty space
Plasma in gravitational collapse
The prime cause of all structure
Vast light years across
Many parsecs of Nebulae,
Wispy evanescent deep space things
Gigantic streaming entities
birthing atomic energy, starlight, heat
Matter and anti-matter
Whole uncharted interstellar regions
Of dark energy in filamentary
networks
Quasars, pulsing with
electromagnetic waves, evolving stars, systems, and galaxies
All in a billion years
Clusters and superclusters
Deep funnels of form
Complex folds in the fabric of space
Dark matter bridging cosmos across
unfathomable arcs in time
Vortices of new creation
Whirlpool coalescences gathering
material from those first exploded stars, wild novae, and the terrible supernovae
– cosmic blast furnaces forging the elemental signatures of life in hydrogen,
oxygen, carbon, phosphorus, collecting and compressing all the products of
fission and stellar collapse…heavy elements, iron, gold, uranium.
These cycles recur in billions of
years
Sol, our Sun forming after 9
billion years
4 billion years later, cosmos
comes to life
And now 13.7 billion years later
The observer
Observes… itself, himself, herself
It is you and I
It is our eyes and our space
telescope
Our Large Hadron Collider
Embodied and externalized nerves
and brains
Our world-wide networked web of
intelligence
Our outer space probes flung far
toward the void
The Big Bang still ringing
energy moving thinking singing
In our heads…
…the brilliant photon embers.
The big bang…
…of intelligent minds.
– by Tullio DeSantis 2012