{"id":1210,"date":"2015-01-19T11:32:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T11:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.futura-sciences.com\/e-luminet\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2015-04-23T05:11:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T05:11:26","slug":"luminets-illuminations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.futura-sciences.com\/e-luminet\/2015\/01\/19\/luminets-illuminations\/","title":{"rendered":"Luminet’s Illuminations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luminet\u2019s reinstated visualization of a finite Universe, albeit one from which we can exit through one face and simultaneously enter through the opposite one, relies upon a keplerian form of mental sculpture that may be described as plastic rather than algebraic. Luminet\u2019s characteristic lithograph, Big Bang<\/em>, exploits the spatial vocabulary of perspective to evoke realms beyond the three dimensional. Whereas Escher relied on contradictions and oscillating ambiguity in his graphic art, Luminet suggests plunging, interpenetrating and matter organizes itself into structures on the right; the tumbling dice on the left imply irreversible disorganization arising from chance. The remarkable range of Luminet\u2019s creativity in art and science is integral to his agenda to recreate what he calls a \u00ab\u00a0humanism of knowledge\u00a0\u00bb \u2014 not that the arts and sciences are somehow to be conflated, because they work in very different ways, with illogical and logical means. But Luminet argues that they well up from the same instincts and intuitions: \u00ab\u00a0I do not believe that we acquire at the beginning the \u2018heart of an artist\u2019 or the \u2018heart of a scientist\u2019. There is simply within oneself a single devouring curiosity about the world. This curiosity pushes us to explore it through various languages and modes of expression,\u00a0\u00bb he says.<\/p>\n

Martin Kemp<\/strong>, professor of the history of art at the University of Oxford. <\/em>Excerpt from “Luminet\u2019s Illuminations\u00a0: Cosmological Modelling and the Art of Intuition”, <\/em>Nature, 20 november 2003, vol. 426, p. 232<\/p>\n