Thousands attend ASU Origins Project Science & Culture Festival 2011
April 18, 2011Thousands of people attended events sponsored by the ASU Origins Project during its inaugural Science & Culture Festival, April 7-11.
Key festival participants officially kicked off the festival on Friday, April 8, with a discussion of the relationship between science and culture. Broadcaster Hugh Downs, filmmaker Werner Herzog, School of Music director Kimberly Marshall, and choreographer Liz Lerman each reflected on the theme and debated science’s role in cultural change. ASU Origins Project Director Lawrence Krauss posited that rapid pace of scientific discovery will likely render our current culture unrecognizable 25 years from now. Herzog, however, responded by noting that there are certain cultural forms that seem to transcend change. Marshall stressed that people often assume science to be the primary catalyst for change, when it is equally plausible that the arts and humanities prompt scientists to think in new ways and ask new questions.
Two very special events occurred on Saturday. The ASU Origins Project invited winners in its Dear Aliens contest to an awards ceremony in the College of Design North on Saturday afternoon. The contest, developed by children’s book author, Lucy Hawking, asked students in grades K-12 to think about how they would respond to aliens who had decided to make contact with people on Earth. Benjamin Lee, a seventh-grader from Pardes Jewish Day School in Phoenix, was chosen as the overall winner. Lee’s letter was read by famed physicist Stephen Hawking and bounced off the moon and into space during the ceremony. All of the winners received a certificate and were congratulated by Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and SETi Post-Detection Task Force chair, Paul Davies. (Click here for a news report on the ceremony.)
Later on Saturday, thousands attended a multimedia performance of Gustav Holst’s masterpiece, The Planets. Performed by the ASU Symphony Orchestra and Women’s Chorus under the direction of William Reber, the music was accompanied by images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and a narration written by Lawrence Krauss. Following a brief intermission, Stephen Hawking delivered a lecture entitled “My Brief History.” Hawking spoke movingly of growing up in a family who, despite their status as intellectuals, were nonetheless wary of his interest in mathematics. Punctuated by humorous anecdotes, Hawking’s lecture also traced how he developed his own ideas even while he was in the shadow of his powerful mentors at the University of Cambridge.
A number of the festival’s events were held in the Tempe Center for the Arts on Sunday, April 10. Noted British philosopher AC Grayling discussed his new book, The Good Book: A Secular Bible. Grayling explained how he used redaction—a methodology central to the development of the Judeo-Christian bible—to organize scores of secular writings on ethics into a text that speaks from a secular perspective about to how to live a good life. In a notable portion of his talk, Grayling insisted that the Golden Rule needed rethinking. Instead of commiting ourselves to treating others as we hope to be treated, which assumes our own feelings to be normative, Grayling suggested we approach others with a commitment to tolerating and accommodating the differences and unique characteristics of those around us.
Grayling’s discussion was followed in the afternoon by a conversation with bestselling author Jean Auel. Known for her book, The Clan of the Cave Bear, and her phenomenally successful Earth’s Children series, Auel sat down with ASU Professor of Journalism Ed Sylvester to discuss how science factored into her writing process. Auel noted that despite the early assumption by many that The Clan of the Cave Bear was nothing more than a romance novel, she had “done her homework” and managed to impress a number of scientists with her commitment to getting scientific details correct. Auel also discussed her new book, The Land of Painted Caves.
The marquee event that day was a screening of Werner Herzog’s new 3-D film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. That sold out event began with a panel discussion between Herzog, Krauss, and ASU paleoanthropologist Curtis Marean about prehistoric cave-dwellers. The film itself focused on ancient drawings found in the Chauvet Pont d’Arc caves in southern France, the earliest known cave imagery produced by humans. Depicting a range of animals, the images document not only the Paleolithic fauna, but the skill and capacity for creative reflection of prehistoric humans.
The festival came to a close on Monday at Gammage Auditorium with MacArthur Award-winning choreographer’s new work, The Matter of Origins. Lerman’s work opens up dialogue about how we as a culture engage and process scientific change. The Matter of Origins draws on the relationships between Edith Warner and Robert Oppenheimer to explore the connections between physics, history, and dance. The production, which included physicists Lawrence Krauss and Tanmay Vachaspati as dancers, “allowed the audience to weave together information and feeling, knowledge that is measurable, and senses that are profound,” Lerman explained.
A number of smaller events rounded out the festival. A 2-day mini-film festival which showcased two of Werner Herzog’s most notable documentaries took place April 6-7. Organized by Dan Gilfillan, ASU Associate Professor of German Studies and Information Literacy, the festival “offered insight into Herzog’s documentary style and his approach to filming both narratives and circumstances that allow us to think about that which lies at the heart of what makes us human,” Gilfillan explained. As part of the festival, Eric Ames, Associate Professor of Germanics and a member of the Cinema Studies faculty at the University of Washington, delivered a lecture entitled, “Ferocious Reality: Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man and the Autobiographical Act.” Over 150 people attended the film festival.
In addition, a symposium on “Origins: Causation and Boundaries,” sponsored by ASU’s Institute for Humanities Research (IHR), gathered an impressive slate of scholars who explored the role of the humanities in illuminating human origins.