Completing Aganta Kairos: Capturing Metaphysical Time on the Seventh Continent

Abstract

We present an overview of the art project Aganta Kairos (To Fish the Metaphysical Time). This project celebrates the neutrino-the ghost particle-which scientists consider a cosmic messenger and the artist regards as a link between people who care about their relationship to the cosmos and question their origins. The artwork is based on a performance of celebration and seeks to build a human community that encompasses different knowledge domains and interpretations of the universe. This intersection of knowledge is realized during the performance of placing a plaque, held with witnesses, and during subsequent exhibitions. Images, sounds, videos, and sculpture testify to the diversity of approaches to questioning our origins, ranging from traditional western science to ancient shamanism. The sites were selected for their global coverage and, for the South Pole, Mediterranean, and Lake Baikal, their connection to ongoing neutrino experiments. In December 2020, a plaque was installed at the South Pole IceCube Laboratory, the seventh and final site. We provide examples of images and links to additional images and videos.

Tidal Disruption: An Unforgettable Encounter with a Black Hole

“…One path to success in this regard is to partner with artists whose works convey science from a different perspective, providing access to communities that are less likely to attend a more traditional IceCube outreach event. A few examples of prior work with artists have been described in previous ICRC meetings, [1,2]. Here we describe an ambitious effort to convey the catastrophic process of a star being destroyed by a black hole, referred to as Tidal Disruption Event (TDE).…”