Old Email Archive

digest 1998-03-17 #001.txt

11:32 PM 3/16/98 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
-> Physicist looking for electromagnetism imagery
by DNEHL@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU (Linda D. Henderson)
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Date: 16 Mar 1998 10:23:33 -0800
From: DNEHL@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU (Linda D. Henderson)
Subject: Physicist looking for electromagnetism imagery
To SLS members from Andy Zangwill, School of Physics. Georgia Tech:
I am a physicist engaged in writing a graduate textbook and reference
volume
of CLASSICAL ELECTROMAGNETISM. To stimulate thought and evoke an
aesthetic
response, I plan to include a frontispiece for each chapter (~30) in
the
form of a painting or sculpture from the history of art that somehow is
evocative of the subject matter of the chapter. The subject is vast and
includes static electricity, magnetism, fields, charge, electric and
magnetic lines of forces, lightning, electric current, conductors,
electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, optics, resonant
cavities,
waveguides, cable and wireless telegraphy, lasers, antennae, special
relativity, radio, radar, microwaves, x-rays, charged particle motion,
scattering, diffraction, plasmas, electrical equipment, elecrical
circuits,
cosmic rays, polarization, magnetization, dielectric matter, etc.
I am interested in four kinds of material: (i) historical works, e.g.,
Dufy's ``Fee Electricite''; (ii) works that directly represent an
electromagnetic phenomena, e.g., ``The Electric Shock'' by Boilly;
(iii)
works where electromagnetic phenomena are appropriated for unrelated
creative reasons, e.g., ``La Musique est comme la Peinture'' by Picabia;
and
(iv) works that evoke an electromagnetic subject although the artist had
no
such idea in mind, e.g, a few examples in contemporary art pointed out
by
Marc Levy-Leblond in Leonardo 27, 211 (1994).
Linda Henderson (Texas) has been a great help in identifying works from
the
early 20th century. I seek information on specific art works, catalogs,
books, scholarly writings, etc. that address this subject from earlier
(non-modernist work from the late 19th century), much earlier (18th
century)
and later (contemporary art) periods of time.
Please respond to andrew.zangwill@physics.gatech.edu
Prof. Andrew Zangwill
School of Physics
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Andrew Zangwill
School of Physics
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332
404-894-7333 (voice)
404-894-9958 (FAX)
andrew.zangwill@physics.gatech.edu
Linda Dalrymple Henderson
Dept. of Art and Art History
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX  78712-1104