“IT’S IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND AND HAVE A PICTURE OF OUR MODERN UNIVERSE. IT’S THE NEXT FRONTIER.” — Ryan Straka, music composition student On this afternoon, the composer is Tim Labor, who is marking up pages of sheet music with a pencil. “So we’re inside the cloud watching the stars double in number,” the associate professor of music says, his eyes following the roller coaster of tiny black symbols. Beside him are Mario De Leo Winkler, a UC MEXUS postdoctoral researcher in the Physics and Astronomy Department, and Ryan Straka, a fourth-year music major. The three are working on Straka’s thesis project — a musical composition that represents the merging of the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. De Leo Winkler’s role is to ensure that the sonification is scientifically sound. He guides the student with charts, graphs, equations, photographs, NASA articles and research papers on the galactic collision. Labor is there to help make sure the piece, which will be performed for the public this fall, conveys the magic of the spectacular event. “I’m the poetics consultant,” he says. The purpose of the project is multifaceted. For the composers, it is to draw inspiration and connect with a power outside their own heads; for the scientist, it is to share astronomy with new audiences through the universal entry point of art. “It’s important for people to understand and have a picture of our modern universe,” says Straka, the first student to take on the unique interdisciplinary opportunity. “It’s the next frontier.” SCIENCE VS. ART? Science and art. For far too long, the disciplines have been painted as polar opposites in a clash between logic and passion. But it is misguided to believe that the two are mutually exclusive. At a time when the great connector of technology helps dissolve the boundaries of thought, when connections between scientists and artists occur, the outcomes are often more wildly impactful than either could have imagined on their own. At UC Riverside, science and art are colliding like two far-off galaxies. Across campus, scholars are breaking out of their labs and studios, forming a spirograph of unexpected connections, solving historical mysteries, inventing solutions for the future and stretching perceptions of what is possible. Every day, you can see the merging of disciplines at work. “There is a new energy being shared amongst certain humanists and scientists who are starting to explore in very open-ended ways the realities of overlap between the arts and the sciences,” says Jason Weems, an assistant professor of art history. “In terms of these crossovers, I believe the best is yet to come.” Science and art were not always separate fields. The diverging roads certainly didn’t exist in the 15th and early 16th centuries when Leonardo da Vinci reigned as a master of both. The eventual birth of industrialization and specialization contributed to the division, but the line is finally fading once again as scientists and artists realize they make Photo: Carrie Rosema 10 | <strong>UCR</strong> Winter <strong>2015</strong>
Astronomy postdoc Mario De Leo Winkler (left) and music professor Tim Labor are helping undergrad student Ryan Straka with his thesis, a musical composition based on colliding universes. <strong>UCR</strong> <strong>Spring</strong> <strong>2015</strong> | 11
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