Creativity Stew

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Ring Nebula Hubble Image, NASA

While reading Janna Levin’s recent book about the more than fifty-year-long scientific effort to prove the existence of black holes and gravity waves (Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space), I was struck by a particular anecdote which reminded me of art school. In her interview with the developer of the enormous LIGO gravity wave detector, Rainer Weiss, Weiss reminisced about his work as a graduate student at MIT during the Korean War. He described the working environment in Building 20, a ramshackle, temporary wooden structure thrown together during World War II by the War Department. Dubbed the Plywood Palace by the occupants, the purpose of the building was to train more scientists as quickly as possible. Funding for any and all of the projects within was provided by the military with no strings attached. This allowed the scientists to freely explore ideas regardless of their ultimate application. Space…