Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories
podcast. I'm Andrei Glessner. In this episode, we're
gonna be hearing from theoretical physicist turned
filmmaker,
Mark Levinson.
His previous films include Particle Fever, which explores
the time at CERN, where physicists
discovered
the Higgs boson,
and The Bit Player,
which tells the story of an often overlooked
genius, Claude Shannon,
the father of information theory. Mark Levinson's new
film, The Universe in a Grain of Sand,
explores the intersection
between science and art.
How do we make sense
of the world around us?
I've often thought about how our perception of
the world is shaped by the tools we
have to observe it.
I see these beautiful connections between
artists and scientists and mathematicians.
They are all creating new representations
of the human experience that are complementary.
What art might inspire how we do science?
What scientific knowledge might inspire how we do
art? Artists see in a way that they
haven't seen before by inventing
tools or techniques to extend their vision. Tools
began really as part of nature. Every tool
we come up with, we discover something new.
How good a craftsman can we be with
our tools to understand the universe more deeply?
What do you make a computer out of?
What do you make glass out of? Right?
How will you build the things of the
future? Once I loved a chemist, and now
I know how the world is made.
Pieces of the Earth extend our sight beyond
our bodies.
The idea for a digital future was that
you could build a binary machine that could
do all the calculations you wanted. That changed
everything. Here's Mark Levinson.
I am
a, I guess, you'd call
physicist turned filmmaker.
I was a theoretical physicist, and I I
like to tell people now I'm a very,
very theoretical physicist.
Really, I've been making films for longer than
I was a physicist, but I did get
my doctorate in, theoretical particle physics and then
somehow thought that was the proper
preparation to become a filmmaker.
I
worked
in fiction film for many years. I was
really interested in telling stories, human stories that
sort of dealt with how the world works.
And
as I was in the fiction world for
many years, but always
thinking about wanting to do something that was
about that overlap.
About 10, 12 years ago,
I heard about a physicist who wanted to
make a film about the Large Hadron Collider,
the big experiment
at CERN outside of Geneva.
And that was my field, actually, and so
I knew what was at stake. And so
I
contacted the physicist and said that, you know,
I could be very interested in this. I
think this could be a human story. I
saw it more as a narrative. I was
not interested in doing a physics film, a
documentary per se. I'd never done a documentary
and didn't really wanna do a science documentary,
but I could see the potential for something
else there. And if he was interested, I
I'd love to take it on. And he
said,
sounds great. And so I did, and that
became particle fever, which
we were
fortunate
to be making,
when they actually discovered the Higgs. Although that's
not what when I started, everybody told me
that they're not gonna be making a discovery
while I'm still shooting, not knowing how long
I'd be shooting and what the progress would
be there, actually. So it ended up having
incredible timing because we were really a pretty
unique
project that followed in real time the discovery
of of, you know, something that was really
foundational in terms of our understanding of the
way the world works. So suddenly, I was
a science documentary maker. I followed that with
a film about,
Claude Shannon,
the father of information theory who,
has to be one of the most,
egregiously
unknown geniuses of our time.
And I admit I didn't know who he
was either when somebody proposed this to me.
I ended up making a film
about him that was a sort of a
hybrid that had scripted components
as well as unscripted.
And,
so sort of keeping my hand in both.
And then,
I made my latest film, which is the
universe in a grain of sand. And as
much out of self justification as anything, I
I've I've been
very interested in
showing the overlap between art and science. I
think there's a lot of parallels
in what they're doing and, you know, how
they approach things.
And so this was an experiment to really
explicitly integrate
science and art. And so I had this
idea of telling a story
that was somewhat
of a technological story and advances in our
scientific understanding,
but
juxtaposing it with the works of artists and
painters,
sculptors, and and
experimental filmmakers
that were not explicitly
designed to explain the science,
but for me captured something about the phenomena
that I thought was
complementary
to
maybe scientific explanations and maybe provided a different
perspective that I think is important.
It's a really
interesting documentary, as you say, with the juxtaposition
of the of the science and the art.
And it's, well, it's a piece of art
in its own right. Right? It doesn't it's
it's not a straight scientific documentary in by
any stretch of the imagination.
And there's not, as you say, not necessarily
a direct link between what's
we're seeing in the art and what your
the the science that's being
talked about. So how did you go about
choosing which art you were going
to depict? It originated
from discussions with, Dario Gill, who was the
head of international research at IBM. We had
I had a friend who worked there, and
he told me that Dario was often
quoting a segment from particle fever in talks
he gave. And the segment he was take
taking was where
one of our physicists in particle fever, Sebastianopoulos,
talks about how,
in his mind, what really distinguishes a great
scientist
is
a modicum of intelligence,
but really
an artistic taste in being able to identify
an important problem that hasn't been solved
and that the time for solving it has
come now.
And that that decision,
was what really was often what distinguished the
most
creative and and impactful scientists.
And so
I I went the first time I went
to Dario's office, I saw he had a
poster of, Glenn Gould,
from when he was recording
the the early version of the, Goldberg Variations.
I thought that well, that's interesting.
Not what I expected necessarily
at the office of the director of I,
IBM Research.
And we just had a very wide ranging
conversation and and about where where technology was
going and about art and science. And so
there was a very loose mandate of what
I want what what the film was gonna
be about. It was they he asked, would
I consider doing a film? I certainly wasn't
interested in doing a film about IBM
or about,
strictly about technology, but I began to see
there could be something broader here. The questions
that are interesting to me are how we
make sense of the world, whether that's from
a scientific perspective or the artistic perspective. Specifically,
what happened is when I got the approval
to start to explore making the film, it
was right really when COVID started. So I
think normally I would have gone and started
to do interviews. I would have just started
to interview people, and it would have been
more scientists and technologists and things like that.
But because I couldn't do that, I had
this idea, and
it is interesting thinking back on where
it really came from, but this idea of
using the works of experimental filmmakers and and
artists.
At one point, I went back and looked
at my hard drives from particle fever because
I actually wanted to find that clip of
Savas,
which in film in the particle fever, you
know, we've cut it, inter intercut it,
and I realized, oh, well, I can I
can use the whole thing? I have the
original on that. And what I discovered is
that,
remembered is that I had had this idea
of maybe using experimental
filmmakers
back on particle fever. There's a couple of
people
that I had talked to. And, again, particle
fever was my first documentary,
and I I guess, unbound by the traditions
of what it had to be, I had
started thinking, well, could I use experimental films,
which I had become
aware of. So my early film preparation was
I was I I I got my doctorate
at Berkeley.
They have an archive there called the Pacific
Film Archive,
which is, you know, this great
cinema tech type place that shows,
a lot of European films and, experimental films
as well. And and so I had
been a volunteer
to project in their research screening room, and
it allowed me to see all sorts of
things, and it exposed me to these filmmakers.
And and it was interesting because, I mean,
in particle fever and in the bit player,
the the Claude Shannon film, I mean, one
of the things I've yeah. I I continually
face is how do you
make science accessible? How do you explain to
laypeople
what science
the science that they may not know? And
it's an evolving thing,
and it's always the the hardest thing about
these films where the films that I make
that involve science are not designed to be
explaining science. They're always I'm I'm looking at
it in terms of
process or people or things like that.
And so I guess I had had this
idea even back then that, you know, from
you see these works of experimental filmmakers.
And, you know, I mean, from very early
on, one of the things they played with
when they when they could actually do things
with
with, you know, with the equipment they had
at the time,
was
superpose images,
and and and create images in film
that are certainly nothing that could actually happen
in real life. You don't see 2 people.
If you saw 2 people standing on top
of each other merged in real life, you'd
totally freak out. But we accepted in film,
and so I started thinking, well, maybe there's
something there. And,
you know, I just had great admiration for
these artists who are making these films, working
as hard as any scientist I know, you
know, often not getting the recognition they deserve.
So what I did was,
as I said, not being able to shoot
anything, I hired 2 professors of experimental film,
avant garde film. We just started meeting virtually
every week, and I told them some of
the ideas. They were not science people, so
I would be I'd be explaining the science
to them and talk about things,
and
they would start suggesting ideas of of filmmakers
to look at, artists and experimental filmmakers. And
so, you know, we would meet, as I
say, once a week, and, I'd look at
things and we discuss them, and then we'd,
they'd evolve a lot more. And and so
at a certain point, I had several 100
artists in
a spreadsheet.
It was exciting. I mean, I was seeing
these things. So so I I started assembling
a canvas of artists
before I actually even had a full narrative.
I mean, I sort of knew, okay. You
know, I was gonna talk you know, at
some level, I wanted to talk about the
development of our classical computers and technical things,
but then, you know, get into how this
has progressed in terms of,
the brain and where things were happening. And
another discovery was that
at IBM, actually, in IBM Research, they were
doing pure scientific research, which I didn't realize.
And so I I could see that this
could possibly
merge
and deal with things with the brain, with
AI, with a quantum where where there was
you know, I I mean, this was 2020,
2019, 2020.
So it was before the huge explosion in
AI, but it was when quantum computing was
starting to take
get get a lot more serious attention than
it had. So so I was looking, again,
looking for art that could do this. And
so,
that went on for months. And then finally
I mean, in the fall,
I had a lot of artists
and no structure. And so then I said,
well, maybe I should write a script and
and, you know, just if I could if
this is gonna tie together, do I have
the elements to put together a film? And
so I just wrote a script, sort of
a narrative of what it could, what the
flow could be.
And, again, not
sure at that point whether this is, is
it a short film? Is it a feature?
Is it who knows what this is? But
just try to put something together
indicating, okay.
Here,
I don't know who's gonna say this, but,
you know, this is something we ought to
do. And I can maybe use this artist's
work here and maybe use this artist's work
here.
At that point, again, I still couldn't shoot
anything. So,
I actually brought in another editor. Melody London
worked with me and we and and basically
said,
does this make any sense? And I recorded
myself doing all the narration because, again, that
was just the easiest just to see. I
needed something to put it together. And and
I think, you know, we put together a
a maybe it was about 15, 16 minute
piece
that people,
were found compelling. It was very different from
anything that
any of us had seen, but there was
something that worked about it. The artwork,
in a sense, I actually had it in
play before I actually had the story in
place, and then it became a real iterative
process as, you know, as it went on.
Yeah. That's really interesting because it I I
mean, it sounds like the film wouldn't be
what it is at all if COVID hadn't
happened. Right? It's that's one of those things.
Another instrumental thing was I had George Dyson,
who,
you know, was a fascinating person who I
had met,
a number of years before briefly because I
actually have a fiction script
that I'm I've been working on that involves
science and art, and I got support from
the Sloan Foundation.
And
George was an adviser on another project at
the Sloan Foundation. So I had met him,
but,
it had not really had a lot of
interaction, but there was there was enough overlap.
George is is,
Freeman Dyson's son. Freeman is a very, very
prominent physicist,
was
at the Institute for Advanced Study. So I
I knew all about Freeman Dyson from my
physics.
And it turns out that, I saw somebody,
in Europe who had been the filmmaker working
with George. And when I told her about
project I was working on, she says, oh,
you know, George is working on a book
called Anologia
about the
fact that in some ways he felt we
were going back to analog, which is something
that Dario had talked about how we were
going that direction. And and it's a fascinating
book. It's a very unusual book.
George is a very interesting person.
He sort of was a renegade, I think,
from traditional science, but has be but is
very, very bright and very understands
a lot about science and
and,
was just looking at that whole
the way the world was evolving. And and
so George sent me a draft. He hadn't
even finished it yet. And and that so
that started to influence the way I was
looking. So, yes, I think having that time
to not just
run and start shooting, but to think about
these things
was very, very significant
in terms of how the film evolved. That
is it has resulted in a very thoughtful
film. Right? I mean, it's it's really interesting
film to watch and, you know, it stayed
with me,
in terms of the concepts that you're talking
about, but also the the imagery in it.
To be perfectly honest, there's a question here
which I'm not quite sure how to ask,
but,
it's sort
of no. Not sort of. It did
take me back to, you know, my early
twenties of listening to a lot of Pink
Floyd and watching experimental film. Right?
Yeah.
Well, my brother has said that this would
be the ultimate trip for him
if if that's what you're alluding to.
Well, I know. Not necessarily.
But that's sort of I I think the
question I wanted to ask really before we
get onto something else, which I wanted to
ask about this is,
is there a concern for you when you're
making something like this? You know, you're talking
about the brain. You're talking about,
quantum things. You're using experimental film that it
might,
you
know, without careful handling of it, the science
can become pseudoscience quite quickly. Do is that
something that concerns you when you're making a
film like this? No. I wouldn't say I
was worried that the science would become pseudoscience
Because I think
my guiding
principle
in particle fever and the bit player and
this film has been
that
I
I think it's important that what is said
is accurate.
What's
critical is knowing what to leave out.
And I would rather
leave some leave things out, but have the
things that are in
be accurate. And I I I've tried I'm
pretty careful about that.
In in particle fever,
for sure,
there were a lot of things, some big
things that we just left out. And, I
mean, people ask this. I mean, I, you
know,
I I I do talk to a lot
of people that are making science films. They,
you know, and talk about what the difficulty
is. And I think that what I say
is I think the problem with a lot
of science films is that they try to
explain everything.
And
if there's one advantage I have with a
real science background,
it's
knowing what I think you can leave out
and what is important
and emphasizing that. And so
on this film, too,
I was
very conscious of that. I mean, and
it's a tricky thing. I mean, you know,
I mean, quantum computing in particular was was
a very tricky area in terms of how
much to say. And I went through various
iterations,
trying in some in earlier versions to have
much more. But it's one of those things
where if you
start going down that path, you get into
the weeds very quickly and people can't understand
everything. And so it was about pulling out
what the essence was, which is
which worked well because that's what I was
trying to get with the artist. They're not
gonna explain the absolute details.
They're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna
have things
that particularly
talked about entanglement, for instance, a very, you
know, complicated principle
that is,
exploited in quantum computing.
I I I just decided it would be
better to do less than too much and
and and have things that don't go with
it at all. So my worry was actually
not so much
that it was gonna get into pseudoscience. I
felt the science was
hard there.
That the the two worries were,
is the art too abstract,
and
that that I would be piling abstraction
in scientific concepts and abstraction in art, and
that that was maybe people couldn't get get
those 2 things
at the same time, which I think most
people can't actually.
And so it was something where as I
was constructing the film, I I did find
I had to be very careful about
what voice over I had over images that
were that were very abstract. And I thought,
you know, I could not be expect people
to be understanding
abstract ideas and looking at abstract things where
they're trying to decipher both things at once.
Sometimes it happens still, but
the other
sort of ace in the hole for me
was that
I think I tried to find visuals that
were so compelling
that
for you know, people would tell me that,
even if they didn't understand the science,
they were they were immersed in the visuals
and it and it let them think about
things.
And so I think the key became,
trying to give things enough space.
I don't know if I I I did
still, but definitely, at a certain point, it
was I was trying to, you know,
open things up, just give people a little
bit of time to think about it. So,
I don't know. These are they're all sort
of related to your question. The other the
other
aspect of that, though, is is somewhat the
flip side of your question, which was what
was a a bigger concern for me was
what the artists would think about me using
their work. So I was less concerned about
scientists saying, oh, you got the science wrong
or you made pseudoscience
because I know that,
the basis of the science,
excuse me, was was right.
What I was a little bit worried about
was where what the artist would think about
me excerpting the work, using it in ways
that, you know, were not really related to
what they had done.
And what was amazing
and in retrospect, not so surprising is that
pretty much universally, they had no problems.
And I think,
as I say,
in retrospect,
I think most artists,
do not want
or do not think that their pieces should
have one single interpretation.
They're actually very excited
that people,
you know, I mean, typically artists don't like
to explain their work. They they they it's
about an individual experience. And so
almost everybody pretty much everybody I contacted
were
was excited that I would I I looked
in at this in a serious way. I
mean, it was not exploitive. I was not,
you know, it's not like I was just
throwing their things in there and laughing at
it or or just using it just for,
you know, decoration.
I was looking at it and and seeing
something in it that they may not have
thought about and maybe gave them something to
think about as well. And I think I
greatly benefited
from,
Leo Leo Goldsmith
and,
Greg Zinnman, who were my two advisors
because they knew I mean, almost all of
the living artists in the film,
we had a direct contact to through them.
So that paved the way.
And,
and they were all
very excited. They all thought the project seemed
very interesting. It's not what they had thought
that their work would be used for, but
that they were very excited about that. And
for me, I mean, you know, there was
a a
a a a a, you know, very utilitarian
perspective is that I thought, okay. I could,
you know, hire
people who do graphics and animation, and I
had done on particle fever and on the
bit player, and they did great jobs.
But here were people that had spent, you
know, maybe years of their own life doing
and creating something with so much thought and
intelligence and and
and so striking that that, you know,
it'd be nice to actually take advantage of
that. The other thing that I wanted to
ask you about in terms of filmmaking was
the music, because I think that's extraordinary. Yeah.
The the majority of the music was by
my composer, Robert Miller, and he's been, you
know, a stalwart since particle fever.
And he just he lives here in New
York. He's extremely interested in science.
He actually has,
written
a lot of
music that they use at the
the planetarium here in New York at the
Museum of Natural History, And he just loves
it. And he and he's a real collaborator.
This was a tough a tough one for
him because it went on for a long
time. There was a lot of changes.
And,
we, you know,
we I I put together a temp score.
So, you know, working with the my editors.
I had 2 other editors who had worked
with me on it.
In the end, I took it over. But,
you know,
all of them,
you know, also used various things we had.
I have a, you know,
library of music that has worked. Actually, some
of I I mean, initially, as we're putting
the film together, we're just using temp music.
I mean, just not worrying about rights, not
scoring. But but, in fact, I have quite
a bit of music from Robert from Particle
Fever and the Bit Player, you know, so
I know tonally. I could try things. I
wanted to do something that was different, that
was appropriate, that was, you know, not typical,
just score.
And,
most of the music is is Roberts.
There's a couple of places where we use
the music that was
part of of the of an experimental film,
but a number of them didn't have music
at all, and then Robert composed it. There's
a couple places where we did use the
music,
and, and that was another concern. You know?
But, again,
we I was lucky that everybody went went
along with it. But and Robert just you
know, we have a very
good dialogue and interaction.
And,
I'm I'm I'm excited to hear that people
are responding because I it was a real
process. And right from the beginning, people were
responding even for our temp music. We sort
of even at the temp stage, we were,
you know, using music
that was not typical.
You know, we used I I I actually
use a lot of Kronos and things like
that. And then,
and then Robert comes in and and and
replaces it. And so so,
really, 90% of the music in the film
is is his score.
Of course, we have the Goldberg Variations, which,
was,
very appropriate and right for the scene.
And then we had the, you know, Okay
Go piece, which just again came up incidentally
because
I had no idea that this was gonna
come up. And then Luis says they did
talk about the fact that they they
they made you know, they stored the the
song in DNA and and used it.
So,
but I'm glad that the music resonated because
I wanted something different than, you know, it's
appropriate.
With the Goldberg Variation, go ahead. Just for
those people who maybe don't know what that
is because maybe maybe it's not their world.
Right. So,
Bach wrote these pieces, the Goldberg Variations,
which are,
you know,
32 pieces,
and, you know, supposedly wrote them, you know,
for as as a a a a a
sleep mechanism
for this emperor.
And,
you know, it's interesting. I from what I've
read that they they sort of fell out
of favor for a while. They weren't, you
know, so popular. And then Glenn Gould did
a recording,
the, you know, brilliant,
Canadian pianist in in in in the fifties.
And it was just sort of revolutionary.
And
suddenly, you know, they became accepted and and
and lauded. And, you know, a lot of
people consider the Goldberg Variations to be, in
in some sense over the variations,
a record of every human emotion. And, you
know, it's just an incredibly comprehensive thing. And,
Gould did another recording,
25 years later.
And,
they're very, very different recordings.
The recording of a very a young brilliant
man and then, you know, somebody who's older
and more mature. And and this was a
very a perfect example of something where
the idea of
what that could represent for the film actually
came from Dario.
And I had talked about the Goldberg Variations
with him.
There's another reason. I'll tell you that
in a second. But,
we were just having dinner and and Dario
pointed out how
this is a perfect how he it was
really his his perspective that was a perfect
example of how
just
digital is not actually including everything.
When you look at it, and it's essentially
you know, I then did the interview,
which is in the film where he essentially
said what he had said
casually at dinner that, look, it's the same
composer,
the same notes.
It's a still it's a piano.
That's all. And they're so different, and that
is a perfect reflection
of what we you know, what you don't
get just by a digital recording and a
digital record of the notes.
And so it was just so perfect for
the theme and that part of the film
where I was talking about the fact that,
you know, digital
has allowed us
to do many things and and and and
certainly
enhanced our ability to,
probe the depths of the universe. I mean,
the ability to digitize and and universalize
and and do
extremely complex
computational things. But we're reaching the limits of
what we can do with that in some
way, and,
and this was
a perfect example of what we are missing
and
what, you know, maybe we need to return
to analog for and what
analog world of art can also bring. So
so it was one of those
perfect
marriages of
an idea that evolved. It wasn't something that
honestly that I had thought of from beginning,
but it came out
from my discovery that he was interested in
this. And and what was
bizarre for me is I I have a
long time
passion project,
which is an adaptation
of,
a a
a novel by Richard Powers,
called The Gold Bug Variations.
And,
Richard Powers has gotten a lot of attention
now because, his book, The Overstory, won the
Pulitzer, and he's he's got a lot of
attention. This is an older story,
and The Gold Bug Variations
is a
story that it the the title is a
pun. It's based on The Goldberg Variations, but
also The Gold Bug, which was a short
story by Inger Allan Poe about cryptography.
For me, it's like so many of my
worlds coming together because,
the Goldberg Variations,
the Gold Bug was Claude Shannon's favorite story,
which was the subject of my you know,
he was the subject of my second film,
the bit player. In fact,
Powers quotes something about Shannon in the Gold
Bug Variations.
And and the story, you know, revolves around
a scientist in the fifties
who,
basically was sort of, you know,
monomaniacally
trying to figure out,
the code for DNA,
and he gets,
derailed
by,
a woman in the lab, a married woman
in the lab who
introduces
him to,
Bach and music and the Goldberg Variations. And
he begins to think that
perhaps that's gonna be the key to understanding
things
in life and love that he can't understand,
in a lab. So so there's this whole
background when I saw that, you know, Dario
had this. I I had already been working
on the old bug variations,
but it really
pulled together a lot a lot of interests
and and themes for me.
So is that is that passion project
coming to fruition?
I, you know, I've I've been working on
this off and on for years,
and,
I get derailed myself by other projects. So
I had, actually first discovered the novel before
Particle Fever. At the time, it was not
the rights weren't available, but I made contact
with Richard Powers.
And I made particle fever, and then I
went back and the rights were available. And
I actually wrote a script,
and, and it got a lot of attention
that got Sloan gave me a grant. I
went to,
it got selected for the Sundance
screenplay lab
and developed it. And
and then, the bit player
came and and that there was a sort
of a time pressure on that because we
wanted to do something around the centennial of
Claude Shannon.
And and then I, you know,
finished that and went back to the gold
bug. And then,
and then this came up, and and it
seemed like, you know, something that,
I didn't think was gonna take that long,
and I didn't know what was going on
with it. So,
anyway, I am now committed
that
I'm this is gonna be the next project.
And so,
yeah. So so I'm I'm hoping it is,
and and,
Richard Powers has been great. He's been very
supportive of it
because in some sense, the story is about
a scientist who discovers
art and music and love. And so that,
you know, that transition
from pure science to art and science
is something that,
you know, is something that I've explored and,
I am excited about it.
Yeah. No. I I feel like,
we should probably talk about that again when
that's actually out. So let's let's make that
promise. Yeah.
There's this, analog and and digital thing, which
is particularly,
interesting, obviously, in the light of artificial intelligence.
One of the things we're very interested in
in neuroscience is capturing what it is like
to have some experience. That's where the power
of art lies is to communicate
experiences
in terms of symbols and strokes. And that's
something that current AI technology can't yet do.
My daughter's 13
and
not alone in the fact of being a
13 year old girl, big Taylor Swift fan
and that sort of thing. But she just
wants vinyl. You know? She wants she she's,
you know, she will listen to,
the digital things, particularly in the car and
that sort of thing, but if she's at
home, she'll put the vinyl on. She wants
that whole
experience of that, to do that. That's part
of what she wants. And,
I at the same time,
as that in my work, I'm seeing because
I lecture in wildlife filmmaking and science communication
and things. And I was recently at the
festival about wildlife filmmaking called Wildscreen, which happens
here in Bristol. And there was a panel
about artificial intelligence
in filmmaking.
And, you know, there's some aspects of it,
which I think are, you know, pretty delightful,
cleaning up audio. That's pretty good. I don't
have a problem with that. But when it
becomes into sort of the creative aspect of
it,
you know, the storytelling of it, it it
seems like it's
I mean,
do you have a sense of whether we're
AI is ever going to give us an
experience
like that,
the 2 different
recordings of the Goldberg Variations. You know, I
mean, it's interesting
because,
as I said, when I started this,
AI was
you know, it was an important thing, but
it was way before
the huge explosion of, you know, these large
language models that everybody that embraced, you know,
with the chat GPT and things like that.
That took over while we were, you know,
as I was trying to finish the film,
I actually had to do a little bit
of modification
because when I was doing the original interviews,
what was really big were something called generative
adversarial networks. That was not the large language
model. It was it was about a sort
of an iterative process,
but it was a different it was not
the large language models. I was worried that
talking about these GANs, that was the word
everybody was using, GANs,
felt a little out of date. The underlying
idea of neural networks, though, is the same.
I mean, the the basis of them is
the same.
But
what I also realized is that
my my film has a perspective
about that, I think, which is my own
perspective as well. We should see AI as
another tool and just it's another step in
in some sense are merging with
nature
and
and and understanding it. And I
personally, I don't
see
AI as an existential threat to creativity.
I see it as another tool
that artists
are going to use and are using just
like scientists are.
There's dangers. But to
deny it, it's like saying I don't want
to understand that. You can't go back. I
mean, and there's just such a history of
this as we know. I mean, when photography
was discovered, people thought it was the end
of painting.
And what happened? They discovered they they they
came out with new techniques. They came out
with abstraction. They came out with impressionism.
You know, and we've had that, obviously, you
know, there's 2 in the film and TV
world. You know? Oh my gosh. Videotapes. What's
gonna happen to film? And then DVDs
and and and now and digital. And I
think that,
you know, in some sense, what what Savas
Demopoulos said is
it's it's it's it's about how you use
it. It's about knowing how to use it.
And I think there's a lot of people
that are using AI.
Yes. I mean, if people are just using
it instead of and as a crutch,
okay,
that's not good. But,
it's about
the the idea. I mean, coming up with
the idea of it. I mean, I say
I you know,
the the concept of creativity, I think, is
very
it's very
difficult
to define exactly, but, you know, any conventional
criterion would say it's about making connections that
are unexpected
and and, you know,
original
juxtapositions.
I,
you you know, I
is that something a computer can do? I
I
I mean, I I don't know what does
happen what happens in human brain. It's all
about those things as well. But,
you
know, are we going to it's about who's
deciding what you're gonna do, what you're going
to paint. That's the that's the human element,
the the imagination. I mean, as I say
at the end of the film, I mean,
it's that imagination now. Are we gonna be
at a point where, like,
you know, you turn on your computer or
you wake up in the morning and your
computer announces, I have an idea that I'm
gonna paint a woman in this background and
with this sort of background.
That, you know, I don't think we're there
yet. I mean and and I don't know
if that's coming,
that it will have
that
sense of
motivation
and and and
and and and and and idea of what
to do. I mean, again, it it it
really it's a it's a odd way that
the Sadas' comment resonates as well as
the
the I
coming up with the idea
of what to do
is is the real
boundary.
How you get there, what it does afterwards,
well, that's a matter
even that's gonna be guided. So I I,
you know,
I I think there's a lot of social
political questions. I mean, you know, I think
it's a it's a huge worry, you know,
in terms of fakes and things like that.
But in terms of
what is actually created or what can be
created and artists,
I I I think it's a it's a
great addition. I mean, it's a, you know,
you look at these early
pioneers in in computer graphics. I mean, I
love these
you know, finding this thing. I mean, Lillian,
Schwartz, to me is just, you know, it's
amazing what she did. And but, you know,
what was great was that one clip we
have where she says, okay. We have to
figure out how to move this pixel from
here to here. That's what it was at
that level.
But then Stan Vanderbeek saying, you know, recognizing
it's another tool. It's like, oh, I've got
the hammer sitting
here. It's like a hammer, you know, but
we just don't know how to use it.
And and, you know, in some sense, I
I was hoping the film also sketches this
progression
from that to the work of people like,
Rafik Anadol, you know, doing these, you know,
dream. He actually calls them hallucinations
and things like that. And
so
I think the film,
I hope, has
a
perspective
on AI and art and creativity. It's, you
know, that is,
oh, okay. It's it's like we discovered electrons.
You know? And what what can you do
with electrons? And you discovered, you know, that
this is the way certain things work and
that,
you know, there are compromises
when you digitize something, which
we always know,
because it's an approximation
and it's very useful. Sometimes digital,
nobody wants to go back to, you know,
having to handwrite
manuscripts
all the time.
But,
so,
anyway, I think,
I I was
it was the direction the film was going,
and I think it's
maybe even stronger now that
there's so much interest in AI and,
you know, I I I mean, I very
deliberately did not want to get into the
political social aspects of it. I think that's
another film, and I'm sure there's probably
hundreds of films that are being made about
that now.
But I wanted to
look at it from this other perspective of,
you know, that artists and scientists, not just
it's not just scientists that are using technology.
It's artists as well. Some aren't,
but I I think you can't not be
affected by it. And for some, you know,
they may not be explicitly using computers or
AI, but
to use it to clean things up or
to, you know, I don't know, create new
colors or suggest new juxtapositions that they may
not have thought about. I mean, I I
I think that's all good.
You know? They have to still sit down
in the morning and decide what they're gonna
work on.
Yeah. Yeah. No. Fair enough. Fair enough. I
do there's there's this other thought that I
have, which is about the Goldberg Variations and
the 2 different versions. Do you think if
you'd made this film part of more the
changes in the world making the the content
of the film different, do you think if
a younger version of you made this film,
it would be a different film? I, yeah,
I don't think I was ready to make
this film when I was younger.
I think that,
in fact, actually, the interesting thing, and I
don't have the I'm not sure myself what
the answer is yet is how is making
this film gonna change the Gold Bug variations,
which I wrote as a script years ago?
And is it going to change the way
I make that and look at it? Because
this was a
you know, I mean, a lot of people
have said it's I I think it's a
pretty unique film in terms of
that mixture that I just said I'm not
gonna just do explanatory animations. I'm gonna just
put in things that are associative, that are
visually rich and stimulating.
And
is that something now that I will that
will make me think differently about this? So
I I don't think in fact, very explicitly
to your answer, I guess I answered it
because
I looked at you know, when I discovered
that back on particle fever, I was looking
at these things. I wasn't ready to put
them in. They weren't right. I don't think
they were right. I think particle fever
ended up particle fever ended up being such
a a compelling,
dramatic narrative story.
I never really went that far with, you
know, like, putting an abstract art. I think
that was it would have been the wrong
place, but I think I wasn't ready for
it either.
Especially at that time, I think, you know,
I hadn't made a documentary. I think, you
know, I I I was okay. You have
to do certain things. We need more explanatory
animations. And I think I think that was
the right decision. I don't regret it.
And then,
and then the bit player,
you know,
had these,
you know it was already a jump because
it was a mixture of narrative,
fictional or not.
And I think there was something I felt
in making this film.
I think I felt a sort of freedom.
In some sense, I felt
most artists like in a sense that I
I because when you remove
the necessity of explaining
something explicitly,
It's a
broad canvas, actually. I mean, it's it's exactly
what are the things where, you know, the
choices.
It's it's incredibly
freeing, but it's also
it can be daunting because, you know, you
could almost put anything in. I mean, for
me, everything had to rest there had to
be a reason there. But,
I
I I think this is
clearly my most visual film. I mean, it
represents it's very different from the others.
But I think it took a
while to get there. I think I had
to
be established enough to have the freedom to
do something like this.
I had to have the support of somebody
who basically
allowed me to do it. I mean, I
would have been hard to do that with,
you know,
particle fever or the Bit player.
So,
yeah, I I think I wasn't maybe ready.
And but as I say, for me, the
really interesting question is, am I gonna do
anything different, you know, with the gold bug,
which I have been approaching as, you know,
a a, you know, a linear sort of
narrow well, it actually has 2 time periods.
It's not entirely linear, but it was, you
know, basically
straightforward
storytelling.
And
I'm not sure myself yet, you know, what
Amazing.
I'll tell you what, let's talk about that
again when we talk again when that, when
that's available. But but speaking of films being
available, what's the life of the universe in
a grain of sand? How does a film
like this get out there? How can people
see it? What what does it that look
like? Yeah. That's also I mean, we're still
working on it. I mean, it's just started
to go you know, I have taken it
around to some festivals. I don't think it's
it's a, you know,
it's a what I'm finding is it's a
tricky film. I think for a lot of
festivals, they don't know what to make of
it. So,
I mean, luckily, I have certain, you know,
connections and background from my other films. So
we did show it,
at, you know, it showed it a couple
of science oriented things, and they had a
great screening at at CERN in Geneva,
where there's a you know, they have a
whole program about science and science and the
arts.
So we had a great screening there.
And then,
what was very nice is it got selected
for the Vancouver International Film Festival. And so
that was the first big broad
general festival, not just documentaries, not just science.
And so we had 3 really great screenings.
I mean,
what I'm finding is look. The film is
not for everybody,
but for people that are interested in science
or and or art,
I'm finding that there's a lot of interest
and there's a lot of people
that that we have really good comp discussions
afterwards. So what we've tried to do at
a couple places at CERN
and Vancouver, and then also we also now
just recently had our big premiere in New
York. It was part of the Imagine Science
Film Festival, and and it was the opening
night event.
And what's been really great is at a
number of them, we've had, people that are
on the science side and people of the
artists. So a couple of the artists
whose work is in the film have been
on the panels, and those have been really
fascinating.
And so, you know, I'm still I'm trying
to take it around to those
venues. I think
that,
you know, is there theatrical?
I you know, theatrical for any film is
dubious these days. Documentaries,
less.
There is a program that Sloan supports called
Science on Screen that I participated in where
they subsidize
screenings of,
you know, films at Art House Theater. So
I'm trying to do that.
The my ace in the hole is that
I have a distributor
that that people that did particle,
the the bit player.
It's a European company called Off the Fence,
and they're real distributors. You know them? Yeah.
And so they've taken it. And so they
are now they took it to Midcom.
They are,
you know, I'm getting them all the materials.
So they they're pretty good at getting, you
know,
getting it out there. So so I have
that. And
meanwhile, I have
the freedom to try to exploit the theatrical
because they mostly do online and broadcast.
But so I'm trying to start to line
up things. I think that the film has
an interesting potential that my other ones didn't,
which is the art museum world.
And so,
I'm talking to art because a number of
art museums are showing some of the artists.
In fact, actually, one interesting thing is a
the director of programs at the Exploratorium
in San Francisco.
He
contacted me, and he said that I didn't
even realize they actually have their own archive
where he said that we have
probably
80, 85%
of the experimental filmmakers works that are in
the film. They have original prints for. And
so he's very excited about doing something. And,
you know,
I'm trying to
think about
art museums. My ideal would be finding an
art museum
that would, you know, have screening a screening
or screenings and have
a gallery show of the artists in the
film that, you know, would correlate with it.
That sounds amazing. Yeah.
So so that's one of the things we're
working on. We had I mean,
the the London Science Museum, we had a
great screening of particle fever. I don't know,
you know, if they'd be interested in something
like this. But so I think it's gonna
be a, you know,
a a double sort of effort with off
the fence
doing, you know, what they do, which is
great to have a company behind it that
can do that. And then us, you know,
individually sort of trying to go to, you
know, drum up interest in
museums and art museums, science museums,
all those sort of places. But, you know,
it also could even I mean, I think
even at universities, I mean, you know, in
various departments.
I mean, a film professor here at NYU
said it could almost be like the basis
of a course, you know, an experimental film.
And
and and then other people have been saying
the technology part of it. You know, a
lot of people people in computers, they don't
even know about,
how how, you know, semiconductors
were ever made, and it,
you know,
gives a different perspective. Yeah. No. It's really
inter I mean, I I, you know, I
sat down to watch it. I was gonna
watch it with my daughter, but she ended
up needing to do some homework, so I
watched it on my own.
In fact, I'm not sure it's quite right
for her. It's definitely right for my wife
who's a musician, a
violinist. So,
that,
well, we will watch it together at some
point. But, yeah, it sounds like there's a
there's a home for it. You know, if
you're a science
interested person, you'll find it at science museums,
science film festivals, and art
person. You'll find it in art,
museums and galleries. And, if you like Pink
Floyd
and experimental film, you'll find it online. So
that's Yeah. One of the the goals for
me is really to to sort of really
merge those worlds in terms of getting from
one to be interested in the other. And
I have found even in the film world,
the interesting thing is I have people that,
you know, I'm I'm I'm very close with
and I really respect in terms of their
film
knowledge
who told me that,
honestly, they never really were very interested in
experimental film and video art and things like
that. And this has made them
want to look at it in a different
way, which is fantastic, you know. And
one amusing thing is that I I'm used
to having to try to
deal with people who don't understand science with
explaining the science.
And I've had the fun opposite this time
a couple of times where some of the
scientists have said, I don't really understand the
art. You know?
And they said, it looks cool. I think
it's really interesting, but, you know, I love
that idea that, you know, they're now the
ones that have to be able to deal
with abstraction in a way that they yeah.
Really.
That so you'd made the move a long
time ago from physics into film. Any regrets
on that? No. I don't think so. You
know, when I when I was making particle
fever,
and the first time I went to CERN,
I it was a very odd feeling because,
first of all, I was a theorist. And,
you know, as one of the big points
we make in part in particle fever is
that there's such a difference,
in terms of the cultures and worlds. And
and even in
particle theory, there are people that are closer
to experiment, people that do so called model
building, and then there are people that are,
like, out on the edge. I was out
on the edge. I mean, for me, I
I I joked that I had almost
less I almost had more experience
with
experimental physicists.
I did have more experience and interactions with
experimental physicists when I was making particle fever
than when I was studying physics.
And when I went to CERN for the
first time, it was interesting because the theorists
all sit at a table, one table together,
you know, and mostly it's experimentalists. And
I I have to say at a certain
point,
I was thinking, wow, I could have been
on the other side of the table.
And, you know, you get I got caught
up in their stories and,
I did sometimes think, maybe maybe I should
have stayed in physics.
But I think the key for me was
when I finished the film,
I was thinking I wanted to make another
film. I I was not thinking I'm gonna
go back and look at, you know,
new models of of supersymmetry or things like
that. So so I and I I think
that
no. I'm I'm
I'm I'm
I think I've made the right choice. You
know, I think I'm doing, you know, maybe
straddling this world. And,
and in particular, I mean, the universe and
grain of sand for me was
it was a discovery process. I mean, it
was really the most
in that sense. It was like, you know,
what is this film going to be? What
works?
I mean, there's something
incredibly
there was something incredibly satisfying with
finding a piece of art that, wow, look
at what how this works and, you know,
what does it show? And so
I you know, it's creatively been very
gratifying.
And,
now now
I don't have any regrets.
From my point of view as someone who's
watched the film,
I'm glad that you, that you moved on
from from politics. Well, I don't I don't
think this film would exist. I don't think
your other films,
in this area would would exist if you
hadn't done that. Right? This is art made
by you. And, you know,
some people don't think film is art, but
they're wrong. And, you know, this is art
made by it's it's made by
you,
and it is
your Yeah. Voice in it to sort of
to some extent.
And the physics still happens anyway, so I'm
glad you moved on. Yeah. It's interesting that,
you know, that would took me a while
to embrace that, that it is my voice.
And because when I recorded myself initially, it
was, you know, out of necessity.
I never thought it would stay in there.
And then, you know, more and more people
said, no. It it's your story. You need
to be doing this. And,
you know, I worked for years when I
was in the narrative world. My my day
job was I was,
doing ADR recording. I would work with actors
in postproduction to redo lines. And I actually
developed a very good a close relationship with
Anthony Meguela.
So I worked with him on on English
Patient and Talented Mr. Ripley
and Cold Mountain. And and he
was very much
you know, he knew I wanted to, you
know, direct my own films, and I had
ideas. And he he very, very strongly said,
Mark, you you
you need to do something that is unique,
that respect
reflects your own unique
background.
And,
sadly, he he died before I made particle
fever, but I I think,
you know, I still feel that influence and
that that compulsion that he he pushed me
in that direction to say, yes. Okay. That's
you know, I'm not gonna just do some
comedy or something like that. I love comedies,
but that's, you know, what I have to
offer is something different. So I I felt
like this, in some sense, was the culmination.
But
but the gold bug variations,
that's gonna be that'll be the other side
of it, I hope. And,
yes. We'll we'll we'll you'll see what happens
with that. I'd like to thank Mark Levinson
for talking to me for this episode of
the Physics World Stories podcast. And I'd also
like to thank Mark for making the universe
in a grain of sound,
which you can find out more about and
find out when there are screenings
near you or indeed on the Internet on
grain of sound movie.com.
Hopefully, there'll be a future episode where Mark
will join us again to talk about that
Gold Bug variations project he's working on. But
2025
is the international year of quantum science and
technology,
because
it marks the centenary
of Werner Heisenberg's
efforts to develop the mathematical formulation
of quantum phenomena. We'll look at that in
January, but until then I hope whatever you're
doing or celebrating this December and wherever you
are in the world, you have a wonderful
time, and thank you very much for listening.