The Ends of Time, in Art and Science - Facts So Romantic
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In Gallery 919, in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a giant breathing machine. Its creator, William Kentridge, calls it “the elephant,” after Charles Dickens’s description of factory machines that move “monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.” On the walls surrounding the elephant are five different video channels, full of metronomes, maps, springs, people in white coats, stars. The installation, called The Refusal of Time, is a collaboration between Kentridge and historian of science Peter Galison. Both men are fascinated by time—how we’ve measured it, how it works, and whether it’s real at all. In a related essay, also titled “The Refusal of Time,” Galison recounts Einstein’s relationship with Friedrich Adler—a student who quit (...)