I have been really so ill the last week which has meant lots of plans cancelled. The good thing is I have been stuck indoors watching YouTube videos of Karen Barad and reading her book and making notes and writing and rewriting and preparing A3. I’ve sort of been at it the whole time (maybe that’s why it’s taking so long to get better).

Today I sent the sample to a physicist I have stumbled across who has kindly agreed to take a look at the theory and make sure I’m not making wildly inaccurate claims about quantum mechanics. I think it may be a strange thing for him to do though because Barad whose work my whole hypothesis bounces around is this peculiar hybrid of humanities and science which is unusual. But I am grateful to have the opportunity to have an actual scientist glance over my ideas – even though I suspect it might read to him like a 5-year-old’s version of the ideas he explores.

I asked him to look at the research question and pick holes in it – it is currently looking like this:

 

Diffraction

Entanglement 

&

Photography

 

According to contemporary science-philosophies, the notion of isolated, unrelated objects in a void universe expresses an out-dated and unhelpful view of reality. Rather than seeing ‘things’ which have their own place in space and time, many academics have been exploring a universe which is emergent, and where everything is interconnected, relational, dynamic, non-linear and lively. 

 

Within this evolving view of the universe, how – or can – photography successfully communicate the contemporary model described above? Or is it fatally challenged by its ontology? 

 

I will upload his response (unless he tells me it’s all crap – in which case I’ll cry and start again) and the rest of the sample before long, hopefully.

 

Lastly, because of the Hollins paper I recorded here recently, I am tempted to rethink the very top heading. I will wait and see.