Creative physics explores the presence of shifts and transformations in the process of creation, and our awareness of these processes. This vestigial, mysterious quality is sometimes referred to as an "art shadow." These random, embodied fragments of inspiration, memories and dreams offer a simultaneous encounter with the past and the present. It is these complex conversations that animate the work of artist in residence Pamela Davis Kivelson.
Renowned contemporary artist
Pamela Davis Kivelson (PDK) joined the Department of Physics in March 2023 as its first artist in residence. Her remit? To challenge perceptions of ourselves and others, both currently and historically through her department-wide, collaborative, creative project, 'Conversations Across Time'. PDK’s residency will generate a rich creative body of work, not least her collaborative “un-play” – a hybrid of film, art and performance and a physics first – that explores physics and in particular, quantum information and quantum computing. Her residency lays the foundation for future artistic collaborations.
A renowned contemporary artist in science faculties in America and beyond, Pamela currently holds a similar position at Q-FARM at Stanford University. In the Department of Physics at Oxford, she has worked with a diverse range of students, staff and faculty members, interviewing her subjects to inform her work. As well as academics and researchers within the Department of Physics, PDK has collaborated with award-winning composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford’s Keble College to compose the “un-play’s” score and creative media charity, FilmOxford. The live dates are affiliated to the Artful Intelligence season at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).
Art in a black hole orbit
'Conversations Across Time' took place from 15-17 June 2023 at the Beecroft Building in the Department of Physics, giving a unique experience to those interested in portraiture, quantum computing, AI and women in science and technology. Selected players, directed by PDK and Nina Jurkovic, created a quantum simulation, answering the question of what do horses, medievalists, black hole orbits, boardrooms and quantum computers have in common.
PDK considers the effects of a black hole orbit on art. Using her work as input, Professor Biao Lian (Princeton), Dr Ruizhu Chen (Stanford) and Zhaoyu Han (Stanford) plotted black hole orbits that visualise the ways in which multimedia works and paintings of astronomical size would get challenged, break apart, and disintegrate in the vicinity of a black hole. Part of the image spirally falls into the black hole, while the rest picks up enough energy to escape the black hole. What you see is what happens to these images as they are rotated and transformed over time.
‘Though the viewer is only nominally aware of the original narrative in the image, that awareness is still creating a sly presence,’ explains PDK. ‘Information is lost. Light rays, themselves are bent by the intense gravitational field of the black hole. The brushstrokes are transformed by orbiting motion. That dreamlike vestigial presence of the original art is its "art shadow." In them are embodied fragments of inspiration, memories and dreams. They are their own universe. They are the subtext of how we read or experience art, how we invent. These past and future encounters with art and beauty are the fabric of creative change. They are the elemental creative forces we search for.’
A physics un-play and art piece
Entangled with the Ashmolean, CAT2, took place on 15-16 June 2024 at the Ashmolean Museum. This piece portraiture and women in science and technology offered a unique experience in looking at the Quantum future.
A Quantum un-play
Described as a 'participatory un-play', Quantum Apparitions: The Physics of Loss occurred on 3 June 2025 in the Beercroft Building. This work took inspiration from the LA fires and the concept of loss in physics and in life, fuelling discussion, reflections, and re-imaginings about portraiture and black holes.
Affiliated Artists
Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Cheryl Frances-Hoad received her musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, and Kings College London. Chosen to be a featured composer on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Composer of the Week’ (Five under 35, March 2015), her works have garnered many awards, from the BBC Lloyds Bank Composer of the Year award when she was just 15 to more recently The RPS Composition Prize, The Mendelssohn Scholarship, and three Ivor Novello (formally BASCA) British Composer Awards (for Psalm 1 and Stolen Rhythm in 2010, and Scenes from the Wild in 2022).
Recent projects include Your servant, Elizabeth, commissioned by the BBC Proms for the 'Platinum Jubilee' Prom on 22nd July 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall. Cheryl was composer-in-residence at Presteigne Festival 2019 and was Associate Composer at Oxford Lieder Festival from 2019-2021.
Kathy Selby
Kathy Selby is an alumna of Somerville College and UC Berkeley. Her physics research fields have included alkali metal clusters and MRI of atherosclerosis, aneurysms and osteoporosis. Kathy’s career in physics has supported her lifelong music habit - playing violin, piano, flute, and singing.
Acting credits include Fiddler in Mary Queen Of Scots Got Her head Chopped Off (Viaduct Theatre, San Francisco), and recently, Squidward in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical (Baltimore Drama Group, Cork). While on the faculty of Cornell University, Kathy’s music and physics worlds underwent a joyous collision teaching the Physics of Musical Sound.
AION Interferometer
The Atom Interferometer Observatory and Network is a flagship UK project in Quantum Technology for Fundamental Physics, using the interference between wave-packets of laser-cooled atoms to search for gravitational waves and dark matter. By carefully measuring the difference between two atom interferometers separated by a long vacuum tube, we hope to see small wobbles as gravitational waves, or coherent dark matter fields, pass through the detector. With peak sensitivity in the few-mHz to few-Hz band, the AION detector explores a region invisible to other detector platforms, providing a unique window into new physics.
The first AION-10 prototype detector, using a 10-meter vertical vacuum tube, is currently under construction at the University of Oxford with planned operation in 2-3 years. As the project proceeds, we plan to extend to a full scale detector spanning first 100m and ultimately 1km underground. Suitable sites for the 100m detector are currently being surveyed.
