Review: Notes on the Classification of Spectral Lines, the Art of Water Writing, and Other Important Ephemera by Catastrophe Theory Arts
by Michael Meigs
The title is entirely opaque. It's a curious choice by Stephen Pruitt and Rebecca Whitehurst for the succession of illuminating thought pieces they assembled with great care for a single weekend presentation at the Salvage Vanguard. The Tuesday preview audience could have been met by just about anything, from astrophysics to hoodoo. And in fact, we were.
A miscellany. This short evening somewhat resembles a sequence of TED talks that you might have turned up by chance on-line or on television.
But their choices conveyed consistent preoccupations. Messaging, first of all -- Pruitt and Whitehurst came forward to their assembled public with pre-emptive apologies for any technical imperfections ('It's just the two of us, doing this') and suggested a response to glitches ('Go, team!'). Rather than stepping immediately into prepared material they asked for our participation in a thought experiment drawn from experimental psychology. If you were to meet someone tomorrow, where and when would you suggest? Write that on the index card you have in hand, and we'll collect and collate them to calculate the likelihood of coincidental choices. Oh, and give us your name and e-mail if you'd like to know how it comes out.
Setting the theme, Stephen told the story of the Pioneer spacecraft and scientists' belated decision to devise a message for mankind's first reach beyond this solar system. He explained the symbols etched into that plaque with the thought of communicating our existence and identity to someone or something beyond our ken, and he mused on light, time and distance.
Rebecca sat at her desk at stage left, staring into her laptop and going through lecture notes on the development of classification of stars, done largely at Harvard University by talented women who received little, no or belated recognition for their remapping of human understanding of the universe. Parts of this story resounded particularly for me, for over spring break we'd made our first trip to the Big Bend area of the state, including to UT's McDonald Observatory with its museum and massively attended 'star parties' on the mountainside.
Affable and diffident, Stephen stood close before us and talked about his father, the coach and sports fan who despite those enthusiasms had allowed his son to explore different interests. Messaging is important in sport, a system of signs and movements mostly without meaning until a key, a 'tell', indicates the following gesture is significant. He demonstrated. He and Rebecca stepped into communication. They defined messages and keys, showed them to us.
How likely is it that there will be anyone out there in the great unknown to receive our messages? Rational definitions suggest near impossibility. Rebecca sifted out for us the percentages of matter existing in space and defined the relevant portions as low as 2 percent; Stephen gave us the formula embodying the likelihood of any message being received, given distances, durations and the hypothetical survival times of intelligent life, including that on our own planet.
Rebecca held out a fistful of index cards and went through them. Citing the compulsive behaviors of her own daily routine, she discarded one card after another as Stephen unwound the filament from a ball of red yarn, looping it around stage objects and lightly binding his presenting partner as she audited her obsessions.
Later turning to different stars, Rebecca lectured us on successive iterations of the musical Les Miserables and the effectiveness measured by various criteria of performers who have played Inspector Javert (not surprisingly, Russell Crow came lowest in her estimation).
In near darkness and against a looming active projection resembing Microsoft's screen-saver image of stars whizzing toward us from perspectives of infinity Stephen took a bucket and swab to paint on the floor of the Salvage Vanguard a recreation of the encircled cryptic atomic symbols from the Pioneer plaque. The two performers stationed themselves on chairs before the projection of a night road receding into the distance. Stephen mused about the vast spaces of west Texas where FM and AM radio signals die away and leave the traveler alone, isolated although still in this state. Again I had a quick moment of déjà vu, reliving four days recently spent in those same precincts.
Vignettes and entertainments in themselves, these various passages reminded us of our good fortune of being here at all and quietly questioned mankind's heedless presumption of purpose and centrality. Pruitt and Whitehurst have entirely different styles which give them a highly effective complementarity. One has the impression that Stephen's distracted but not overcome by the complexity and profundity of these thoughts, while Rebecca's confident delivery and acrobatic physicality meets them head on.
I came away from their evening of exploratory performance with a feeling of calm and clear sightedness, the sort of serenity that one might enjoy after an extended session of meditation or contemplative prayer. And with a feeling that I'd experienced more than that. This pair's contemplations and communications are artistic messaging of surpassing quality. While pondering the experience over the past two days I turned to the bulky Oxford English Dictionary in my office to look up the entry for 'poetry.'
The apposite OED definition (3.b) is too clunky to cite here, but a 1791 illustrative citation of one I. Waller Johnson encapsulates what I experienced in their voyage at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre:
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. . . . Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford.
EXTRA
Notes on the Classification of Spectral Lines, the Art of Water Writing, and Other Important Ephemera
by Rebecca Whitehurst and Stephen Pruitt
Catastrophe Theory Arts
May 24 - May 28, 2016
Performances at 8 pm on Tuesday, May 24, 2016 and Thurs-Saturday May 26, 27, 28 at Salvage Vanguard Theater.
