Contextualizing literature

1. The mass of an electron increased as the
velocity of the electron approached the
velocity of light.
PART I

2. 19a r t s & s c i e n c e s m a g a z i n e
arts canvas & exhibition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 8, 12,
dance & theatre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17, 20
sciences aliensism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
archeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
physics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 5-6, 9, 11, 13,
current Events –
what’s happening &
what’s in
the Dreyfus affair, j’accuse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
wag the dog! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
around the world events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 20
the Potemkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
the Dreadnought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
pop culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
changes to come . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
editirial commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
works borrowed credits. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
2
I s s u e 1 . 1

3. EINSTEIN
Relativity

4. 4

5. In that year, the publication of Einstein’s “On the Electrodynamics
of Moving Bodies” and three other papers — on light, on
Brownian movement and on the equivalence of mass and energy
— revolutionized modern physics.
Thanks to this work, the difficulty of relating the laws of motion
to Maxwell’s law within a unified theory was resolved. Einstein’s
work, which was completed in 1916 by the theory of general
relativity, opened a century shaped by physics — as the 21st will
probably be shaped by biology.
Savage Century 1905: The Birth of Modernity, Thérèse Delpech
1905
5

6. “Relative, relative,
everything is
relative, that’s the
secret of my
success.” a l b e r t e i n s t e i n
6

7. 1905
witnessed the publication of one of the most important and
certainly the most provocative of the works of Sigmund Freud,
whose thought was to dominate the century to such an extent
that it is not an exaggeration to speak of the century of the
unconscious.
Savage Century: Back to Barbarism, Thérèse Delpech
7

8. 8

9. Lorentz's theory of electrons:
The mass of an electron increased as the
velocity of the electron approached the
velocity of light.
Einstein realized that:
The equations describing the motion of an
electron in fact could describe the nonaccelerated
motion of any particle or any suitably defined
rigid body.
9

10. T H E D R E F U S A F FA I R
J’Accuse . . .! The article, by Emile
Zola, the great French novelist,
appeared in a Paris literary
newspaper, L'Aurore (The Dawn)
on Thursday, Jan. 13, 1898, "an
essential date in the history of
journalism," according to historian
Jean-Denis Bredin. Written in the
form of an open letter to the
President of France, the 4,000
word article, entitled J'Accuse! (I
Accuse!), rightly has been judged a
"masterpiece" of polemics and a
literary achievement "of
imperishable beauty." No other
newspaper article has ever
provoked such public debate and
controversy or had such an impact
on law, justice, and society.
10Published in Flagpole Magazine, p. 12 (February 11, 1998)

11. The 1905
Salon d’automne showed for the first
time works of the painters that soon
became known as the Fauves, or “wild
beasts.” The term is a reflection of their
vivid colors, spontaneous violent
brushstrokes and drawing that broke
with academic norms.
Savage Century: Back to Barbarism, Thérèse Delpech
11

12. A few years after the Fauves burst on the scene, the
Futurist movement arose in Italy, containing clearly
apocalyptic elements and openly declaring itself in
favor of a major war, which alone, the Futurists
believed, could bring about the hoped-for renewal of
art and culture more generally.
Savage Century: Back to Barbarism, Thérèse Delpech
Matisse and colleagues, including André Derain,
Maurice de Vlaminck, and Albert Marquet, persevere,
and their paintings are hung in Room 7. The public jeers
at the "orgy of pure colors," judging the works primitive,
brutal, and violent. The artists are dubbed "fauves"—
wild beasts. Room 7 becomes "le cage.“
Copyright 2008 National Gallery of Art
12

13. Einstein based his new kinematics on a
reinterpretation of the classical principle of
relativity:
That the laws of physics had to have the same
form in any frame of reference.
Kinetics: The branch of mechanics that studies the motion of a
body or a system of bodies without consideration given to its
mass or the forces acting on it.
13

14. Arthur Evans in Knossos: In 1894
Evans met with Minos
Kalokairinos and visited the site
of Knossos. Three years later he
purchased the land on which the
site of Knossos was located and
spent the rest of his life
excavating its remains and
interpreting them.
Excavation began in 1900 and
continued for 35 years. Objects
from the site were put on display
in London in 1903. Evans was
honored and made an Oxford
chair and knighted in 1911 and
1936. 14

15. Karl Landsteiner, Austrian
physician documents first three human
blood groups A, B and O in 1901. In
1902, a fourth main blood type, AB
discovered by A. Decastrello and A.
Sturli.
(History of Blood Transfusion Medicine Bloodbook.com)
Glass became a relatively cheap and
convenient form of packaging in 1903
when Michael J. Owen in Britain
invented a semiautomatic machine for
producing both jars and bottles.
http://www.answers.com/topic/history-of-packaging-and-
canning
WAG THE DOG!
The firm of Mitchell and Kenyon,
founded in Blackburn in 1897 by Sagar
Mitchell and James Kenyon, released
films under the trade name of Norden
and were one of the largest British film
companies in the 1900s, producing a
mixture of topicals, fiction and 'fake'.
With the outbreak of the Boer War in
October 1899, the company turned to
the production of war films of events in
the Transvaal and the Boxer rebellion in
China. These were filmed in the
countryside around Blackburn and
consisted of fictionalised scenes of
events from the battlefronts.
http://www.victorian-cinema.net/mitchellkenyon.htm
15

16. As a second fundamental hypothesis,
Einstein assumed that the speed of light
remained constant in all frames of
reference, as required by classical
Maxwellian theory.
16

17. A copy of the first program – 1904
http://www.its-behind-you.com/storypeterpan.html
17

18. Paris World Fair, 1900.
While standing in the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition
receiving line, President William McKinley is shot by an
anarchist , September 1901.
First zeppelin flight 1902.
First underground tunnel of the New York Subway
opens 1904.
Treaty of Portsmouth 1905, peace settlement signed at
Kittery, Maine, U.S., ending the Russo-Japanese War.
Russia recognizes Japan dominant power in Korea.
18

19. June 1905, the Potemkin’s crew spontaneously mutinied after being
threatened with group execution for refusing maggot-infested meat.
Subsequently, the ship gave partial support to striking demonstrators in
Odessa by firing shells at the part of the city where Imperial officers were
housed. Ironically, Russian crews suffering the defeats and hardships of the
Russo-Japanese war were planning mutiny throughout the fleet but was to
take place later in the year. The Potemkin uprising was not part of the plan.
The event is considered a contributing step towards World War I.
THE POTEMKIN
19

20. Anna Pavlova, the Dying Swan,
Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, 1905. 20

21. King Leopold’s savage rule of Congo Free State ends. The
nation is renamed the Belgian Congo, November 16, 1908.
Following failure of the Allied Gallipoli campaign, Winston
Churchill dismissed as First Lord of the Admiralty, 1915.
Australian forces were used as fodder and slaughtered
needlessly after the conflict had been lost.
21

22. As a consequence of his theory Einstein recovered
the phenomenon of time dilatation,
wherein time, analogous to length and mass, is a
function of the velocity of a frame of reference.
Later in 1905, Einstein elaborated how, in a certain
manner of speaking,
mass and energy were equivalent.
22

23. The British completion of the HMS Dreadnought . . . October 1, 1906. HMS
Dreadnought represented a true terror weapon of the day . . . [it] obsoleted every
other battleship then in existence. Rather than give Britain's large navy an even
bigger advantage over Germany's small coastal fleet, it put them on an almost
equal footing overnight, really only one battleship ahead.
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/uk/uksh-d/drednt9.htm
THE DREADNOUGHT
23

24. POP CULTURE
Mass media and mass production provide a framework to support “Overnight phenomenon”.
In 1900 Eastman Kodak markets the Brownie, a simple cardboard camera named after
Canadian cartoonist Palmer Cox’s popular characters. Its low cost brings photography and
photographic albums within reach of millions worldwide.
In 1908, Künstlerische Kodakgeheimnisse (Artistic Secrets of the Kodak) by Austrian
architectural critic Joseph August Lux, celebrates the manner in which photographs allow
families to create stability through personal documentation and this in turn combats the
impermanence and instability of modern life.
24http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownie_(camera)

25. SYNCHRONICITY OR CAUSE AND EFFECT?
From our vantage it appears events conspire to
create a path to war.
We don’t know how to establish a balance
between science and stability. Science is an
expression of our own creativity in response to the
world, yet it is often not the benign force we
expect. When science overreaches our humanity
many look to a failure of faith. We demand that
faith and duty protect us from ourselves.
Historically we make polar forces of spiritualism
and science. We make ourselves the battleground
between these two extremes.
25

26. HISTORY
Is history pseudo-documentation? Is it the
product of our understanding of events and
therefore a subjective collection of
evidence we were already looking for? Or
is it a catalog of events from which we are
free to draw valuable conclusions?
Do we selectively create history to determine an
outcome we can comprehend? And in so doing,
do we limit our understanding of the outcome?
26

27. Nikolas II came to power at the age of 26 in 1894.
He continued the tsarist tradition of opposing
political change, press censorship, persecution of the
Jewish population and exiling political prisoners.
The failure of the Russo-Japanese War provoked
demonstrations and worker strikes. Nikolas was
forced to concede powers to the newly created
duma.
Tsarist secret police (Okhrana) information card
Joseph Stalin the Okhrana, in St. Petersburg, 1912.
Tsar Nikolas II
CHANGES TO COME
27

28. The Art:
Slide 4, Matisse, The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg,
Russia.
Slide 8, Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou, 1906, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.4
Slide 12, André Derain, Mountains at Collioure, 1905, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
John Hay Whitney Collection 1982.76.4
Slide 15, Joffrey Ballet Archive, The Parade
Slide 28, André Derain, View of the Thames, 1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1985.64.12
Slides 20, 29, Albert Marquet, Posters at Trouville, 1906, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.1
Slide 24, Brownie camera picture. http://www.boxcameras.com/no2brownie.html
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