Tracing Light
Saturday 5th of July 11:00am (Australian Premiere)
THOMAS RIEDELSHEIMER | GERMANY / UK | 2024 | 99'
Where quantum physics meets art, light reveals its magic.
Light, without which life itself is impossible, is the working medium and obsession of director Thomas Riedelsheimer. Light, seen only in interaction with matter, allows us to explore the origin of the universe. In Tracing Light, science and art interact to illuminate the birth of stars and secrets of the molecular world.
Einstein’s work on light changed our understanding of the world forever and revealed it as more complex and magical than was thought. Now, at a radical moment in physics, we bring together leading scientists, and artists who sculpt with light, across Scotland and Germany – from the Max Planck Institute at Erlangen, to Glasgow University’s Extreme Light Group and western reaches of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, in a quest to understand and embody the ineffable. New questions are given voice, visually and sensually, in the language of matter; in the language of film – light.
"Light is so much more than beautiful sunsets or shadow patterning. Light is philosophy. It puts our ability to think and to imagine to the test. In the realm of photons, nothing works as we know it in our everyday world. Particles are simultaneously waves and found in many different places at the same time. The very act of observing properties changes them. Time stands still and thus unites future, present, and past. Light makes us realise that our human perception and our frames of reference are extremely limited, and that there are farther universes of possibilities. Light can make us more modest and humble – that has perhaps become my greatest realisation. Tracing Light does not intend to explain anything – that would be presumptuous. But the film seeks to move us to feel how grand and wonderful this universe is. Even without us ever fully understanding it."
CREDITS
DIRECTOR/ DOP/ EDITOR:
Thomas Riedelsheimer
PRODUCER:
Sonja Henrici
Thomas Riedelsheimer
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER:
John Caulkins
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS:
Leslie Hills
Stefan Tolz
Mark Thomas
MUSIC:
Fred Frith
Gabby Fluke-Mogul
SOUND DESIGN:
Christoph von Schönburg
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
