Art and Science in a Grain of Sand

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SThe Ccience and Art are, in many ways, parallel forms of investigation: they arise from human imagination, deeply shape our understanding of the universe, imply experimentation and rely on the manipulation of terrestrial materials. These common points are at the center of the documentary and the director of the writer and the director Mark Levinson The universe in a grain of sand. Although the title comes from William Blake’s poetry, who believed that scientific reductionism destroys imagination and meaning, Levinson’s film places science and art in the conversation with each other, both conceptually and visually. Each thumbnail illuminates the next one.

In a segment, for example, a voiceover tells us that the main scientific idea underlying our digital age is that each type of information can be fully expressed by discreet units, such as zeros and zeros. Meanwhile, the screen fills with colored points arranged in apparently random blocks. But while the camera is moving away, the points merge to reveal that they form the famous Pointillist painting of Georges Seurat des Parisians taking advantage of a beautiful park, A Sunday afternoon on the island of the Grande Jatte. The echoes are undoubtedly. The many scientists and artists who parade in the film also offer their perspectives on what science and art share and the value of this sharing. The neuroscientist of MIT Sarah Schwettmann, for example, notes that the underlying questions motivating the two areas “concern the fundamental nature of the human relationship with the world”.

For me, a script was a theory of the universe, the human universe rather than the physical.

Levinson himself has a deep personal knowledge of science and art: he obtained a doctorate. In the theoretical particle physics of the University of California in Berkeley in 1983, then radically changed direction to work in cinema. He filmed his first documentary Particle fever At CERN just when the Higgs boson was discovered there. This piece of serendipity, and the cinematographic eye and Levinson’s ear for physicists and physics, brought the recognition and award film.

I spoke with Levinson about kinship between science and art, The importance of materials for the two disciplines and ways whose human progress goes towards a unification of man, nature and machine.

What made you choose the film as an artistic medium?

What interested me about the film was not a way to explain science. Eastern European cinema was my entry! I saw these Polish, Russian and Hungarian films incredibly complex, serious and brilliant products under restrictive political conditions. I wanted to make films on the complexity of modern life. My first film was a fictitious story about the ancient Russian dissident artists and how they made art. [This film was called Prisoner of Time.]

You therefore went from a mainly scientific state of mind to a mainly cinematographic and artistic state of mind. How did it go?

As a student graduated in theoretical physics, I was sitting in a room with a pencil and paper, trying to find theories of the universe. Then I started writing a script and I was always sitting in a room with a pencil and paper. For me, a script was a theory of the universe, the human universe rather than the physical. And then you release and shoot the film, which is like having an experience. Obviously, it seems that it was this incredible change, but it didn’t want it when I was in it.

Your first idea for Grain of sand had to show art and science through films that experience the medium itself in a scientific way, but you found yourself with a broader vision of science and art in the film, through disciplines. How did it happen?

I first thought of the experimental film because I knew that some first pioneers of the film manipulated the “materials” – a relevant theme of the film – and their work appears in my film. But I was also struck by the interesting competition of the transition to more abstraction in art and physics at the same time, in the early 1900s. Another factor was my familiarity with the terrestrial art of Andy Goldsworthy and its resonance with the film. His line which he “tries to understand the stone” was gold for me! But when the film was published, I continued to present the art increasingly earlier, to try to make it larger!

I would like people to see science and technology that are not as threatening and foreign.

Instead of simply explaining the functioning of science and art or how they echo, your film seems to want to simply show the disciplines in action and let viewers establish their own connections. Is this a fair summary?

Yes! The film, in a sense, was an experience in assembling art and science instead of explaining them explicitly.

The title The universe in a grain of sand Metaphorically evokes science to the small scales of neurons and digital chips. The film also notes that sand is the natural source of silicon, the semiconductor of these chips. Does the metaphor also describe artistic creation?

By making the film, I had this sudden achievement: we do not really think of all the high -tech things that surround us as being linked to nature. But they are Nature and this has become a very strong thematic element of the film. But that also resonated me with the idea that artists work with materials based on nature and understanding of the properties of nature. The “sand” for me is representative of the earth.

What do you hope that viewers, scientists and general artists will withdraw from your film?

I would love people to see science and technology not as threatening and foreign, but as a reflection of our fundamental desire to understand the world around us. I would like people to see our progression as in a certain sense a unifying nature, humans and machines. I would like artists to see the beauty of science. I would like people (especially scientists) may have rejected art to perhaps see it in a new light, as presenting a different but useful perspective.

• Sidney Perkowitz

  Published on July 7, 2025

  Sidney Perkowitz, Candler professor of Emeritus physics, Emory University, is the author of Empire of Light: A History of Discovery in Science and Art and other writings on science in art and culture.