#levinthal

If you read the text on Wikipedia on Levinthal you realize that these photographs are not made in an easy way. Setting, staging and lightning all need to be perfect for a good photograph.Here is part of what Wikipedia says about Levinthal

His work is included in the permanent public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art,[2] and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. He has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon.

Levinthal has produced a diverse oeuvre, utilizing primarily large-format Polaroid photography. His works touch upon many aspects of American culture, from Barbie to baseball to X-rated dolls. He uses small toys and props with dramatic lighting to construct mini environments of subject matters varying from war scenes to voyeurism to racial and political references to American pop culture.

He creates miniature scenarios using shoeboxes, cardboard, and foam core to make miniature offices, hotel rooms, pool halls, foyers and narrow corridors. These shadowy and dark scenes expose the secrecy and intimacy of small spaces. Levinthal is particularly interested in exploring the different emotions that each scene produces, such as reactions to an office corridor in contrast to those to a hospital or a private bedroom. Indeed, there is an inherently voyeuristic aspect to these early works.

I love both artists and can offer a nice original by Henk Tas in a private sale. For the books on these artists visit www.ftn-books.com where there is the best book on Tas available and the highly collectable Smithsonian catalogue on Levinthal’s photographs.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OPENING THIS SATURDAY, MAY 11. DAVID LEVINTHAL: WAR GAMES. David Levinthal, a central figure in the history of American postmodern photography, has staged uncanny tableaux using toys and miniature dioramas …

I used to think there's a ideology called random. Or you may say randomology. 

When I was in primary 2 or 3, I started to play this console football game. In that game, it allowed you to randomly choose the stadium you wanted to play. That's my first encounter with the word (and perhaps the concept) of random.

Everything must be random. If not everything, something has to be random. That's the beauty of the world. I thought about it.

However, my belief with randomology started to be challenged and questioned. My first encounter with brilliant essay by Albert Einstein, The World As I See It, delivered the first punch.

In his essay, he (sometimes overly paraphrased) proposed that he did not believe God played dice. Something happens because of something, not due to chance only.

My fascination with random selection of football stadium in the console game was gradually answered, as well. It's not totally random per se, but when I carefully looked down the mathematical expressions, that "random" was set up by series of complex and delicate algorithm.

So, no randomology.

First and foremost while learning cellular biology, I understand that protein is shaped by information from DNA. The building block of amino acids, followed by primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structures. But how exactly protein (essential element in our lives) was shaped in its 3D comformational shape?

At first I thought the amino acids tried, in random, all the possibilities in order to finally achieve the lowest-energy, stable formation.

But when I do the maths, assuming protein with 100 residues, number of possible structures is 3^100 (since 3 bases code for one amino acid).

Again, assuming it takes only 10^-13 second to convert one strand of polypeptide into 3D shape of protein, it still takes 1.6 x 10^27 years.

Bloody hell, it's too long for one protein. And our body needs millions of proteins.

This is called Levinthal's Paradox. 

So, no randomology. So protein does not fold randomly to try every possible structure.

Randomly (I think it's not. Maybe the neurons in my brain suddenly clicked in to bring this thought), I remember (see? There was a process of recalling from the past memories) the question from Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker. "How long it would take a monkey poking randomly at a typewriter to reproduce Hamlet's remark 'Methinks it is like a weasel'?" 

Simple maths will tell you there will be 10^40 possibilities. 

But, what if I preserve each right character? So that means the monkey can only retype the wrong ones. 

It only took 2431-2883 tries. So much less than 10^40.

And this is not randomology. This is another method to eliminate randomness.

I believe universe works just as that. It will keep our right actions, and somehow gives us chance, time permitting, to correct the wrong ones.

Randomness is just another concept of lazy people to think about something around them. There is no randomness. Give scientists time, they will draw the expressions of the rotating galaxy. Galaxy does not rotate randomly, it does with purpose!

No more Levinthal's paradox. What I believe is, everything happens for a reason. 

This is good portraiture.