Rendezvous Problem 5: Reproducibility with Magda Stanová & Vojtěch Witzany

Rebuild the device. Repeat the experiment. Redo the computations. Simply: reproduce the results. It seems straightforward enough, doesn’t it? The requirement of reproducibility is the foundation of modern science – and of a pluralistic, industrialized society. But what if things were different? What if your experiment always destroys or alters the object you observe? What if your “experiment” is the entire universe?

A repeated joke isn’t funny, but looking at the night sky seems to impress us every time. Some experience triggers wear off quickly, others slowly, while some might get better and better over time. How does the impact of artworks change over time when someone sees them on a daily basis? And what happens when two or more triggers of various fade rates are mixed together?

Together, Magda Stanová and Vojtěch Witzany explore the limits of repetition and reproducibility – in science, in art, and in our ways of making meaning.

Two people have a date in a park they have never been to before. Arriving separately in the park, they are both surprised to discover that it is a huge area and consequently they cannot find one another. In this situation each person has to choose between waiting in a fixed place in the hope that the other will find them, or else starting to look for the other in the hope that they have chosen to wait somewhere. If they both choose to wait, they will never meet. If they both choose to walk there are chances that they meet and chances that they do not. If one chooses to wait and the other chooses to walk, then there is a theoretical certainty that they will meet eventually; in practice, though, it may take too long for it to be guaranteed. The question posed, then, is: what strategies should they choose to maximize their probability of meeting?

The premise of the series is that a rendezvous between an artist and a scientist is staged. They start from the same topic, but they each talk from the perspective of their own discipline. The scientist talks about science, the artist speaks about art. At certain points in the course of this address they might intersect. Equally, a complete disconnection, despite the common thematic space shared, might present itself. A conversation following the two presentations explores these intersections and discontinuities.