Nikola Tesla (1st of May 2010)

Nikola Tesla, pop art, version 1

My colleague from the institute, Zlatko Vučić, asked me to think about the visual identity of the Summer school of young physicists in year 2006. The subject of the School was "Tesla's legacy in physics". As far as I remember, Zlatko already had a firm idea of Tesla as a pop icon. I think he spoke about Warhol, Marilyn Monroe, Mao Tse, ... Anyhow, for that purpose I made several representations of the image of Nikola Tesla, and Zlatko chose one of them that was used for the School flyers, posters and appeared on the title page of the School proceedings. I also worked on the design of the CD (proceedings and the CD are shown below).

Proceedings of the Summer school of young physicists 2006

The version chosen was not my favorite, perhaps because its realization in PovRay was the simplest one. There were more interesting variants, and one of them is shown in the image that opened this post. The basic idea was to form big structure by assembling smaller patterns (the smaller patterns are shown enlarged in the right quarter of the image). Below is a variant with patterns that remind of the brush strokes.

Nikola Tesla, pop art, version 2, brush strokes

The matters are more or less obvious in the further, so I will not comment on them any more. Instead, I should better say some words on the way Tesla saw the nature of reality and the position of man. I shall use several pieces from Tesla's text "How Cosmic Forces Shape our Destinies (Did the War Cause the Italian Earthquake)" published in New York American on the 7th of February 1915.

By the way, there has been much discussion about Tesla in recent years (in Croatia), but all of it was disconnected from what Tesla made of himself. There was a talk of his ethnicity, his father who was an orthodox priest, but noone said something about some of his inventions or ideas. But that is how it is in the modern world of internet and communications. If it lasts longer than a minute and cannot be used to immediately take a primitive radical stand (of any color), noone has the patience for it. Well ...

Nikola Tesla, pop art, version 3, circles

Tesla was weird in may respects, but interestingly weird. So, here are some of his weird but interesting statements:

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance. There is no constellation or nebula, no sun or planet, in all the depths of limitless space, no passing wanderer of the starry heaven, that does not exercise some control over its destiny—not in the vague and delusive sense of astrology, but in the rigid and positive meaning of physical science.

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

Quantum mechanics was forming in these years, so it is possible that Tesla heard something of that decadent entangled weirdness. But I do not believe it too much. I think that he is speaking of a classical concept of the universe as a gigantic, but (infinitely) multiply connected clock.

If a man does not control his exsistence, it is not clear who does. Tesla speaks about the influences from "without", but are those influences predetermined and written down in the formation of the universe or what? And what does universe represent afterall? From Tesla's text, one could arrive at the conclusion that the universe is a big play/show, but for whom? And by whom or what? Or perhaps the text should be understood only as resulting from one of Tesla's depressive moods and fatalistic determinism.

Nikola Tesla, pop art, version 4, molten metal
There is no gap between, no break of continuity, no special and distinguishing vital agent. The same law governs all matter, all the universe is alive. The momentous question of Spencer, "What is it that causes inorganic matter to run into organic forms!" has been answered. It is the sun's heat and light. Wherever they are there is life. Only in the boundless wastes of interstellar space, in the eternal darkness and cold, is animation suspended, and, possibly, at the temperature of absolute zero all matter may die.

A paragraph that is interesting in the context of viruses. Tesla radicalizes aristotelian idea that the transition from the living and the dead is continuous by saying that there is no dead at all (!) and that the whole universe is alive. Of course, the question arises on the meaning of such a statement. The idea that sun's light and heat are enough for the creation of life is also very questionable. But, since for Tesla the whole universe is alive, it can pass, only again I cannot see much content in that statement.

Nikola Tesla, pop art, version 5, trees

But regardless of somewhat depressive view on the position of man in the universe, Tesla had immense trust in science and the correctness of the knowledge that we acquire using scientific methods and also our senses. Tesla was no relativist.

Contrary to the most important tenet of Cartesian philosophy that the perceptions of the mind are illusionary, the eye transmits to it the true and accurate likeness of external things. This is because light propagates in straight lines and the image cast on the retina is an exact reproduction of the external form and one which, owing to the mechanism of the optic nerve, can not be distorted in the transmission to the brain. What is more, the process must be reversible, that in to say, a form brought to consciousness can, by reflex action, reproduce the original image on the retina just as an echo can reproduce the original disturbance If this view is borne out by experiment an immense revolution in all human relations and departments of activity will be the consequence.

UPDATE: (29th of August 2012) Photographs that I made in Tesla's birthplace, Smiljan, can be >> seen HERE.

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Last updated on 29th of August 2012.