Wonder of the Beyond, The

Because people generally need a bit of room — to create some distance, establish a tiny bit of breathing space — in order to make their own considered decisions about the liable goodness or badness of a thing. But shucks to all of that. Because I have to say this — I need to say this — out loud, in print: Navid Kermani has written one of the funniest, most perceptive, outrageous and engaging books about art, life and faith that I have ever read and these are the kinds of books I most love to consume. The premise of the book is a simple one: Kermani goes to look at some of the most significant and not so significant — but still interesting or contentious objects of Christian art in the world and boldly holds forth on them.

He is a Muslim. He is of Iranian origin, but has lived much of his life in Germany. The book is translated — a couple of clunky moments in the first few pages and then, wow — just wonderfully. He is easy to read, but his insights are fierce and acute. What do I know of Montaigne, you ask? Very little, I answer.

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But enough to say that these charming, informal, clever little essays — which cohere almost effortlessly into a breathtaking whole — stylistically and emotionally remind me most of him. There can be no greater accolade, surely. Kermani is an intellectual and a novelist. Most of all, he brings a sense of innocence and mischief. He is very human.

Wonder Beyond Belief: On Christianity by Navid Kermani

He is unapologetic and — a thing so precious in writing on faith — free. Just like so many of the artists — and the religious, both past and present — he engages with.

What a rare thing! What a wonderful thing! How on earth did he get there? Kermani goes to look at a little statue of the Christ Child Perugia, c. He arms himself with the non-canonical Infancy Gospel of Thomas and really lets rip. It would be fair to call his work inter-faith. This notion tends to fill me with dismay and horror. It creates the idea of a fine meal liquidised.

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As if everything good and diverse and distinct may be lost — pummelled, by good intentions, into an ecumenical sludge. Kermani talks about art and faith from his own singular, but refreshingly uninhibited, perspective. There is incredulity, but it is matched by an intense empathy. He is very nearly seduced. Ginsberg and fellow designer James King developed a hypothetical timeline of their uses and abuses, applications and implications.

By , for example, a probiotic drink containing E. To provoke a response to what synthetic biology could bring, Ginsberg and King therefore made a briefcase of coloured faeces. Futuristic organisms are a way of looking into what we make now. How do we transform that? In , Julian Voss-Andreae was part of a team that showed C 60 molecules could exhibit wave-particle duality , making buckyballs the most massive particles that wave behaviour has been observed for.

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To highlight this, Voss-Andreae has created a series of quantum people, sculpted from thin parallel steel sheets that appear and almost disappear depending upon your viewpoint. Voss-Andreae also creates sculptures inspired by protein structures , and is now working on an NSF-funded collaboration using DNA as a building material for nanoscale machines.

The expectation is that my expertise contributes to the research and that the research in turn inspires novel artworks in the future of the collaboration. At age seven, Gina Czarnecki , the daughter of a concentration camp survivor, visited the site of the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. From that visit an interest in human bodies may have started evolving, she tells Chemistry World , which today she uses to create senses of threat and irony in her work.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust, and in collaboration with Imperial College London biologist Sara Rankin , the project broke new ground in establishing what consent Czarnecki needed to do this. Trophies of empire is a pair of suspended stalagmites and stalactites made from hip bones encrusted with crystals of salt and sugar, which act as preservatives.

As a colour-blind A-level student, Luke Jerram looked set for a degree in engineering despite taking art alongside maths and physics. Influenced by his colour-blindness, many of these projects also explore how we see the world. Jerram, based in Bristol in the UK, also takes great pains to make his depictions as faithful as possible.

Over the past 10 years, the understanding of viruses has improved dramatically and all the images have got more and more accurate.

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Sometimes people get that a bit confused. How does gravity affect chemistry and biology? Nina Notman talks to the wine detectives uncovering the flavour molecules in our favourite tipples. Regularly updated and packed full of articles, podcasts and videos, there is no better way to keep in touch with the chemical sciences.

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Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Site powered by Webvision. Skip to main content Skip to navigation Create your free account Registration is free, quick and easy. Five artists show Andy Extance why science and art need not be mutually exclusive. Topics Arts Culture and people science and art.

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