Emergence, Cosmic Origins and Collective Patterns
Science and Cocktails is proud to present a special episode devoted to Emergence, featuring a panel discussion with leading scientists from around the world and across disciplines. Meet Vijay Balasubramanian, who explores the emergence of space, time, and neural processes; Constantino Tsallis, who investigates the role of entropy in the universe; and Suchitra Sebastian, who studies the strange world of quantum matter. Interwoven with the discussion, the episode will feature a unique audio-visual performance, From the Foam, by Mark IJzerman, in which complex forms arise again and again from simple local interactions, offering a vivid artistic portrayal of emergence.
Emergence is all around us. Interactions between atoms give rise to the richness of matter; interactions between cells give rise to living organisms; and interactions between people give rise to economies, societies, cities, and politics. Space and time themselves may have emerged from something more fundamental. Black holes appear to encode hidden microscopic degrees of freedom. The quarks and gluons of the early universe evolved into the matter that shaped cosmic structure. Quantum elements combine to produce the many forms of matter we observe, while simple local rules allow animal groups to move as if they were one.
Emergence: from the origin of the universe to the collective patterns that shape our world.
The panel discussion will be moderated by theoretical physicist Jácome “Jay” Armas. It is one of the signature events of the National Science Agenda (NWA) consortium Emergence at All Scales, integrated in the Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena, and presented in collaboration with Paradiso.
This event is an initiative by the Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena (DIEP) with the support of the University of Amsterdam. Science & Cocktails Amsterdam is presented in cooperation with Paradiso Amsterdam.
Vijay Balasubramanian
Vijay Balasubramanian
Vijay Balasubramanian is a theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds the Cathy and Marc Lasry Professorship in Physics and Astronomy. After a PhD in physics at Princeton, he became a Junior Fellow at Harvard. His work spans string theory, quantum field theory, black-hole thermodynamics, spacetime structure, statistical inference, information theory, and the physics of living systems.
Constantino Tsallis
Constantino Tsallis
Constantino Tsallis is a Greek-born, Brazilian physicist best known for proposing a nonadditive generalization of Boltzmann–Gibbs entropy, now widely called Tsallis entropy, in 1988. Raised in Argentina, he studied at Instituto Balseiro and earned a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1974. He worked at CBPF in Rio de Janeiro, founded Brazil’s National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems, and is an External Faculty Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.
Jácome “Jay” Armas
Jácome “Jay” Armas
Jácome “Jay” Armas is a theoretical physicist and associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, also affiliated with the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. His research spans string theory, quantum gravity, black holes, holography, and hydrodynamic approaches to soft, active, astrophysical, and quantum matter. He coordinates the Dutch Institute for Emergent Phenomena, is the PI of the consortium Emergence At All Scales and founded the public science platform Science & Cocktails. Armas edited Conversations on Quantum Gravity, published by Cambridge University Press, and received the 2023 EPS High Energy and Particle Physics Outreach Prize.
From the Foam
From the Foam
From the Foam is a live audiovisual performance in which complex form arises, again and again, from simple local interactions. Reaction-diffusion fields and fluid simulations are mixed live with real-life footage, so that the generated and the filmed bleed into one another and the image hovers at the edge of recognition. A body, a creature, a coastline surfacing for a moment before dissolving back into pattern. Matter shifts from symmetric to non-reciprocal interaction and organises into something alive. Sound is drawn from and inspired by the same systems: organic, breathing textures rise toward a call or a voice and dissolve before they arrive. Nothing fully resolves; recognition itself becomes an emergent act, meaning that condenses out of noise and slips back into it. Generated in real time, and developed in dialogue with scientists, the work is not a picture of emergence but an instance of it.
Mark IJzerman
Mark Ijzerman
Mark IJzerman is an interdisciplinary artist and composer working across ecology, sound, and technology. His installations and audiovisual performances draw on fieldwork and collaboration with scientists, often incorporating living organisms, custom-built hardware, and self-written software to build systems that take on a degree of their own agency. His recent work looks at the ways we, as humans, experience our ecology and the non-human around us — landscapes as much as other forms of life, the micro to the macro — using different media to let the non-human speak. Mark IJzerman has exhibited and performed his work in various venues and festivals, including Sonic Acts (NL), V2_ (NL), Chroniques Biennal (FR), De Lakenhal (NL), iii (NL), W139 (NL), Meakusma (BE), Le Guess Who? (NL), Rewire (NL), FIBER Festival (NL), LIMA (NL), Mapping Possibilities (EG), Mapping Festival (CH), EYE Filmmuseum (NL), Next Nature Network (NL), the International Space Station (outer space, via Moon Gallery), amongst others.
