The visual arts project of the authors Lucie Mičíková, Nik Timková, Zuzana Zabková and the art historian Lucia Kvočáková called Harvested Darkness created within their “Björnson“ collective renders, above all, a definition of a place. A place in multiple layers and meanings of the word. Their intervention into the premises of the Košice Synagogue embraces not just their creative dialogue but also a place of interconnection where their collective imagination builds further layers. The depth the artists articulate is not physical; it leads to places where the presence could be projected only by shared collective experience. The installation formed by their own architectonic solution, visual elements and projections entices the visitors to immerse into comfortable darkness located elsewhere than the Cartesian bodily presence. It is a place of shared imagination where the heat of togetherness forms a new ecosystem, fruitful humus where the humanistic construct of the subject is melted into a fertile synthesis with the surrounding darkness.
Level I: Areas Beyond the Cosmological Horizon
The corridor led straight and those who went through could easily attain a false sense of security. Suddenly, her hand that kept touching the rock touched the void. There was a stone margin, an edge, and then just emptiness.
An infinite universe contains an infinite number of observable universes. The same laws of physics and constants hold true in all of them. However, in such configuration as the distribution of matter, almost all of them differ from the universe we are able to observe. Even so, there might be universes with a similar or the identical configuration because there is an endless number of universes very far beyond our cosmological horizon. The observable universe, which is identical with the one we know, is 210(118) meters far from us. Supposing the universe has no end, there is an endless number of such observable universes identical with the one of our own.
The dust is slowly falling down and a ray of light is penetrating it: a curious golden glitter, as if shining rain was falling around it. It is enough for awakening a fear in her because it is illuminating the left part, a place where everything falls or flows as a river down the edge of a waterfall. The falling dust radiates as a huge fair light column and continuously falls into an endless abyss.
The more it descends the more the dusted light brightens the gloriole of the golden mist. What if the dust slowly leaked through the wounds cut in the nature by the mysterious knife.
She has not seen it herself but they say it is a gate into the world of spirits. It has been known for centuries – it is a part of the initiation ceremony of the shamans – the candidate must pass over to the other side and bring some trophy. Every now and then some do not come back.
Level II: Universes with Different Physical Constants
A violet ocean has its bed covered with huge stone balls. Lightnings are striking on the island sticking out of the sea as a horn as it is covered by cast iron rods. From a distance it looks like a sea urchin.
Since the catastrophe when the worlds were opened the polar ice started melting and weird ocean currents started flowing. The ocean was denser and denser. Now that I am wading through it, it is as dense as creme.
In the chaotic inflation theory, the multiverse as a whole is stretching and will keep on doing so forever. Some regions of space, however, have stopped stretching and form distinct bubbles. Such bubbles are the embryonic Level 1 multiverses. There are around 1010(10000000) of such universes. In each of the bubbles there is a different spontaneous symmetry breaking which results in different properties of the bubble, such as different physical constants.
An endless hall leads into wide space. It is fanned with more and more air and absorbed by deep darkness. It enters into a huge dome under the tombstones. Noise is resonating through a huge but stationary black bubble of air: there is some trembling or vibration, a sound heard in the blood and felt in the bones.
At last she hits a rounded metal rod with her fingers. She halts and keeps fingering the iron until she gets at a handle made of coarse iron. Very swiftly, with all her force, she pulls the rod down. Very loud roaring and cracking resounds and a shower of blueish sparks gushes out.
Level III: Many-Worlds Quantum Mechanics Interpretation
She crosses the footbridge and continues into a long rock corridor where stalactites are hanging. They emanate strange colours. The roaring and cracking sounds have ceased.
The Level III multiverse does not contain more possibilities in the observable universe than the Levels I and II. In reality, all possible worlds formed by the division of the multiverse of the level III with the same physical constants could be found in some of the observable universes of the level I. The difference between the Level I and the Level III is where the doppelgangers reside. In Level I they live elsewhere in three-dimensional space. In Level III they live on another quantum branch in infinite-dimensional. Similarly, all Level II bubble universes with different physical constants can, in effect, be found as worlds created by splits at the moment of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a Level III multiverse.
She silently enters the narrow corridor and opens the first door she bumps into. They belong to a room leading into a street. It is hot and musty so she opens the glass door into the balcony and fills the room with some evening air. The room is not so big and its furniture is robust and shabby. A home of hospitable people. On the wall there is a shelf with flowers and a few framed photos and an old book on the table. It is open. She wanders on the page 86. A description under a strange card is slowly fading away.
A black line is entering the space, leaves the paper creating abstract patterns tapping into a spiral.
Level IV: Other Mathematical Structures
This level considers all universes to be equally real which can be described by different mathematical structures which is definable in purely formal terms is also a mathematical structure. A Theory of Everything involving a set of different types of entities and relations between them is nothing but what mathematicians call a model, and one can generally find that it is a model of. That means that any conceivable parallel universe theory can be described at Level IV and subsumes all other ensembles.
Everything else, from one horizon to another, is of a monotonous mustard colour except from the mountains covered with sage flower buds giving them the touch of metallic blue. Blue dust is slowly falling from the sky.
She lies in a boat steered by a spell above huge depths and looks above into the darkness. For her whole life she keeps looking into the dark - but this darkness is the night of the ocean – it is violet. Endless. Roofless. It is expanding beyond the stars. Terrestrial forces hold no power over it. It was here before the light and will persist after it. It was here before the life and will persist after it. It is expanding further and further, beyond the evil itself.
I came from a different world. Really. I came into your world through another.