The deep blue oil paintings on wood panels in this exhibition are from a series that is, as the artist says, «a culmination of several ideas.� They can be viewed as �star charts,� a section of deep space, and as �flow charts?» Symbolically, the underlying structure of networks revealed by the interconnections in logic systems, biological systems, or communication systems). This exhibition is presented in cooperation with Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York City.

Steve Deihl's work is included in the collections of The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; Marshall Spaceflight Center, Huntsville, Alabama; and Nathan Hall Biology Center, Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Rainbow Project
Steve Deihl

Gravity Constant

«My proposal for the SETI workshop, The Rainbow Project, extends some of my ongoing investigations as an artist. I recently paired eleven universal constants with eleven drawings in a project entitled constants . Taken together, this small handful of numbers, including pi, e, alpha, the Planck constant and others, become parameters serving to describe our world and, by extension, all parts of the universe.»

Hubble Constant

«An interstellar message could convey these constants images linked with their respective specific numbers, but the problem arises, how to send a picture? Since I began thinking about the nature of an interstellar message, I have come to believe that a message comprised of numbers alone is missing the point. It should also say something about the species which sent it � our culture and values � and provide the means for assembling a mental picture by the recipient.»

«A Rainbow could be such a picture� In our world, the image of the rainbow is ubiquitous. It is a spiritual symbol, linked in mythology and religion to hope and peace, and it is also the physical manifestation of light theory. Since visible light frequencies exist universally, then perhaps we could translate these numbers into our message. The recipient would assemble the frequencies into the standard form of violet through red, immediately apprehending the rainbow symbol. The first message we send is its own frequency, constructed in a 'meta-language' free of any Earth reference, essentially using frequency to describe itself. Since the message is self-referential, this initial information becomes its own standard and, over several days, subsequent frequency messages would be built upon this aspect, creating the rainbow pattern.

Boltzmann Constant

sources: butlerart.com, nancyhoffmangallery.com, artretran.com