Maxwell's Demon - Mike Hannon & Irene Buckley

Maxwell's Demon (from Perpetual Motion Machine)

tape and video, 2007

Mike Hannon (video) and Irene Buckley (music)

"If we conceive of a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can follow every molecule in its course, such a being, whose attributes are as essentially finite as our own, would be able to do what is impossible to us."

- James Clerk Maxwell, 1867.




Maxwell's Demon forms part of Perpetual Motion Machine, a suite of three video works with music. It takes as its departure point the historical fascination with fallacious notions of free energy devices. Perpetual motion refers to a condition in which an object continues to move indefinitely without being driven by an external source of energy. In effect by its very definition, it is a system wherein the item in question consumes and outputs at least 100% of its energy constantly, sustaining no net loss as a result of the laws of thermodynamics. Using modern terminology, any machine that purports to produce more energy than it uses is a "perpetual motion machine".

The recorded history a concern with perpetual motion dates at least as far back as the 8th century. In 1775 the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris issued the statement that Academy "will no longer accept or deal with proposals concerning perpetual motion". In the 19th century, the invention of perpetual motion machines became an obsession for many scientists. Many machines were designed based on electricity, but none of them lived up to their promises. These designs may have appeared to work on paper at first glance. However various flaws or obfuscated external power sources had been incorporated into the machine.

Maxwell''s Demon is the name of a thought experiment devised by the eponymous Scottish physicist in order to test the validity of the apparently unassailable Second Law of Thermodynamics. In this famous conundrum a demon controls the trapdoor linking two containers of the same gas at equal temperatures. He (or she) allows molecules of greater than average velocity from the first chamber to flow into the next, thus decreasing entropy between two adjacent systems. This would appear to imply the potential for a perpetual motion machine that violates the Second Law. And, assuming the existence of mirror matter (also intriguingly referred to as Alice Matter), a demon that does not need feeding may indeed theoretically exist. However he (or she) would have to pay the entropy cost in the hidden mirror sector of the world.

Maxwell's Demon celebrates the prospect of what is an extremely compelling yet ultimately desperate enterprise. The quest to construct a free energy device is poignant, quixotic and archetypal. It represents a range of utterly human attributes and their associated behaviours (ambition, desire, lust for power and freedom) on a scale that is grandiose and mythic.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Mike
• Hannon
• Irene
• Buckley
• art
• video
• computer
• music
• experimental
• abstract
• molecules
• thermodynamics

[mhtroll23]

awsome music dude

[philskelton1]

cool and more.

[crawhip2]

cool