A deeply compelling lecture, defying the supposed impossibility of a union between physics and comedy.
Vivien Puppa Kocsis graced us all with her first live performance. And what a fabulous debut it was. She may not be a performer (yet), but she had irrefutable stage presence and commanded the room with ease.
Though the content of the lecture is necessarily more pop academia than rigorously academic in content, it is entirely engaging start to finish. Not to mention funny. Kocsis is a diva with great comic sensibility. She was even good at crowd work.
Mixing anecdotes, philosophy, and physics, this is a deeply compelling hour of entertainment and education. The focus of the lecture is, as the title suggests, what we, as humans, are capable of seeing. Very little, it transpires. 0.004% of reality, to be precise. Kocsis discusses how the composition of atoms at the higher frequency side of the electromagnetic spectrum renders us invisible (this is definitely a poor approximation of the physics – sorry). Kocsis then discusses the other end of the spectrum, from the infrared light that mosquitoes see in, to the longest wavelengths in the observable universe. As an audience member, the one thing you really won’t notice is the passage of time, as the hour feels like mere seconds, so enjoyable is the content.
The lecture is abundant in little props and visually eloquent examples, including a demonstration of phytoplankton (which get jetlagged, apparently!) – pretty bloody cool. I could’ve listened to much more and have indulged much more depth.
Kocsis is charming and compelling, as well as an exemplary teacher. At points, she even (successfully) reprimanded the overexcited and rowdy audience-students, which is more than any of my secondary school teachers could boast. The only thing this lecture suffers from is a lack of time in which to dive deeper into the actual physics. I very much hope Kocsis will continue her career as performer and burgeoning comic. I’m not sure how her brand of comedy lands in the irony-averse USA, but in London, it was hugely appreciated, not to mention a welcome break from a theatrical market saturated in distinctly less, um, academic content.