Exhibited in Art Among the Stars 2025
The Dark Ages
2025
digital collage, text
18 x 24 inches
This project is inspired by a period in the universe's history called "The Dark Ages". It's a period that was millions of years long, which happened within the first one billion years of the universe’s lifetime. During this time, it is almost entirely dark, with the only light being some photons. Protons and electrons are combined in an event called "recombination", but that process isn't visible. The universe continues to expand while this is happening. Cold hydrogen gas cools and gas begins to clump at some point and small fluctuations in density occur throughout the universe. Eventually this causes some of the gas clouds to become denser, and this is what ultimately causes star and galaxy formation, ushering in the next era of the universe’s development. Each element in this work is meant to represent some aspect of this epoch. Perhaps the most obvious is the dark background with only a few specks of light, which represents the expansive darkness present during this time.
I drew the universe as many concentric circles, with each outer circle getting progressively lighter to show that the universe is expanding outwards. In order to emphasize this effect, there are small plants shown growing from each layer to the next like the universe is growing outwards. The flat line with minute waves is supposed to represent the small density fluctuations occurring throughout the universe, and the poem is written from the perspective of the universe, imagining what it feels like to be the universe during this time period. Finally, the element of the piece which is just the word "COLD" written several times over plays with spacing and the number of times the word is said changing every line, in order to show how the hydrogen gas is cooling over time.
Ishaani Purang
Astronomy Department, Sophomore
Ishaani Purang is an astronomy and applied physics student who is also very fond of poetry. She appreciates that you can either follow set rules or throw all rules out the window to write a poem, and tries to reflect this in any and all of her work to get her meaning across. In terms of research, she is currently working on SED (spectral energy distribution) fitting with Professor Long at UW Seattle and on line investigations with Dr. Ansel Neunzert at LIGO.
