Jeff Lieberman

Jeff Lieberman

Host of Discovery Channel's Time Warp (among other things), Jeff Lieberman lectured at CMU yesterday for the Jill Watson Festival Across the Arts (wats: On?) on the topic of speed.

"We don't perceive reality."
Lieberman talked much about perception, especially in relation to a human's perception of scale (in the sense of both size and time). Humans have evolved to understand our own scale, but beyond that (microscopic, as well as the scale of our universe) scale is difficult to grasp. In other words, even though experts can do measurements and such, we can't necessarily process the information into a tangible, concrete knowing. Lieberman cited his favorite photograph as one taken from the Hubble telescope, which illustrates his interest in the notions of scale and our inability to understand it. The photograph is actually an exposure over about two weeks of a tiny spot in space that, to us, looks completely pitch black. However, even in the blackness, there is so much more.

Hubble Telescope, Deep Field

In terms of speed, Lieberman pointed out how, even though we see things, we don't really see them. Utilizing techniques he learned after working in Doc Edgerton's lab, Lieberman slows actions down significantly, making a whole new perspective available to us.

Lieberman, although very interested in science, is also very compelled by the small moments where you just cease to think and run on emotion. After all, he said, emotion comes before rational thinking (on the most basic level). He even meditates for two hours a day.
Overall, he seemed to be striving to create a sort of "magic," which I think is portrayed in the following clip of a water cascade from Time Warp*.

* This was Lieberman's favorite clip from his slideshow, but the sound is fake.