00:14 I saw physics as that discipline
00:17 that honestly tried to understand nature and describe nature,
00:20 what was a natural philosophy, the world around us.
00:24 In this sense, it has a component that is perhaps
00:27 somewhat more profound than other disciplines.
00:30 In physics, one studies everything from the furthest galaxies
00:35 and confines of the universe,
00:38 to the extreme limits of the most minuscule
00:41 measurements of particle physics.
00:43 They’re not just the frontiers of knowledge,
00:46 but also the limits of our physical reality.
00:54 I believe that attempting to explain what we do
00:59 on different levels is the fundamental work of scientists.
01:04 Furthermore, I’m going to use a metaphor that I heard
01:06 Pedro Miguel Echenique express many times.
01:10 He says: “when one listens to a symphony,
01:14 a large symphony, one of Mozart’s pieces,
01:17 there are many different levels of understanding”,
01:19 meaning that what someone
01:22 who is an important orchestra director will be capable
01:25 of perceiving, of feeling, of enjoying in that symphony
01:28 is not the same as what I might be able to enjoy.
01:29 And yet, I’m also able to enjoy
01:32 that music very much.
01:33 I believe that something similar happens
01:35 with science.
01:37 Something similar should happen
01:39 if we scientists were to take more time attempting to explain
01:43 our interests, our lines of work.
01:50 I believe that the pandemic,
01:52 I hope, or it should, I don’t know if it did,
01:54 but for me it was a tremendous example
01:57 of how science works.
01:58 That is to say, science is not a collection of dogmas
02:00 that appear and are absolute truth.
02:02 Science goes along self-correcting.
02:04 There are many things that we don’t know,
02:06 a great many things that we don’t know.
02:08 And the more things we know, the more we realise
02:10 how ignorant we are about a great many other things.
02:13 In this sense, of course, one goes along learning on the fly.
02:17 In terms of the pandemic,
02:19 there were many things that were learned on the fly.
02:21 The problem is that, in my opinion,
02:24 communication about this entire scientific process
02:27 was not the best.
02:29 I think that, in many cases, instead of developing trust
02:32 in some of the scientific activities,
02:36 it in fact increased distrust in science.
02:41 That’s why, for me, when we talk
02:43 about scientific communication,
02:45 it’s more important to express how science works,
02:47 what true scientific activity is,
02:49 how we go about learning on the fly,
02:52 how we go about correcting mistakes that may arise,
02:54 than the latest advances in microbiology
02:57 that we are achieving.
03:02 I, like many of my fellow researchers
03:07 at the Donostia International Physics Center, the DIPC,
03:10 we are attempting to research the properties of matter,
03:15 but from a quite microscopic perspective.
03:19 What I mean is that we are not just thinking about seeing this wood,
03:23 this table with our eyes, but rather
03:26 thinking about each little piece of this table having
03:30 10 to the 23rd atoms,
03:33 which is crazy and are also
03:36 quantities that I find unimaginable,
03:37 but we dive into these tiny distances, so tiny
03:41 that they are billionths of a metre,
03:44 because we know that the properties that end up
03:46 making this table can depend
03:47 on these minuscule distances.
03:50 So, clearly, we need to develop tools and knowledge
03:55 about what happens at these incredibly minuscule scales,
03:58 because there is a domain where
04:02 many of our intuitive ideas about what happens in our world
04:06 don’t work, they don’t work at all because it is the domain
04:09 of quantum physics, and we have to use different ideas
04:13 where many things seem like they’re almost witchcraft.
04:18 Pedro always tells an anecdote about when
04:21 he told me in 1999, 2000, what he wanted to do: the DIPC,
04:26 I always told him he was crazy,
04:30 because it didn’t seem to me that it could be possible,
04:33 not because of the project itself,
04:35 but because I know how administrations worked and how difficult
04:37 it was to create a centre like the one he was proposing,
04:42 which is a flexible, agile centre
04:46 that is above-all focused on people, on the researchers,
04:49 where then, and I think now,
04:52 what we are trying to do is make a quite careful selection
04:55 of scientists to come work with us,
04:58 but then offer them trust and freedom
05:02 so that they can develop their scientific research
05:06 the way they think best.
05:09 And with this trust we say, well,
05:11 you also have to assume risk
05:13 as a researcher,
05:15 and you can fail.
05:17 We take that on as an institution because
05:19 we know that there are daring projects
05:22 that don’t always work.
05:24 This philosophy of being so focused on people
05:27 and striving for a flexible, friendly environment
05:30 with lots of personal, international interactions,
05:33 with so many international visits,
05:35 was something that I thought
05:38 would honestly be quite difficult to create and promote.
05:40 Nevertheless, time has proven him right.
05:45 In addition to being a film, culture,
05:48 and gastronomy city, San Sebastian
05:50 is also a science city.
05:52 It is a city where there are some 4,000 people
05:54 dedicated to research,
05:57 which is insane
05:59 for a city with 180,000 residents.
06:01 I mean, that rate is approximately double
06:03 what we see in the countries with the most researchers.
06:06 It’s surprising to me that this research fabric
06:10 was able to be developed in just 20 years.
06:14 I think that, thanks to sustained support
06:16 from all the institutions,
06:19 the message got out that
06:21 investing in science and research
06:24 is a commitment to the future.
06:28 One of our jobs at the DIPC is certainly
06:30 communicating the science
06:32 on which we place such great importance.
06:34 We see that as one of our responsibilities,
06:36 and have since almost the very beginning.
06:37 That is why we also look for partners
06:40 we can maintain a very close relationship with,
06:46 share our values and visions with,
06:50 and also admire their activities.
06:59 One of the main ones, and also one of the ones
07:02 we have been carrying out the most activities
07:04 with in recent years, is Tabakalera.
07:07 Tabakalera itself and, also, some of the other institutions
07:10 that can be found within Tabakalera.
07:13 In particular, the Basque Film Archive and the Film Festival.
07:19 In the case of Tabakalera,
07:21 it has also served to develop one of the lines that we
07:24 have been thinking about for some time,
07:27 to create a space for dialogue between artists and scientists.
07:31 We started three years ago
07:34 putting some German artists, which were Quadrature,
07:37 in contact with two scientists from the DIPC,
07:40 which were dedicated to cosmology,
07:43 which is one of the groups that we attracted
07:46 not too many years ago, which is going quite wonderfully.
07:49 Honestly, it was a spectacular result
07:51 and beautiful start
07:53 to the collaboration with Tabakalera.
07:55 From that moment, we decided
07:58 to do it a little more regularly
08:01 with an annual collaboration.
08:02 It is true that we had to delay it
08:04 a bit with the pandemic,
08:05 but this year we have once again returned
08:08 to this lovely collaboration associated with another concept,
08:10 artificial life, that I think lends itself to this perfectly.
08:15 Both the Basque Film Archive and
08:17 the San Sebastian International Film Festival
08:19 are two other partners
08:24 that we share so much with, including values and vision.
08:26 So, in terms of the Basque Film Archive and the SSIFF
08:29 we have already been working for five years
08:32 on the Film and Science cycle.
08:34 The idea is that we select films that are
08:37 related to science, having a certain,
08:39 sometimes imaginative relationship,
08:42 but it allows us to have a scientist
08:45 present the films and give them a different perspective.
08:52 And then we also collaborate with the Film Festival,
08:55 which has been fantastic for us,
09:00 because the Festival itself proposed a collaboration to us
09:03 with an activity that I think is so symbolic
09:06 and emblematic for so many San Sebastian residents,
09:10 that they experienced when they were young,
09:12 which are screenings at the Velodrome for kids.
09:16 This year was truly lovely,
09:19 because the idea was to screen a film that
09:23 presented robotics in some way.
09:26 Then we were backed by a collaboration with the
09:29 University of the Basque Country’s Faculty of Computer Sciences
09:31 that brought a tiny social robot, Pepper,
09:34 that interacted with students.
09:37 They all ended up dancing in the
09:39 middle of the Velodrome before the film,
09:40 and honestly those were quite exciting times.
09:43 I think that it is one of the most exciting moments that we
09:45 have had at a DIPC outreach activity.
09:49 I’m an optimist by nature.
09:51 I’m an optimist in general when it comes
09:54 to the evolution of society,
09:57 but it’s not unearned optimism just because.
10:05 I believe that we are not aware of the world we live in
10:09 and the number of things we have been able to achieve.
10:15 We take so many things for granted in life:
10:19 that we come home, turn on the heat, and honestly,
10:23 those are advances that we have been making as a society
10:26 in large part due to the large amounts of knowledge production
10:27 that we have developed.
10:29 I would also say this happened
10:31 in a short period of just 200 years.
10:34 That is what makes me think that yes, I am an optimist,
10:37 and I believe, or I hope,
10:40 that we will be capable of developing tools
10:44 to be able to overcome the challenges that we have ahead,
10:48 with climate change clearly
10:51 being one of the most important of these.
10:53 So, what will our solutions be? I don’t know.
10:54 We will have to look for some,
10:56 and I hope we find them. I hope that comes along
10:58 with more science and more knowledge.
Tabakalera-denbora | Vincent Maraval
09:44
Tabakalera-denbora | Uxue Alberdi
08:14
Tabakalera-denbora | Ted Hope 08:53
Tabakalera-denbora | Susanna Tesconi
09:20
Tabakalera-denbora | Niño de Elche 08:48
Tabakalera-denbora | Maria Ptqk
09:47
Tabakalera-denbora | Marcos García
08:49
Tabakalera-denbora | Jone San Martín
10:07
Tabakalera-denbora | Jon Cazenave 07:43
Tabakalera-denbora | Javier Pérez Iglesias
07:49
Tabakalera-denbora | Isabel Herguera
11:12
Tabakalera-denbora | Helena Taberna
08:28
Tabakalera-denbora | Frédéric Martel 09:04
Tabakalera-denbora | Eva Sangiorgi
07:55
Tabakalera-denbora | Dea Kulumbegashvili 09:47
Tabakalera-denbora | Christine Vachon 07:26