The Art Speed of Light

The Roman poet Horace predicted correctly his phrase aere perennius, would last ``longer than bronze'' because the Ode he wrote travels to the eye at nearly the speed of light regardless of the rate of the decay of the paper it's written on. John Keats's 19th century Ode predicted correctly the youthful figures he saw on a bronze age Grecian Urn moved in ``slow time'' aging little from the time of painting to the time of his viewing in the British museum-and to ours today of the same urn. The youthful images of the Keystone Kops have aged slower than their twins-- their mortal actors. Discoveries about light's speed occurred synchronously with the engineering of telegraph and radio transmissions in the 19th century-which allowed anyone an experience of what Physics had discovered. Einstein's privotal papers appeared in the same year as the first feature film shot and transmitted at the speed of light regardless of the aging of the film stock. Experiencing the light-like speed of art in Keat's ode, Cubism, Bob and Ray's radio, the Keystone Kops provides an aesthetic, visceral understanding of Einstein's Twin's Paradox about the dilation of time.