Bridges 2025 Short Film Festival

Laird Robert Hocking

Filmmakers

Laird Robert Hocking

Mathematician and Artist

Taiwan

rob.l.hocking@gmail.com

https://robhockingmath.github.io/

Statement

As a kid, I grew up exploring coastal British Columbia, sometimes bringing home treasure that I found. I would sometimes feel an intense need to find out, for example, what the view is like from a lighthouse in the distance. Similarly, as an adult I find myself intensely curious about, for example, "What would it look like to watch a black hole form in my living room?". In both cases, an answer exists - I just have to go out and find it (either by scrambling over boulders to get to the lighthouse, or by doing the math / writing the code). In this spirit, I see mathematical art less as a creative process and more one of exploration and discovery. Just like when I was a kid, I rarely find anything interesting. However, I occasionally stumble up a treasure which I want to take home (with a 3D printer, or perhaps just a raytracer, depending on the context).

Films

Image for entry 'Oppenheimer's Forgotten Legacy'

Oppenheimer's Forgotten Legacy

00:05:00

Rob Hocking

2025

Watch

Scientifically accurate visualizations of static black holes are easily found online and in the literature. The same cannot be said of the dynamic formation of a black hole via gravitational collapse. The goal of this project was to create such a visualization, specifically as a hologram. In order for it to be scientifically accurate, the visualization needed to be built using a solution to the Einstein equations describing gravitational collapse. I decided to use the earliest such solution, which I learnt was discovered by Oppenheimer in 1939. His solution is analytic, greatly simplifying things; I had expected a numerical solution, which would have been far more difficult to work with. Oppenheimer is remembered as the father of the atomic bomb. However, through this project I came to understand the depth of his contributions to black hole physics. It is my hope that through this work I can draw attention—in a small way—to this largely forgotten aspect of his legacy.