Bwog’s senior science correspondent Ricky Raudales explains all the crazy studies and experiments that Columbian scientists do. Last night, he got to check out all the crazy art that Columbia scientists make when he previewed Through the Looking Glass, an artistic celebration of science. Through the Looking Glass will run tonight from 5–7pm in Wien Lounge. Free tickets can be picked up at the TIC.

Update: Tickets not strictly required! Anyone can just “wander in” til 7, and there will be free food.

For two hours tonight, Wien Lounge will be transformed into an artistic playhouse for Columbia’s science community. Co-hosted by the Columbia Science Review, Scientists and Engineers for a Better Society, Postcrypt Art Gallery and CU AMSA, Through the Looking Glass offers a glimpse into a world in which science and art momentarily converge. Columbia students and affiliates will provide the artistic backdrop for what will surely be an evening of lively intellectual exchange.

With such a diverse array of media to draw from, the artwork seeks, much like science itself, to elude a unifying explanation. Familiar cityscapes are metamorphosed into vivid IR thermal imagery. Projected onto a screen in the corner, a musical troupe of elephants strikes up a peppy ditty. In another work, painted branches and computer paraphernalia dangle, superimposed over a series of human faces. The less tangible sciences are rendered in abstractions of shapes and forces. As a whole, Through the Looking Glass engenders an impossible medley of subjects, ultimately hoping to provoke more questions than answers.