history and creativity to educate people of all ages of the interconnectedness and fragility of our spaceship planet. Science and art both attempt to help us make sense of the world around us: science with facts, and art with dreams. How we affect positive change depends on how much knowledge we can obtain, and how we use it. Scientists need the public's consent in order to persuade them to do more with less. The only way this can happen is through education. Education has to be widely available and actively promoted, and then it must be engaging as well as thought-provoking. In order to achieve this, we go into the past when music was one of the sciences, and musical experiments were being conducted alongside scientific ones. The struggle that men like Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton endured to reconcile their beliefs and the beliefs of their peers with their scientific discoveries are actually not far from present day antagonism against progress in environmental issues. Only by our knowledge of the past can we understand enough to change the present. This project is not necessarily to teach, but to stimulate the curious mind to further explore how we fit in this universe.

Describe the current stage of your initiative and your implementation plan over the next three years

The project consists of three components: writings on science and music at the dawn of the 17th-century, narrated by Dava Sobel; music by Vincenzo Galilei, Henry Purcell, Claudio Monteverdi, Giulio Caccini, Girolamo Frescobaldi and Francesco Cavalli, played on period instruments; and a high-definition collage film sequencing scenes of nature with images from space observatories such as the Hubble and Cassini. The program was presented at The New York Early Music Celebration in October of 2007. The film was projected on a 16’ x 18’ screen and placed above the performers, evoking a planetarium-like setting. The audience could view both the faces of the performers and the film, to create a performance within the body of the film. The timing of the images has been fine-tuned with the narration and musical pieces to offer a double narrative emphasizing the plurality of these mediums.
We will present three nights of performances in New York City in January 2009, in celebration of the 400-year anniversary of Galileo’s first astronomical discoveries and The International Year of Astronomy. We have been invited to present our program at the Saint Louis Science Center, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, The Huntington Library, and the June 2009 meeting of the American Astronomical Association. We will also perform the program on two music series in Canada. If awarded, we would utilize the prize money to tour the show in 20 cities in the United States, to help local institutions promote science and the arts. The shows would be offered for free to all, so the institutions’ financial responsibility would only entail promoting the event. Many science institutions have educational programs with local schools, where we would also participate. We plan to make a DVD of this program, which would include interviews with astronomers, scientists, music historians and artists.

Describe how your strategy meets the entry criteria ("What We're Looking For")

“Perpetual Motion” is about effecting people, and encouraging those people to make a positive effect on their environment. Our project has already been written and staged, so is therefore ready to be performed.

Describe the qualifications and experience of you and/or your team and your ability to execute your implementation plan

Dava Sobel is the author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Planets. A former reporter for The New York Times, she has written about science subjects for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and Harvard Magazine. Sarah Pillow, soprano, has performed on such stages as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, with orchestras including The New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra, and has recorded for the BBC and Sony Records. Ronn McFarlane is largely responsible for bringing the transcendent charm and timeless quality of the lute into the musical mainstream. He has toured extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Europe as a soloist (for which he has six recordings) and with the Baltimore Consort. Mary Anne Ballard has appeared with the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, The Bethlehem Bach Festival, and as a member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players. She teaches viola da gamba at Oberlin Conservatory's Baroque Performance Institute.