The LMAC-STEMsocial contest - more about the STEMsocial jury

It's been five days since the LMAC-STEMsocial collaboration was officially announced. There have been over 130 submissions. In fact, there were so many, that we (well, @mobbs) decided to make this mosaic of all current submissions avaialable a few hours before the deadline. For those who submitted after the fact - sorry!

Can you guess what the main picture in the mosaic is?

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Looking through, it's hard to know which ones will be selected in the first round. We also had no idea there were so many users on Hive in total, let alone this number of highly talented artists!

With the top 15 having been selected, @mobbs, @gentleshaid and @lemouth will be part of the voters deciding the winners, as we, of course, are part of the STEMsocial community. However, we have extraordinarily different lifestyles, experiences and views which I think are going to lead to a pretty interesting discussion on what we consider the best.

• @lemouth of course, has a physics background and hails from Europe.
• @gentleshaid has a botanical background, hailing from Africa.
• @mobbs has a musical background, hailing from the UK.

I thought it might be interesting to share here where each of our personal interests lie in respect to what we find most valuable in this project.

Now to be clear, this post is only going to be personal interests, and not part of any official or objective approach to our decision making. Our views will undoubtedly update and morph according to what we see, discuss and consider.

_{Note: we're doing this at the end of submission time as to avoid any attempt to match our desires in their submissions! (not that we would be so simple anyway)}

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@mobbs

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So, my background is musical, but I have been deeply fascinated in the cosmos since I was a child reading the books on my dad's bookshelf and subscribing to magazines updating me on the James Webb Telescope way back in the 1990's, right through University when I was watching University lectures on general relativity and Hawking Radiation.

So, I'm fairly well-versed in the layman's concept of dark matter/energy, black holes, CBR, gravitational waves, string theory and all that jazz. Although the subject matter is Dark Matter, I don't really mind whether or not it is a focus of the art here, but I would appreciate some awareness or appreciation of the cosmos in a non-fictional sense, blended into fantasy.

Being somebody who likes to be a bit of a contrarian, I also would like to see the main picture be used in more unconventional ways than the way it kind of pushes you to use it for; The Night Sky. After all, we pass through dark matter every day - kinda. It's not ALL hanging out in the distant galactic centres.

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@gentleshaid

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Being given the chance to judge in a contest of this magnitude is an honour. As a Botanist, of course, I am not expecting anyone to push the limit of creativity to the level of linking dark matter to plants as far as the image in question is concerned.

However, I am expecting a level of creativity that a layman can relate to. After all, not all scientists have heard about dark matters but everyone can identify creativity when they see one.

Before becoming a content creator and consumer on hive, I knew almost nothing about dark matters, cosmology, or what not. I have got the blockchain and authors like @lemouth to thank for expanding my horizon. Now, I can say a few things about black holes, dark matters, standard particle models, etc.

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@lemouth

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As already mentioned, my background lies on the particle physics side. Being a researcher and a university lecturer during my day time, physics rules my life. I hence eat physics already at breakfast, and even dream about it during my sleep. Okay, this is probably slightly exaggerated, but that is not too far from reality.

In this contest, I will make use of my eye of physicist to assess how the different contributions are as close as possible to what would be expected with a solid scientific background. However, art and science should join their force so that this rule won't be a strict one. Art can indeed turns squares into circles, and I will try to keep this in mind as much as possible.

Moreover, being a heavy content consumer on Hive, I will pay a specific attention to the description of the competing entries, and include some extra points when ranking them. I enjoy reading and this will definitely influence my vision of who should win.

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The famous last words

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We hope that everyone has a lot of fun with this contest. It is now time for @gentleshaid, @mobbs and @lemouth to join their secret room on the STEMSocial discord and sort out which one out of the 15 selected entries will be our pick.

See you in two days for the final answer!