Hidden Patterns

Accompanying the solo exhibition of Barabasi Lab at the Ludwig Museum Budapest and the ZKM in Karlsruhe, this book will be more than exhibition catalogue: it comes with a range of voices and viewpoints that give readers a sweeping view of the work Barabasi has done over the last twenty years and how it connects to art, science, and our general outlook on the world today.

The Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) at Northeastern University was founded 20 years ago and the lab is dedicated to a deeper thinking about networks-how they emerge and evolve, what they look like, and how they impact our understanding of complex systems. The backbone of this book are the extraordinary visualisations, in 2-D and 3-D, that Barabasi’s lab has evolved, and which are unique not only to his practice but to the world of network theory and science at large.

A series of essays and statements by scientists and artists alike will be followed by a long, beautiful array of breathtaking plates. Given the current state of the world, the book will also explain how Barabasi’s work relates to Covid-19 and how understanding networks helps us predict and understand the spread of diseases.

About the Author

Albert-László Barabási (b. 1967), a Romanian-born Hungarian-American physicist, is the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science, a Distinguished University Professor or Physics, and the Director of the Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) at Northeastern University. The CCNR is a thirty-person lab dedicated to deeper thinking about networks-how they emerge and evolve, what they look like, and how they impact our understanding of complex systems. CCNR's research studies span a wide range of subjects, from cellular protein interaction to how distant galaxies fit together in the cosmic web to what blend of popularity and performance leads to success in tennis.

Barabási and his lab are renown for producing highly creative visualizations that depict the research findings in often colorful 2- and 3-D models. Examples of his visualization work have been shown at the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City.