Karol Jałochowski

A physicist, filmmaker, and science journalist. Created the acclaimed documentary series Pioneers: At the Edge of Understanding. He has collaborated with POLITYKA, Newsweek, and Scientific American, and was a resident at the National University of Singapore, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Complexity Science Hub. His work bridges science, culture, and philosophy.Selected examples are listed below.

In Places Like This One

100 minutes, 2026With Amélie Desvars-Larrive, Heinz Fischer, Laura Freudenthaler, Mirta Galesic, Rudolf Hanel, Peter Klimek, Eddie Lee, Ljubica Nedelkoska, Helga Nowotny, Henrik Olsson, Wendelin Pressl, Vito D. P. Servedio, Stefan ThurnerOriginal music by Kajetan Jałochowski

Imagine a planet reduced to brutal simplicity. No complexity, no grey area. Neurons never become minds, life forms never become societies. Welcome to Null. Karol Jałochowski invented this celestial body and invited leading European scientists, artists, and public figures to describe it as if it truly existed somewhere in the universe. The result is a surreal, largely improvised, deadpan documentary that blurs the boundary between reality and fiction while tracing the uneven process of exploring and understanding Null. Details here.

Ceci n'est pas SFI. A documentary about the Santa Fe Institute

94 minutes, 2024With Fred Cooper, Artemy Kolchinsky, Tamara van der Does, David Krakauer, Cormac McCarthy, Jennifer Dunne, Laura Fortunato, Sid Redner, Paula Sabloff, Thomas Ashcraft, David Wolpert, Elizabeth Hobson, Geoffrey West, Andy Rominger, Peter Stadler, Tom Rael, Jerry Sabloff, Stefan Thurner, Cris Moore, Mirta Galesic, Tom Easterson-Bond, Bob Davis, Patrisia Brunello, Chris Kempes, and othersOriginal music by Kajetan Jałochowski

Interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity are essential practices for confronting the global challenges of civilization. Yet they are not readily embraced within conventional academia. Interdisciplinary exchange enriches scientific knowledge and keeps intellectual inquiry alive and dynamic. The Santa Fe Institute, an independent research institution, fosters such exchange by bringing together humanists and natural scientists in search of bridges between their fields and methods. The film presents the Institute’s members and their experiences of this unique collaboration, rooted in a willingness to engage in mutual enrichment through diverse scientific perspectives.

SAMPLES & TESTS:
Cormac McCarthy On Murray Gell-Mann and Typewriters
David Krakauer on Stupidity
Geoffrey West On Love and Prophets
Jennifer Dunne on the Institute
Laura Fortunato and Sidney Redner on the Sun and Science
David Wolpert on Luck
Mirta Galesic on Physicists

Couldn't Care Less. Cormac McCarthy in conversation with David Krakauer

75 minutes, 2023

Cormac McCarthy spent the last 25 years of his life writing novels at the mountaintop retreat of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, an institute dedicated to the formal analysis of complex systems. In this documentary, filmed in December 2017 in the SFI library, McCarthy reflects — in conversation with his colleague David Krakauer — on isolation, mathematics, character, and the nature of the unconscious.

Cormac McCarthy's Veer

40 minutes, 2022Music by Mikołaj Trzaska & Jacek Mazurkiewicz

“Why is the unconscious so loath to speak to us? Why the images, metaphors, pictures? Why the dreams, for that matter?” asked Cormac McCarthy in one of his most famous essays The Kekulé Problem. In this film, made at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico — an institute dedicated to the formal analysis of complex systems — he allows himself to expand on these ideas. A film, it should be added, that had his personal blessing.

Artur Ekert. A Model Kit

54 minutes, 2018Original music by Jacek Mazurkiewicz

Artur Ekert (1961), a young maverick mathematician and physicist, invented a unique form of quantum cryptography in 1992. As a recipe for the perfect cipher, it also challenged common assumptions about the nature of free will and randomness. Despite decades of intensive research, the idea remains remarkably challenging and elusive — much like its inventor. This rare film presents Ekert in his ad hoc habitat: Singapore.

Postcards From the Multiverse 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08

Charles H. Bennett. A Drinking Bird Mystery

62 minutes, 2018Music by Boyd F.C. Bennett as arranged and performed by Jan Bokszczanin

Charles H. Bennett (1943) is an American thinker, physicist, and pioneer of information theory with astonishingly broad interests. He is best known for his research into the surprising interconnections between physics — especially quantum physics — and information. He is one of the founding fathers of quantum cryptography and a co-author of the revolutionary concept of quantum teleportation. But you can find that on the Internet.

BONUS SCENES:
On Martha's Coffin
On Perfect Crime
On Jimmy Hoffa's Mausoleum
On Doomsday Paradox
On Boltzmann Brain

Freeman Dyson. Space Dreamer

46 minutes, 2016Music by Tekla Mrozowicka aka cétieu

Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) was a legendary scientific figure whose influence extended across countless fields of knowledge. Without his extraordinary mathematical ability to see through things, science would look very different today. He was also known for his optimistically subversive views on many of the world’s central problems. As he explains, the world needs heretics to challenge prevailing orthodoxies. Dyson was involved in virtually all major nuclear disarmament initiatives and helped make the planet far safer than many had expected. He was also a lone but vocal advocate of long-term deep-space colonization — and of sailing to the moons of Jupiter, the subject of this film.

BONUS SCENES:
On Childhood
On Being a Rebel
On Gandhi
On God
On the Universe
On Star Maker
On Slaughterhouse-Five
On Politicians
On Peaceful Scientists
On Life
On Immortality
On Community Spirit

Daniel C. Dennett. Do Lobsters Have Free Will?

46 minutes, 2015Original music by Scott Johnson

Daniel Dennett of Tufts University was one of the most important philosophers of mind of our time and a great reformer of the field. He was also the author of several hundred scientific papers and more than a dozen books. For nearly half a century, he searched for answers to fundamental questions: What is consciousness? What is free will? How does reality emerge and evolve? Is faith a natural phenomenon? What are the roots of irrationalism? This film documents a personal meeting with the philosopher at his home in northern New England.

BONUS SCENES:
On What Philosophy Is
On Ancient Greeks and Us
On Artificial Intelligence
On Getting Better at Thinking
On the Endless Creativity of Nature
On Free Will of Machines
On Free Will in a Deterministic World
On Dangers of Consciousness
On Machines Helping Us Think
On Moral Values in Our Times
On What He Believes but Cannot Prove

Gregory Chaitin. Against Method

46 minutes, 2015With Gregory and Virginia Chaitin

Gregory Chaitin is a mathematician and expert on complexity. Already as a young prodigy, he made major contributions to the philosophy of mathematics and computer science. Chaitin argues that there is no such thing as absolute certainty in mathematics: there are truths that cannot be proven and problems that are impossible to solve. For him, however, this is a reason for profound optimism. The creativity required to confront such difficulties is, he believes, no different from the creativity nature displays in its astonishing power of creation. For Chaitin, this analogy is no accident — and he seeks to demonstrate its validity mathematically.

BONUS SCENES:
On Fantasy Worlds
On Four of My Heroes
On Randomness vs. Intelligence
On Software That Is Everywhere
On Unexplained Explosion

Julian Barbour. Bottom’s Dream

47 minutes, 2015

Julian Barbour is an independent physicist affiliated with University of Oxford, a historian of science, and the author of numerous papers and several books. For more than thirty years, he has sought to remove what he considers unnecessary concepts from the toolbox of physics. One of them is time itself, which, according to Barbour, is an illusion — entirely unnecessary for a scientific description of the world. In recent years, he has been developing a theory explaining the origins of our sense of the passage of time and its directionality, both associated with this illusion. We meet Barbour at his home in a small village near Oxford, accompanying him through the routines of everyday life.

BONUS SCENES:
On Experiments
On Discovering Laws
On Albert Einstein
On Ernst Mach
On Eternal Laws
On Leibniz and Mach
On Max Born
On Paul Dirac
On Russian Literature
On Reading Shakespeare
On Time Capsules
On Time Travel
On Walnut Trees

Roy Glauber. The Bomb that Shook the World

47 minutes, 2014Original music by Jacek Mazurkiewicz

Roy Glauber was the youngest scientific participant in the Manhattan Project. The programme led to the creation of the first atomic bomb — Glauber witnessed its first test — the bombings of Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the development of the thermonuclear bomb, and a profound reconfiguration of the global balance of power after World War II. The movie presents Glauber’s personal recollections and reflections on the project, as well as a portrait of the Harvard University professor and 2005 Nobel Prize laureate.

Reality Lost. How the Objective Reality Had to Go

58 minutes, 2013With Artur Ekert, Charles Bennett, Gilles Brassard, Dagomir Kaszlikowski, Vlatko Vedral, Valerio Scarani, Christian Kurtsiefer, Stephanie WehnerMusic by Jessica Lurie Ensemble

When the 20th century began, a major shift took place in science. Scientists started conducting experiments with unprecedented precision — manipulating single particles, atoms, and electrons. And they became bewildered. Small objects appeared to possess strangely fuzzy properties. What is more, the very act of observing or measuring them seemed to bring them to life, extracting them from a vague and indeterminate domain. The equations of quantum mechanics were beautiful. They produced astonishingly accurate answers to mind-boggling questions about the exotic microworld. But there was a price to pay: objective reality seemed to vanish. Was it ever regained?

BONUS SCENES:
Vlatko Vedral on Information
Dag Kaszlikowski on Schrödinger's Cat
Christian Kurtsiefer on Hacking Quantum Cryptography
Artur Ekert, Gilles Brassard, and Charles Bennett on Their Brainchild
Stephanie Wehner on Quantum Computers

Some earlier short works

Complexity Science Hub. An Introduction by Stefan Thurner
Foundations of Complex Systems: E01, E02, E03, E04, E05
Susan Blackmore. Meme Machine
Lee Smolin. On the Origins of Laws
Paul Steinhardt. The Cycles
Seth Lloyd. I, the Universe
Freeman Dyson. The Heretic
James D. Watson. Being Different
Daniel C. Dennett. Breaking the Spell
Stuart Kauffman. Reinventing the Sacred
David Wineland. The Trapper
Avi Wigderson. Life is Beautiful
The Mechanics: Short Version, Long Version
Julian Barbour’s College Farm: The Ideas Behind Shape Dynamics, The Mystery of the Arrow of Time, The Dominion of Law, One Big Thing Isaac Newton Did Get Wrong, A Colony of Swifts and Kepler's Planets, An Invitation to Quantum Physicists
Paranal Observatory. The Eye
Alma Observatory. The Ear
Seth Shostak. The Listener
Pyramid Lake. American Dream
Collapse
The Splitter
Gwai Lo