Interests outside of technology
Especially these days with 100% remote working I thought that it’d be a great idea to present myself.
Sports:
I used to play volleyball at various levels including a year at 2nd division. I also taught Volleyball in my high school for a while. I’m also a avid hiker, having grown up in a remote part of Norway nature has always been a part of my life, and I return as often as possible.
Art:
I’m a big art-fan, particularly of national romanticism in Norway and the UK, as well as impressionism, surrealism and early abstract art. I particularly enjoy water-colour paintings, and
In more contemporary times I’ve been struck the hardest by two figures, very far apart. One being the late Remy Zaugg; whose work I encountered at the Reina Sofia in Madrid, and Raqib Shaw, whom I’ve seen several times in the UK.
I found Remy Zauggs work on perception to be interesting. In a series, rather than painting the painting, Zaugg would write on the canvas the object or colour which belonged there. This piece also connected to my interests in artificial intelligence, as this kind of thinking and context is both very close, and very very far away from computer vision capabilities. It gave a representation, one that was perfectly valid and capable of transmitting just the same information as an actual painting. In a way, similar to how one can thinking of deep learning layers abstracting away layer by layer of its input. Yet, for the machine to achieve this level of sentient, where it will start to question perception, and question the representation in order to create new abstraction, I think is very far away.
I’m far less knowledgeable about architecture and such, although I do have a habit of travelling to place which are rich in older buildings. I’m in general a big history fan, as a kid I always thought I’d be an archaeologist. The highlight of any city trip would be to go to the archaeology museum.
Humanities:
As I grew older, archaeologist was no longer what I wanted to do. But before I decided on my current degree, I actually considered several options in the humanities. The side of me that like to debate current topics, obsess over philosophical details, archaic language or historic evolution also like to make the occasional appearance.
Physics and Mathematics
I am interested in topological and geometrical theories in physics, primarily condensed matter physics. My master’s thesis is currently being written on ab initio searches for topological insulators. In non-jargon speech: I use computers to combine atoms at random, and watch them form structures. I then look at the allowed energy states for the electrons in the solid. A topological insulator can then be identified by having some unusual properties such as an inverted band structure, i.e. the valence bands and conduction bands have crossed and changed order, and they’ve done such in a way that it forms Mobius band like structures, rather than “trivial” forms like a regular annulus. A interesting way of phrasing this is that I’m researching ways for the energy gap could avoid being topologically equivalent to the vacuum.
My favourite movement these days is category and topos theory. I took a course in Edinburgh on categorical quantum mechanics, and followed that up with organising a small reading group on topological quantum field theory - I was totally blown away. I recommend everyone to read John Baez’ Physics, Topology, logic and Computation: A Rosetta stone.