Uploaded October 2018 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Find more information here: wearecognitive.com/project/stephen-hawkings
Black Holes might not seem to be visually engaging at the outset. Ultimately there’s not a lot to work with when you think of a hole that swallows light where nothing can be seen. But for me and the work we do at Cognitive this is exactly the sort of challenge we love.
We first had the privilege of being able to visually translate Professor Hawking’s work on Black Holes when we illustrated his 2016 Reith Lectures for BBC Radio 4. As we had a track record in bringing esoteric concepts to the screen, so they could be understood by as wide an audience as possible, we were asked to create an animation to accompany Professor Hawking’s words to be housed on the BBC website.
The feedback from Professor Hawking and his team was very positive, and they wanted their own animation that they could use more widely to raise awareness of their ongoing work. So we started visualising the work that Professor Hawking, Malcolm Perry and Andy Strominger were doing on ‘Supertranslations’, or ‘Soft Hair’ in Black holes.
We started the work in 2017, and after Prof. Hawking sadly passed away in March 2018, we carried on the work under the Stephen Hawking Foundation to coincide with the publication of Hawking's final book: 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions' by John Murray Publishing on October 16th 2018.
Struggling to keep your audience engaged and buying into your ideas? Check the quality of your presentations with our free pulse check: presentation-pulse.scoreapp.com
Find more information here: wearecognitive.com/project/stephen-hawkings
Black Holes might not seem to be visually engaging at the outset. Ultimately there’s not a lot to work with when you think of a hole that swallows light where nothing can be seen. But for me and the work we do at Cognitive this is exactly the sort of challenge we love.
We first had the privilege of being able to visually translate Professor Hawking’s work on Black Holes when we illustrated his 2016 Reith Lectures for BBC Radio 4. As we had a track record in bringing esoteric concepts to the screen, so they could be understood by as wide an audience as possible, we were asked to create an animation to accompany Professor Hawking’s words to be housed on the BBC website.
The feedback from Professor Hawking and his team was very positive, and they wanted their own animation that they could use more widely to raise awareness of their ongoing work. So we started visualising the work that Professor Hawking, Malcolm Perry and Andy Strominger were doing on ‘Supertranslations’, or ‘Soft Hair’ in Black holes.
We started the work in 2017, and after Prof. Hawking sadly passed away in March 2018, we carried on the work under the Stephen Hawking Foundation to coincide with the publication of Hawking's final book: 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions' by John Murray Publishing on October 16th 2018.
Struggling to keep your audience engaged and buying into your ideas? Check the quality of your presentations with our free pulse check: presentation-pulse.scoreapp.com
