Mark Antrobus

Mark Antrobus
Born	1945 (age 80–81)
Residence	Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India
Nationality	British
Known for	Relativity, Light, Aether

Mark Antrobus (born 1945), also known as Govinda, is a British-born artist, writer and environmentalist who has spent much of his life in India. He is best known within dissident-science circles as the co-author, with physicist Francis Viren Fernandes, of the book The Ether Model & The Hand of God (2008), a work advocating an Aether-based reinterpretation of modern physics. Before turning to science writing he was known in the United States as a performance artist and in India as an environmental campaigner.

Biography

Antrobus was born in 1945 and grew up in a British family with roots in North Wales; his mother, Grace Wardell, was a journalist. During the 1960s he travelled to India and became a renunciate, spending much of his twenties in study of meditation and yoga in villages, ashrams and jungle hermitages of southern India. Returning to the West, he took up work as an artisan and established a business partnership before moving into creative work through performance art.

Antrobus later settled in Kodaikanal, in the Palani Hills of Tamil Nadu, India, taking Indian citizenship in 2009. There he became active as an environmentalist and philanthropist, campaigning against deforestation and promoting sustainable building, solar energy and organic farming. He has been a member of the Consumer Protection Council of Kodaikanal (CPCK) and the Palani Hills Conservation Council (PHCC), and has supported education for underprivileged children in rural communities through the Centre for Peace and Technology (C-Pat). He also describes himself as a natural healer, having long looked after his own health with little recourse to conventional medicine.

Performance art

In the 1980s, Antrobus founded the "Mudpeople" (Mudmen) workshops and performances, an "Urban Aboriginal" troupe combining music, mask-making, body art, dance and drama, which appeared across the United States. His life and art were profiled in People magazine (1986), The New York Times (1987) and High Performance magazine, among other publications. In 1989 he joined the pageant artist Felicia Young, founder of Earth Celebrations, to create the Rites of Spring Procession to Save the Gardens of the Lower East Side, a performance festival that mobilised communities to preserve community gardens in New York City and featured in the 1990 Earth Day events. He later made a Tamil-language film debut in Amma (2011).

Scientific contributions

Antrobus's involvement in dissident science came through his collaboration with the physicist Francis Viren Fernandes, whose papers he edited and with whom he co-authored The Ether Model & The Hand of God (2008). The book presents an Aether model of physics that challenges mainstream interpretations of Relativity, Light and quantum theory, arguing for a return to a physical, mechanical medium as the basis of natural phenomena. Antrobus's stated interests lie in relativity, light and the aether, and in what he describes as a common-sense fundamental theory uniting measurable fact with direct experience. He has expressed the view that science and religion address parallel questions and that physical theory should be intelligible rather than arcane.

Selected works

• The Hidden Secrets of Character Power (2000), co-authored with B. P. Singhal
• Urine Luck (2003), on naturopathy
• The Ether Model & The Hand of God (2008), co-authored with F. V. Fernandes
• Editor and publisher of Kavithalayam, a literary magazine for Kodaikanal International School and American College, Madurai (1993-1998)

Books

• 2008 - "The Ether Model & The Hand of God" (Read in full)

External links

• The Ether Model & The Hand of God at Barnes & Noble
• Earth Celebrations