ScienceOnline09: Science and Art
 Glendon Mellow of Flying Trilobite |
Glendon Mellow of the Flying Trilobite hosted a very enjoyable session, where he started out by covering what he considered the various types of science art:
Scientific Illustration: drawings to illustrate the content of an article. I post many of these for links having to do with dinosaurs or extinct creatures.
Fine Art: a high-culture art, often inspired by science. An interesting and somewhat disturbing example would be Mark Quin’s sculpture of himself made out of his own blood.
Art Inspired by Scientific Subjects: self explanatory, includes optical illusions and Salvador Dali. Awhile back I blogged the MoMa exhibit Design and the Elastic Mind (my photos of it here), which I would put into this category.
Science Fiction: interesting examples of this were invented ecosystems and the speculative dinosaur project.
To this list, I think I would add Found Art. This would include putting a cast of dinosaur bones together into an action pose, propping up a taxidermied animal, mounting forminifera, or any other sort of museum display. A Cabinet of Curiosities would be a great example of found art. This form of art is much more scientifically rigorous, but also very creative. One attendee mentioned that there are many artistic choices in science, such as how to color astronomy photos to best bring out their details.
After the introduction, Mellow said that he felt his relationship with science was “parasitic,” where he’s getting a lot of inspiration from science, but doesn’t feel like he’s giving back. I was glad to see the overwhelming response from the room was essentially, Keep doing what you’re doing. That art inspires science, and scientific illustrations go a long way toward communicating scientific discoveries to the general public.
As part of this art communicating science, I would stress the importance of the metaphor as a tool for illustrating concepts. In Computer Science, we would be lost without metaphors. In fact, our Windows and Macintosh operating systems are basically a collection of metaphors for all the inner mechanical and electronic workings of our computers. Metaphors are indispensable in describing atoms and quantum physics. So writers take heed, remember the importance of metaphors in your work.
A few times the specter of the two cultures debate was raised, but I was glad that one attendee decided to shoot down the whole thing as “tedious.” I agreed with the idea that there are artists who see science as oppressive and scientists who see art as frivolous. These people have personal problems, not cultural ones, and need to free their intellects.
The reality is that there are not two cultures. Someone brought up a younger scientist, who grew up playing with Transformers Beast Machines and therefore had no problem relating biological to mechanical. Another raised the phenomena of Jurassic Park encouraging scientists to fact-check its many portrayals.
So the two cultures is a myth, propagated by scientists who don’t like art, and artists who don’t like science. The reality is that science inspires art, and art, science. The two cultures should continue to work toward our common good. Sessions like this, hosted by thoughtful people like Mellow, are this principle put to practise.
You can see the various artwork referenced at the Wiki for this Session. Highly recommended.
