Cosmic consciousness

My second favorite thing to do in life: visit an art museum. (Well, maybe it's the third favorite thing to do.)  It's always a magnificent walk through time that helps fill notebooks with thoughts and impressions for future pondering ...

Have you ever wondered why it is it that one gets pulled to certain artworks, while others get merely a glance? For example, while peering at the treasures in the Frick Collection or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, I've had an unusual fascination with enamel plates by the "Master of the High Forehead."

Taking notes on the Master of the High Forehead's enamels

This person, or group of people, made the 16th-century equivalent of "art for the masses." (In other words, it was affordable to people other than the clergy.) The name says it all - the faces depicted in these works have unusually high foreheads.

Circumcision of Christ, enamel on copper plate, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The faces also have eerie-looking ringed eyes. Yuk! But for some reason I'm drawn to them, too.

Eyes of the Master

I've been trying to understand why these curious little plates garnered as much interest as masterpieces by El Greco and Kandinsky. I felt as though I knew the Master's work ... where did that feeling come from?

ah HAAA! Now I remember: as young boy, my absolute favorite TV show was Space Patrol ("Planet Patrol" in the US). I've revisited this program thanks to Youtube. It turns out that the Neptunians - bad guys on Space Patrol - look a lot like the odd characters depicted by the Master of the High Forehead. It's no wonder why the Master's work held such fascination.

A Neptunian (at right) keeps Marla, the Venusian secretary, captive

I recall lectures in Psych 101a/b where it was postulated that the mind can reformulate embedded memories and project them as current feelings and impressions; this poorly-understood process was mystified and presented as "cosmic consciousness" (i.e., a consciousness of "the life and order of the universe") by late 19th century psychologists.

I wonder if the artists involved with crafting the Neptunians had ever seen works by the Masters of the High Foreheads? I'd love to have this conversation with them ... and with Richard M. Bucke.

Spitball Testate Amoebas





Award-winning amoeba art!

  

The mind of an artist

An artist colleague once remarked that if I was to understand how artists think, I need to reverse roles in life. With a perplexed look, and a "huh? what does that mean," he suggested that I try working in the lab wearing my scuba suit. The next day I followed his suggestion ...

Showing up for a day's work, ready to experience the artist's mind.

Most of the day involves paperwork (sigh).

But occasionally I get to use fancy equipment, like this low voltage scanning electron microscope ...

... or the Albany high-voltage transmission electron microscope ...

It was hard to see anything through a fogged scuba mask.

Dejected and less inspired about understanding artists, I return to the lab. Sorry, Jan, it's better to collaborate with artists than it is to think like one ...

(Thanks to Amanda Andreas for taking these photos and tolerating my humor)

Curiosity

One theme of this blog, and of my website, is the intersection of art and science. I delight in conversation with artists, scientists, and educators who share this interest.

As you might gather from previous posts, Claire Beynon has been a constant source of inspiration in exploring the art/science interface. Our projects leave me puzzled at times, but they always foster playful curiosity. We are now collaborating with Schenectady artist/educator Chris Moran to help promote art, science, and their common element of curiosity through an upcoming workshop sponsored by the Capital Region Center for Arts in Education.

A puzzling moment (for me; Claire is amused) in the studio

Curiosity is a powerful driving force. In an evolutionary context, the adaptive significance of curiosity seems quite obvious: It prompts an individual to discover new resources (food, shelter, material goods), to find solutions to problems (e.g., cure an ailment), to select a compatible mate, and to occupy a comfortable social setting. At a personal or psychological level, however, curiosity presents many challenges. The risks and rewards of acting on our curiosity must be weighed carefully in order to optimize the outcome, which is the measure of success (and a definition of wisdom).

Modern science employs a well-scripted process - the scientific method - to act on curiosity. Adhering to this approach provides us with verifiable (more accurately, falsifiable) information which, in sum, has freed humanity from reliance on chance or superstition. Metaphorically, the scientific method provides us with the factual tools needed to navigate successfully the labyrinth of nature.

I wonder if the scientific method can help us explore imagined worlds, where outcomes are not necessarily the product of natural law? This question must have been asked a thousand times already. I'd love to hear from an artist who has formalized hypotheses, conducted controlled experiments, and analyzed the results with some measure of statistical significance.

More importantly, I'd love to know how they measure success. And I wonder if that success defines artistic wisdom...

Art/Science on Ice

Last night, Claire and I presented a talk about our art/science collaboration to the McMurdo Station community. It was the third time we've spoken together and, to be honest, the first time I've felt completely at ease.

In these talks, Claire and I set out to convey the genuine nature of our collaboration. Claire has worked in the lab and in the field "doing science" with me and, likewise, I have worked in her studio "doing art." As a result of this cross-pollination, we are adequately versed in each other's scientific and artistic processes. I think that this is why we can spawn new ideas, provide each other with helpful critiques, and jointly apply our technical skills. In a nutshell, we bounce seamlessly between each other's worlds.

The evening began with an introduction by the McMurdo Station manager, Terry Melton. The story of how Claire and I met at the Devon B&B in Christchurch followed (an interesting tale of serendipity), and then we launched into examples of Claire's art followed by some biological facts about foraminifera. The heart of the talk was a discussion of our InterfaCE project, which involves a process that Claire and I developed to study pseudopod ("false foot") structure and motile behavior of Foraminifera on textured surfaces. Claire's art provides templates for microlithographic fabrication of the substrates that the forams move along. (More thorough descriptions are found on Claire's website or mine.)  We finished by discussing the art/science work we're doing this season in collaboration with Katherine Glenday and Christina Bryer. This year's project involves the use of porcelain grains (derived from Katherine and Christina's pieces) as shell-building particles by the forams that we study. In a sense, it is a collaboration between me, Claire, Katherine, Christina, and Astrammina triangularis :-)

Our talk was structured to be a conversation, hoping to avoid too much didactic content. The approach apparently worked: The people we spoke with afterwards thought that the evening was unconventional, and opened their eyes to the commonalities of art and science rather than their differences.

How could it fail when I'm speaking with Claire about art, science, and Foraminifera?