Art/science collaboration - summary of some past work

I just completed another collaborative research proposal with some really smart colleagues. The application includes a novel art/science collaboration to help promote scientific literacy. Let's hope it gets funded!

While digging through the blogosphere to prepare my cv for the application, I came across a wonderful post that summarized a past project with New Zealand artist Claire Beynon. Its various pieces and the people it involved reminded me of the tiny threads of cytoplasm (i.e., pseudopods) that foraminifera use to go about their business.



The Antarctic foram Astrammina rara with its cytoplasmic network extended on a glass dish. The ramifying pseudopods are likened to an art/science collaboration, with the body of creative work encased by an elegant shell.

 

Daydreaming about the trajectories of its individual components (i.e., the many poems, musical pieces, and artworks that were generated) drew imagined parallels to organelles saltating within these pseudopods. And looking at this body of work as a whole, packaged within its posted "shell" - well, it really seemed to be no less than a live foram!

One thing is for sure: art/science collaboration is an effective way to ignite the imagination ...

Updated Cereal Killer

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." This quote is credited to Leonardo da Vinci and it appears he's right. At the last minute I flipped all the metazoan prey upside down so they looked dead at the hands (er, arms) of Notodendrodes. The piece was gifted to the staff of Health Research, Inc. after giving a talk about our research projects. They are displaying it in their lunch room, which seems fitting. 


Cereal Killer as it appears on display at Health Research, Inc.

 I don't want to abandon "Cereal Killer" until it's in a better frame. And then there's "Cereal Killer II" to work on, now that I've figured out how to make these things ...

Cereal Killers

My colleagues and I give dozens of art/science talks to audiences ranging from 1st graders to senior citizens. They seem to enjoy stories about diving under the ice, watching penguins play, and how we go to the bathroom when it's minus 20. But when it gets to the science, do they really understand the important implications of carnivorous single-celled organisms? Don't ask me where the thought came from, but perhaps a play on words, together with an interesting piece of "art," would help. Ergo, I sat down to illustrate a cereal killer foram. First step: buy a bunch of cereal and resist the temptation to eat it all in one sitting. (I love cereal!)
 


Preparing the palette

I have scads of Japanese rice paper left over from the spitball amoeba project. Might as well adorn it with rice crispy cereal (plus other cerealicious shapes, sizes, and colors). NOTE: I consulted the literature and concluded that this is the first time a foraminiferan collage has been made out of cereal. I hope it becomes a new movement ...




Moving breakfast around

   Artist friends often mention the satisfaction it brings to "push around paint." I fully understand what they mean. It's also rewarding to squirt around glue, and brush around cereal. Lots of fun!

The cereal killer with metazoan prey - just like in nature! (Well, artistic license with the bugs.)

In the end, I depicted Notodendrodes antarctikos with plastic metazoans adorning its branches. It's not accurate, of course, but it was fun to make and serves to illustrate the concept: single-celled carnivores littering the seafloor, eating small invertebrates. Sometimes silly examples can spawn serious discussion that lay audiences can grab hold of and tear apart.

Just like a Notodendrodes with a juvenile starfish. Or me with five boxes of yummy cereal to eat!

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)

Seeing Red

One of the tents we use in Antarctica, called a "Polarhaven," is large enough to serve as a dive locker for about four aquanauts.

The Polarhaven at Cape Bernacchi

Because it is heated by a catalytic propane unit, it's also a comfy refuge for sleeping and eating in subzero temperatures. There's only one problem: the walls are red, so the interior is also red.

Laura Von Rosk cinching down the Polarhaven blanket to its wooden floor. The propane heater is seen behind her.

While setting up the Polarhaven at Cape Bernacchi, Laura and I had a brief opportunity to discuss "color" and "composition" (she is a master of both). I've never understood how to use color effectively, and my compositions always feel like run-of-the-mill, "rule of thirds," ho-hum. What could Laura teach me about this during our breaks from work?

A sketch of Astrammina triangularis using watercolor pencils. My drawings seem "cartoon-like" and not very realistic. I always follow the "rules," too. For example, light comes from the upper right, shadow to the lower left. The result just doesn't "feel" interesting to me :-(

Detail of an Astrammina triangularis "arm" that I sketched in normal daylight. I try to do a lot of "deep looking" when studying a subject, but that doesn't always translate into an appealing composition.

Drawing an agglutinated foram inside the tent was an interesting experience. Seeing everything in red light is not too alien, since I spent decades in a darkroom back when photography meant working under a safelight. I never tried to manipulate color in a monochrome setting, though, and wondered if that would be instructive?

Drawing of an agglutinated foram, with notes on objects in the tent, as I remember seeing things in the Polarhaven. (Actually, I placed a red mask over the drawing below, so this is really just a simulation.)

How the drawing looked when viewed outside the Polarhaven - surprisingly ... ugly?

Looking deeply, working hard, trying something new, failing ... but having fun. Art and science share a lot in common.

InterfaCE IV(a)

Next week, InterfaCE IV will be installed in the Mildred I. Washington art gallery at Dutchess Community College, Poughkeepsie, New York. This version of InterfaCE will be placed on a 4x8-ft piece of canvas. I've been prepping the canvas these last few nights, enjoying the feel of gesso slipping off of a brush.

I ran down the canvas applying gesso, like wind skirts along the ice surface carrying streams of snow. The gesso texture will be barely perceptible when it dries, and will be further obscured by beakers and disks of photographs, micrographs, and paintings. Nevertheless, memories of wind-blown snow are at the forefront of this man's mind.

Tonight I made long, wispy strokes while applying the final layer, thinking about how the wind blows snow across the ice. It's so beautiful to watch, and to sit in. I've spent hours relishing its impact, and sometimes felt guilty about being in its way. But then I realize that millions of snowflakes were rescued by letting them coalesce into shapes on my parka and wind pants.

One day those shapes might reappear as InterfaCE V -- or perhaps they already have in the countless dreams that I don't remember.

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...