Visual Culture and Evolution: An Online Discussion

4/14: Wrap up and Thank you

2010-04-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

JD TALASEK
04-14-2010 05:48:04
Dear Panelists:

As we begin this final day of the conference I would like to thank you all for your energetic contributions. There is much here to digest. On behalf of myself and our partners in this endeavour, we thank you.

Ideas from the last section are still developing so please keep that going. Also, please take time to go back and tie up lose threads as well. Here in the wrap up section feel free to post your current or upcoming projects that relate to evolution and visual culture.

Finally, but not least, I would like to thank the over 3,500 visitors that watched the discussion from over 55 countries. The online format has certainly extended the discussion beyond the walls of any auditorium or lecture hall that I can imagine. Please continue to leave feedback and responses on the blog.

Again, thank you.

KEVIN FINNERAN:

04-14-2010 13:19:42
A story, probably apocryphal, is told about the brilliant and precocious Nobel laureate economist Paul Samuelson. It is said that at the end of his PhD oral exam the head of the examining committee said sheepishly, "Well, Mr. Samuelson, did we pass?"

At many times over the past 10 days I felt that, far from directing the conversation, I was struggling to keep up. Fortunately, in spite of the range of expertise and richness of imagination of you panelists, the discussion was remarkably coherent and focused. Your willingness to engage one another directly and to ask pertinent questions enabled me, like the coach of the Brazilian soccer team, to sit on the sidelines and watch the beautiful game unfold.

I know that there were times when many of you were eager to expand the conversation or dig a little deeper, and no doubt you could have. But you did travel far and deep, and we ordinary humans will be challenged to follow your path as far as you went.

Wordsworth described poetry as powerful emotion recollected in tranquility. I am looking forward to spending more time with this conversation, reading more slowly, discovering connections that I missed in the pressure of the moment. I hope you will do the same. I have no doubt that you will be impressed and pleased with what you have accomplished.

Besides, the conversation is far from over. Some of you are posting even as I write, and the conversation will continue in other venues. As Garrison Keillor says at the end of each installment of The Writer's Almanac: BE WELL, DO GOOD WORK, AND KEEP IN TOUCH.

BARBARA LARSON:

04-14-2010 10:37:33
Thanks for asking about future projects, J. D. I have a book coming up on Darwin and aesthetic theory that begins with Burke and ends in the present. It will be an edited volume both about the influence of aesthetics on Darwin and Darwin on theorists and theoretical models. There are books that deal with evolutionism and aesthetics from the perspective of anthropology and prehistory, but this one will be about "the fine arts."

MICHAEL SAPPOL:
04-14-2010 10:59:40
Thank you, JD, Kevin, the NAS, Johns Hopkins, and my fellow participants, for the intellectual roller-coaster ride: evolutionary ideas and images are provocative, proliferative, intoxicating. There was, and is, an evolutionary imaginary of monsters, specimens, tree charts, scenes from deep time, laboratories, field work, fossils, fingerprints, critical commentaries, etc. It was a pleasure and a privilege to contribute to the proceedings, and to get to know some very smart people.

I want to mention that many of the images that I posted in this symposium come from a website that I co-curated with Paul Theerman (National Library of Medicine), Rewriting the Book of Nature: Charles Darwin & the Rise of Evolutionary Theory: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/darwin/evolutionarytheory.html.

I am particularly interested in the visual rhetoric of charts; part of my current work is on modernist scientific charts and illustrations in 20th-century popular science and medical books and exhibitions. As a parting gift: I leave the group with two 19th-century evolutionary charts: a zonked-out vortex chart purporting to show the relationship between "ideal unity" and "protoplasmic identity", from Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) and J. Arthur Thomson (1861-1933), The evolution of sex (London, 1889), 280; and a tree chart of "mental evolution" from George John Romanes (1848-1894), Mental evolution in man; Origin of human faculty (London, 1888), title page and foldout.

Mental evolution in man; Origin of human faculty (1888). Romanes here uses a tree-like diagram to argue for the evolution of higher mental functions.

Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) and J. Arthur Thomson (1861-1933), The evolution of sex (London, 1889), 280.

TRACY HICKS:
04-14-2010 13:51:36
Looking at this symposium as an amazing collection of deeply developed ideas rubbing up against other equally deeply developed concepts rooted in history and in evolution has been an extraordinary opportunity to do what I believe science and art both strive to do --- actually affect change (evolution metamorphosis) in a positive manner. JD, Kevin, NAS, John Hopkins and all this network gathered to support these interpretations had the foresight to see the possibilities of affecting change through this natural selection process. Still in all these loose ends of threads are lines that need exploration from both sides of the two cultures.

I know I have left a number of loose ends and find many other loose ends in grasping the depth of the concepts here. Too little time in the few remaining hours, but life goes on and as innocent as this sounds I am changed by this experience.

So I want to thank all of the panelists. Even if many of you spoke over my head, you all have given me much to learn from.

JAY HOSLER

04-14-2010 14:49:49
My first project will be to read, re-read and digest these fascinating discussions. Thanks to all the organizers and panelists for such a stimulating discussion.

In terms of evolution and the visual, my next graphic novel is called Evolution: The Story of Life on Earth and it should be out this winter from Hill and Wang. This is the first one I've written but haven't drawn, so that collaboration with the artists was very interesting and exiting. After that, I will be writing a drawing a story about Santiago Ramon y Cajal and the interplay between his childhood desire to be an artist and the his microscopic masterpieces of the nervous tissue. Finally, I have a comic about beetles and evolutionary discovery called The Age of Elytra that I will be serializing as digital comic books.

ELLEN LEVY:
04-14-2010 15:20:27
At least with respect to visual culture’s contributions to scientific understandings about Darwin’s legacy, we started with antipodes (keynotes by E.O. Wilson and Eduardo Kac) and then mapped many spaces between, identifying a vast network of intersections between artistic and scientific practices, contexts and inventions. This has deliberately been conceived by the organizers as an open-ended process, starting with origins and moving to the present. Online symposium formats rarely elicit the give-and-take of flowing conversations (and this exchange was not, in my view, an exception) but speaking as a participant, it has been very worthwhile in provoking discussion and putting out some of the salient issues of visual culture in the wake of Darwin. Our assembled group seems to have a high threshold for tolerating “truth claims” of evidence in science but clearly appreciates visual culture in all its manifestations. Although I do not recall that Kuhn’s name came up, the symposium underscored some of the historical contingencies attending the creation and evolution of Darwin’s theory and their ongoing ramifications in culture. My thanks to all involved.

RICK WELCH:
04-14-2010 16:43:16
Dear JD,

Wow, what a fun Evo-Devo ride this has been! Thanks to you and Kevin, as well as the sponsoring institutions and agencies.

I know I will be digesting and assimilating the various contributions for days and weeks to come. The existential threads and streams that have originated between/amongst the panelists will, I suspect, continue long after the symposium goes offline. Opportunities for cross-fertile and synergetic collaboration abound.

When do we start the next symposium?!

BARBARA CREED:

04-15-2010 02:47:51
Dear JD, Kevin and Everyone,
Yes this has been a fantastic experience - and also much fun. This kind of symposium is certainly effective in bringing together people and creating dialogue. Many advantages over a conventional conference. I can also see I have much to read and catch up on. I have just completed a book on the impact of Darwin and evolutionary ideas on the cinema - 'Darwin's Screens: evolutionary aesthetics, time and sexual display in the cinema', published as a print on demand by Melbourne University Publishing. I am currently working, with colleagues, on two areas. The first is 'Cinema & Civilisation', which involves examining the way in which the very first films (1895 onwards) were used by colonial powers in their various civilising missions. This draws on late 19th century debates about the nature of civilisation and the human. The second is a project on the emotions. It draws partly on Darwin's 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals', in order to trace the representation of the emotions in animals and insects etc from the 18th century through to the present in literature, painting, and film. We are interested to discover the degree to which cultural representations of the emotions have been used to unite rather than divide human and non-human over this period. Love to hear from anyone with similar interests.
best wishes

TODD SILER:
04-15-2010 03:24:23
Thank you!! JD, Kevin, NAS, Johns Hopkins, and all you incredibly smart fellow participants. This was a blast! Like riding spring rapids on the Colorado River, and occasionally capsizing. I learned so much. I’m forever grateful to you all... What an intellectual treat!

4/13: All panelists, start your crystal balls

2010-04-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-14-2010 12:08:43

KEVIN FINNERAN:
04-13-2010 11:25:54
Because we have been following a more or less chronological order, because we are drawing near to the end of our time, and because it is subject on which we are all equally ignorant, I would like to start a thread about the future.

We have had some discussion of biomachines, of eugenics, and of sociobiology as a new eugenics. We also have groups such as the transhumanists and the Singularity University that are eager to use science and technology to essentially create a humanity that is healthier, longer-lived, more creative, and perhaps able to leap buildings in a single bound. Many of us are already wearing our technology, embedding artificial body parts, and ingesting our personalities. Synthetic biologists dream not only of recreating life as we know it and designing new organism from "biobricks," but of creating new systems of DNA that are built on different proteins. Is this evolution? Is it eugenics? Where do we see ideas about these developments in our visual culture? How are scientists, artists, philosophers, and others addressing our future options?

I know that there are a number of active threads still proceeding in parallel, but I would like to bring everyone together on this one.

TRACY HICKS:
04-13-2010 13:25:10
On the first time reading of Kevin's prompt "biobrick" read as bio-trick. Small type and aging eyes. But the analogy held. Biomachines, eugenics and sociobiolgy of our past predict a future of rationalized margins for the masses..

We see that fear of science manifest in mass media. First, second and third rate films of mad scientists and science gone awry may have started with the Godzilla era but continue to grow in correlation to bio-engineering. A current example: Repo Men The press right, left and center grasps at the sensation of science missing the substantial structure behind the headlines.

Dismissing the current fundamentalist religious views on evolution as simplistic overlooks an increasing divide between the educated including the marginal/uneducated and this astute level of academic philosophers gathered here.

EO Wilson and Wendell Berry are both heros to me. Consilience helped me to see how the arts and sciences could mesh and improve our understanding of our place in Nature through critical thinking. Frankly I struggled to comprehend it but gained immensely from the process. In "Life is a Miracle" Berry stood for the masses who reason faith as a magic visceral component of life. His views were simplistic and easy to comprehend. Even when not substantive Berry presented an argument based on his faith.

My faith lies in both art and science. Were I to create a symbolic deity it would be an Andrias japonicus,

So gazing into my crystal ball I see visual culture migrating away from rational thinking towards more sensationalism while science continues evolving to create ever more sensational "biobricks"

Andrias image from public domaine

Andrias japonicus image by Dante Fenolio copyright Dante Fenolio

MARCEL CHOTKOWSKI LAFOLLETTE

04-13-2010 14:46:52

To add another “brick” to Tracy’s wall of ideas, let me quote from Fred Ritchin’s provocative article (“Failing to Harness the Web’s Visual Promise”) in the newest online version of “Nieman Reports” (Spring 2010). Ritchin notes that on the Web, “It is possible to think of photographs or even pieces of photographs as nodes that link to a variety of other media, what I call hyperphotography, rather than as images that are sufficient in and of themselves. In this way, the reader becomes much more implicated in the unfolding of a story when she has to choose pathways to follow as a means of exploring various ideas, rather than being presented with only one possible sequence.”

Substitute any type of “visualization” of science (drawing, chart, sculpture, painting) for Ritchin's word “photograph” and consider who will become “implicated” in the future in the unfolding of science’s visual narratives, and how the medium of communication will influence that involvement. Each may determine the consequent interpretation and use of whatever "biobricks' scientists create. An artist envisions her viewers; a writer imagines her readers; the “mass” media (films, television, comic books…) care only about numbers, the box office, the ratings, not the faces or names. Reach is all. The audience becomes an approximation rather than a listener. For scientists, artists, and anyone who cares about encouraging constructive public reception to science in the future (because what's the sense of science if it cannot be put to use?), the 21st century context of multiple pathways (tailored as well as mass-directed) represents both an opportunity and a terrifying challenge. Yes, I agree that the “divide” grows ever wider and deeper And what shall we make of the fact that it is doing so even as the number of nodes and opportunities for creative expression increase? And what if the margins become hardened or walled off? No crystal ball...only a small plea for a more organic approach to communication...one that incorporates understanding of the watershed as well as measurement of the water.

ASSIMINA KANIARI

04-13-2010 14:52:15

To answer Kevin's question my insight is that "designing new organism from "biobricks" attests to the importance that bottom up practices and craft itself has acquired in modern science and in particular sciences using biotechnologies. This part of science and the element of practical knowldge is often invisible from the public image of scientific research. Artist's residencies in labs and sci-art collaborations, which as JD has noted both as a term and as field of policy for culture and science is closely linked to the important work that the Wellcome Trust has carried, it seems to me unpacks this other notion of what it means to do science, one that includes protocols and instruments, fascinating 'objects' in their own right. This lab based concept of craft is the inbetween space where artists and scientists meet in producing fantastically different 'things'.

NATHANIEL COMFORT:

04-13-2010 17:27:45
Let's say someone (someone from this symposium, perhaps) got hold of the technology and built an organism as an art project. Call it SciArt, conceptual art, political art, what-have-you. But it has no biomedical value. The only thing anyone's going to be cured of as a result of it is maybe tunnel-vision.

Is this acceptable? Under what conditions? Does it depend on what kind of nervous system it has? On who is funding the work? On where it is shown? On what happens to it after the "show"?

If it is not acceptable--as many people would say it is not--what does that say about public valuations of art, of visual culture, in contrast to science?

RICK WELCH:
04-13-2010 18:22:12
The working title of this particular discussion forum, “the crystal ball,” represents a most challenging subject for discourse. In the 21st century (an era of information technology), the relationship between art and science has become, on a practical level, ever so much a professional partnership. Digital media, animation, graphic design, etc., have become vital illustrational components of scientific advancement today. This connection is no more evident than in the realm of biology. The down side of this situation, as mentioned by others in the panel, is (at least the appearance of) a relegation of art to the status of the “handmaiden” of science. On the up side, I would argue, more and more scientists are finding that the visual imagery revealed by the application of the technology of today’s art forms is heightening their awareness and appreciation of the beauty (and, yes, the “elegance”) of the natural world. Historically, technology (as the extension of scientific discoveries into our real everyday world) has always had an artistic bent to it. Let us not forget that the ancient root etymon techne is, in fact, the Greek word for “art.” Technology, if looked at properly, can stand as the medium where science and art can be reconciled on the knowledge-discovery landscape.

As epitomized symbolically in C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures (which, incidentally, enjoyed a celebrated 50th anniversary of its own last year), we often tend to see art and science as poles apart, with an “either/or” mentality, as opposed to the conjunction “and” – bearing the notion of complementarity. It is so enlightening and constructive to see the differing perspectives of such complementarity in the narratives of the panelists in this symposium! Some say that science is “objective” about Nature, while art is “subjective.” Not so! They both entail flowing, evolving, impressionistic, and relativistic representations of the world. Relativity theory has exposed space-time as a contorted, distorted, twisted, and fluid medium – rather much like a Dali painting. Quantum theory has shown the microworld to be indeterminate and imprecise, whereby the “observer” defines reality by the experimental way of looking at Nature. For example, material existence has a wave-particle duality, depending on the method of analysis. The expression “observer-created reality” is now part of the vernacular of physics.

The central theme of this symposium is “visual culture and evolution.” Perhaps we should ponder the implicit issue of visual culture in human evolution. After all, we might ask, is there a “Darwinian” union of the two?! Such a philosophical query leads down many lanes of thought, as one contemplates the metaphysical roles of “art” and “science” in human existence. My own training initially was in science (specifically physics), and, I suppose, scientific cognition is my default mode. We must distinguish the significance of “science and the individual human being” from that of “science and humanity.” Personally, I went into science (physics) because I was (still am) curious about the how the world works. Understanding a particular physical principle, or solving a mathematical relationship about a particular physical process, gives me goose bumps. However, “science and humanity” is altogether different. The scientific enterprise (and artwork, as well), many would argue, is just another side of our biological essence, i.e., who we are. Yes, science shows the way to the “understanding” and “knowledge” of Nature. The goose bumps of the individual scientist notwithstanding, such “knowledge” of Nature leads to “prediction” and, ultimately, to “control” of Nature. To what purpose? “Darwinian” thinking gives the obvious answer: the betterment of human society – rather the betterment of some human societies in competition with others. Yes, ‘tis true, that much of science is collaborative today (look at the author lists in papers in such journals as Nature and Science), but there remains competition – some would say that it’s in our genes. (And some would label it “social Darwinism.”) The history of science is tainted with the uses (misuses) of scientific knowledge in conflicts between nation states and in the destruction of the environment (not to mention the pillaging of natural resources from the non-industrialized, underdeveloped countries).

Call me a mystic, but I would aver that the stars were aligned propitiously on the astral plane in 2009 – with the coincidence of the multitudinous Darwin celebrations and the (lesser known) 50th anniversary of Snow’s The Two Cultures lecture (and ensuing book). What most folks (who haven’t actually read Snow’s book) don’t realize is that Snow was not simply presented a cultural divide between the arts (generally speaking) and the sciences per se. His “take-home message” was that we must heal the divide if we are to solve the global problems of under-education, poverty, and “rich vs. poor.” My hope (optimistic and altruistic though it may be) is that a more balanced return to the “arts” will save this biological species called Homo sapiens (sapientia – Latin for “wisdom”) from self-destruction. Snow’s directive is that, if we are to solve the global problems befalling humanity, it is not sufficient for us (the “intellectuals”) to convince one another; we must convince those with the decision-making power (viz., government leaders).

The eminent physicist/philosopher Henry Margenau (1901-1997), like many notable physicists of the “golden era” of physics in the 20th century, turned to Eastern philosophy/religion in the end. Margenau (see his book The Miracle of Existence, 1984) posited that we human beings, in both our scientific outlook and our artistic expression, have come full circle in our relationship with Nature. For, he said, “we look into Nature and see ourselves.” We need both art and science for us to understand our oneness with Nature.

ASSIMINA KANIARI:

04-14-2010 03:54:22
Just a quick post, really footnote to Nathaniel's point about cure and western science method. It comes from Feyerabend's Against Method where he poses the question how non western cultures and civilizations managed to develop cures and medicine outside the domain of western techno-science. He refers to the regions and cultures that today overlap with south america.

TODD SILER
04-14-2010 03:55:56
Nathaniel, your question gets at the heart of how we value of our creations. I’m sure if we combed through the combined histories of science, technology, medicine, and mathematics we’d find plenty of examples of this “no value” perception many people have when encountering new, exploratory work (e.g., the Germ Theory of Disease). This Truizm hints at that reality.

If this hypothetical organism you’re referring to was not intended to have any practical biomedical value or merit –- meaning, its creator made no claims to that effect – then, many people who are knowledgeable about contemporary art would say it is acceptable...and meaningful as an experimental work. The organism, by design, served no apparent purpose other than testing the skills of the artist to see whether or not it was possible to create. Some might argue that’s a purpose with a tangible result.

To add another frame of complexity to this response: If the creator had built this organism to raise new and fundamental questions about biomedical engineering practices and/or biomedical ethics and/or biomedical applications — or anything that challenged the biomedical practitioners to rethink or expand a technique, research approach, or some design scheme — then that creative act would also be regarded as acceptable.

More to the point: Even if the creator aimed to use this novel organism as a way to cure a disease, or spark a discovery, or inspire a technological innovation -- but misses the target -- then that too would be acceptable. After all, is it any different than testing a hypothesis that “fails” the verification, or falsification, process (Popper, 1957 & 1965) in following the scientific method, and subsequently needs some re-thinking with new data. I think people are inclined to say that it was a “productive” experiment with a measurable outcome (i.e., it didn’t work). And that piece of information is also valuable in so far as it earmarks one experiment that needn't be repeated without further development.

From an artist’s perspective, this concern about “acceptability” may strike many in the arts as a moot issue -- especially in this age of Postmodernism, where many creators choose to blur or erase the line between The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Unlike the sciences and mathematics, there’s no standard criteria or canon of aesthetics for making, presenting and interpreting a “work of art.” Any medium is fair game (biological, chemical, nuclear, electronic, industrial refuse, air, light, etc.); any form of expression will do (from the subtle to heavy-handed; from the most sublime to the crudest), and any message (from the elegant to the vulgar). This is where the “interface” between the practices of art-making and science-making can get momentarily turbulent…like two jets flying in parallel formation, until one suddenly crosses the jet stream of the other -- startling everyone in the wake.

ELLEN LEVY

04-14-2010 06:47:12
No predictions here. Instead I offer a wish list for more art exploring the boundaries of human perception and focused on viewer subjectivity, more ecological consciousness, scientific and aesthetic examinations of collective consciousness and behavior through private meditations, more collaborative exploration of the full sensorium, continued challenges to ideas of biological and technological determinism, including the falsely-reductive flow-charts of ‘isms” in art history, and more support in every way for what the cognitive scientist Roger N. Shepard identified as the value of “unfettered artistic exploration.”

NATHANIEL COMFORT
04-14-2010 07:56:55
Todd,

Thanks for this thoughtful response. This thread has gotten me thinking about comparing the ethical dimensions of art and science.

In science, you have Institutional Review Boards, human subjects' guidelines, HIPAA, the Belmont Report, the Helsinki Agreement, and Nuremburg, not to mention Jeremy Rifkin et al, plus an entire academic discipline devoted to thinking about, policing, and bloviating over the ethics of biological research.

In art, what I'm hearing is, you have an ethical wild, wild west.

This could create some significant tensions in future art-science collaborations.

TODD SILER:

04-14-2010 11:24:02
Nathaniel, just a quick note in response: I apologize that my enthusiasm here has led me to break the speed limit and word count. But I felt compelled to add the following…

I trust you know that the arts have a similarly rigorous review process as the sciences. Although it tends to be far more subjective and less dependent on “empirical tests” of hypotheses, premises, suppositions, and so forth, they’re, nevertheless, often deep, insightful critiques by scholars, practitioners, and other professionals who take the work of these their review boards very seriously, and who try to be as impartial, or “objective,” as possible in their evaluations and assessments. I’ve sat on my share of these review boards on both sides of the fence, and, you’re right: we seek to understand and critique various qualities and characteristics of the process and product of the work in question.

Speaking for the arts (and I mean to include here all forms, expressions, media, processes and products), I can say there’s a wide array of aesthetic dimensions and characteristics of works of art that are taken into account. Whether or not the artist who created the work accepts the constructive criticisms and “value-judgments” is another matter altogether. Frankly, if artists did that throughout the ages—if they simply accepted these judgments bytheir peers and patrons and the cognoscenti—there’d be no break with the traditions of making, appreciating and developing art. There’d be no rich history of modern, contemporary, and postmodern art as we know it! Here, Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism applies so brilliantly: “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”

Art movements, like science movements, are largely “reactionary” in their responses to and interpretations of the limits our perceptions of truth & beauty; they’re also influenced by the reach and limits of our tacit and explicit knowledge, which we are the tools we use to know these things. The polymath and science historian, Robert-Root-Bernstein explores all this in his fascinating essay, “Beauty, Truth, and Imagination: A Perspective on the Science and Art of Modeling Atoms” (in J. Burroughs, ed. Snelson’s Atom. Catalogue for Novo Presents: Art at the Academy Exhibit, New York Academy of Science, 1989c, pp. 15-20).

Presumably, professional art reviewers and scholars are informed by a long history of evaluating and assessing works of art, which comprise the History of Art (Hartt, 1989). And these assessments addresses a veritable matrix of physical and conceptual properties (Gombrich et al., 1970; Goodman, 1976), symbolic properties (Langer, 1958), experiential properties (Dewey, 1934), properties of expression (Sircello, 1972), properties of “meaning” (Panofsky, 1955); properties of visual thinking (Arnheim, 1969; Klee, 1959 & 1969), properties of “interpretation and response” (Ackerman, 1982), properties of illustration versus interpretation (Schapiro, 1973), and so much more.

I won’t bore you with further details about the numerous facets of this phenomena we call “Art,” or wax on about why I love both the arts and sciences so profoundly, but I would like to leave you smiling with at least one humorous note that arcs back to my previous post and your excellent questions. It concerns our first impressions and second opinions of an artwork’s “relevance.” Please keep in mind as you read the following that, for me, A.r.t. encompasses All representations of thought. I elaborated on this in another thread, and it’s important to mention here because that broader definition is what I live by and embrace as a “truth” I cannot prove…

I once tried to read the introduction of my friend, Dr.Shai Haran’s book, titled The Mysteries of the Real Prime (Oxford University Press, 2001). I felt like I dove into an intellectual abyss…never to return again. I mean, pure mathematics is one of the most elegant forms of high art that’s so foreign to most people’s experience we have no way of relating it to our world. And yet, to the handful of deep math practitioners working on ”the Riemann zeta function and its adelic interpretation,” Dr. Haran’s symbolic language makes perfect sense. Here’s the overview, in a nutshell:

“The Mysteries of the Real Prime develops an arithmetical approach to the continuum of real numbers and unifies many areas of mathematics including: Markov Chains, q-series, Elliptic curves, the Heisenberg group, quantum groups, and special functions (such as the Gamma, Beta, Zeta, theta, Bessel functions, the Askey-Wilson and the classical orthagonal polynomials) The text discusses real numbers from a p-adic point of view, first mooted by Araeklov. It includes original work on coherent theory, with implications for number theory and uses ideas from probability theory including Markov chains and noncommutative geometry which unifies the p-adic theory and the real theory by constructing a theory of quantum orthagonal polynomials.”

Say what?! When people would ask Shai what he and his colleagues did with this stuff, this creative genius would simply shrug his shoulders and sigh, “Nothing. We just play games with it. Game Theory.” The point is: No one knew what to do with it. It was even more abstract and alien and disconnected from our everyday reality than the most bizarre synthetic organism imaginable. The public tends to dismiss this Extreme Math, because it’s “not of this Earth.” All that changed, however, the day the Defense Departments of the world started applying pure math for more than Game Theory; or, rather, variations on the theme of Game Theory.

I suppose that’s the way human knowledge grows…by our higher awareness of nature’s ways. Ultimately, ”ideas are always in the air,” as Leonardo da Vinci once observed. We just have to be open to seeing every aspect of nature anew—and then, questioning what we see continuously…while enlarging our field of view and vision of what is possible.

One final related note: When I reflect on the evolution of James Clerk Maxwell’s four major equations that enabled us see and define the deep connection between electricity and magnetism united in the properties of light, I realize that scientists and mathematicians alike have been engaged in the same process of creative-critical thinking which artists have flowed with for eons by instinct, intuition, research, and a leap in logic and not just blind faith in luck: We’re all slowly opening the aperture of our imagination to see farther, deeper—and, hopefully, more wisely—than ever before.

This equation appears on my favorite MIT T-shirt that I'd purchased as a graduate student many years ago; I appropriated it and digitally manipulated it in Adobe Photoshop purely for inspirational purposes :)

TRACY HICKS
04-14-2010 11:47:50
Nathaniel,

It is easy to see the arts as a wild wild west atmosphere unencumbered by the bureaucracy of self imposed limitations like the ethics committees governing biological research. But consider the full spectrum of art and science and our historical grounding of alchemy, we have matured in comparable umbrella like forms. Science can be done outside the umbrella of review boards as well as art done outside the umbrella of credibility. Science can create monsters. Art can too. But art done under the umbrella of science bureaucracy will be subject to the same ethical restraints.

Bringing art/science collaboration under the umbrella of science is a way to lessen these tensions.

But the tensions that will inevitably arise from the merge can be significant to consider. They can be signs of irregularities and natural selection can follow.

TODD SILER
04-14-2010 12:08:43
Well said, Tracy. And right on...

NATHANIEL COMFORT:
04-14-2010 13:15:51
Brilliant stuff, Todd and Tracy--many thanks.

I was being terse and provocative about the wild west--really, I just meant in terms of what would be accepted in terms of bio-engineering for aesthetic purposes. Thus, bringing an art-science project like building an organism under the science umbrella would preclude pretty much all of Todd's earlier possibly "acceptable" versions of the experiment. And if it were done under the art umbrella, there would probably be a splinter PETA group--"People for the Ethical Treatment of Art"--vandalizing art studios.

But your expositions on the larger questions of ethics in art are fascinating. With the math example, Todd kind of looped us around to the other thread on elegance. This is fun!

MAY BERENBAUM:

04-14-2010 15:13:29
On a pedestrian note, following up on Tracy Hicks's observation that "second and third rate films of mad scientists and science gone awry...continue to grow in correlation to bio-engineering" and just about every other technological advance. Here's a prediction, with respect to art/science visual culture--as the sophistication of computer-generated imagery increases and removes the constraints of the physical world, the power of the entertainment mass media to define the reality increases as well (e.g., communication devices on board the 1969 Starship Enterprise influenced the design of the first mobile phone--

http://propbuzz.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-props-of-star-trek-influence-our.html--not a biobrick but a "brick-like device" nonetheless...).

TRACY HICKS
04-14-2010 17:49:04
Please walk on through here May. Your point is good and appreciated.

Thanks for the accolade, Nathaniel, Just keeping up with you Todd, Marcel and all these brilliant folks is a tremendously fun stretch for me. Your wild west analogy was/is appropriate. It resonates in the art world. The art world is wild west free wheeling and can be obtrusive to be sure. That is part of the strength of art in the big broad picture. But to continue this perpetual metaphor that picture is also the large end of the funnel. The small end we are talking about here is under the umbrella of credibility.

Unlike peer reviewed science, art stands above the high water line in current culture only by the veracity of the artist and with the credibility of those who( circling back to Marcel's post) find the watershed, Knocking art from its base of credibility is more easy than stopping well meaning science from re-altering the environment after previous generations of scientifically proven alterations have gone awry that we see in the current global warming solutions and debates.

quoting Marcel:
"...only a small plea for a more organic approach to communication...one that incorporates understanding of the watershed as well as measurement of the water."

Describing this in visual terms helps me but we have to get in this water more to find the depth.

Tying these threads together is aspirational. I look forward to meeting and hopefully working with Marcel at the Smithsonian this summer and fall. And hope to meet more of you in the not too distant future.

TODD SILER:

04-16-2010 00:32:34
To All “Crystal Ball” Gazers & Futurists…

it would be a shot of inspiration to hear your responses to these basic questions (and by all means please add your own):

How can we use art-science-technology to help children constructively cope with their FEARS of the future? What do they fear most? What would help remove these fears?

Today, many kids experience chronic anxieties as though their minds were constantly on “Red Alert,” which we hear echoing throughout the airports of the world, further stressing our nervous systems. Ever since we crossed the 2000 threshold, our “futurephobias” seem to be escalating—catalyzed by the events of 9/11, which blasted tons of angst-ridden reports into the atmosphere from the media that are still rumbling around the world.

As I recall, my own central nervous system felt like the anxious fella in this primal drawing (see below). Never mind that this drawing was done decades ago; it still feels like the future to me! Bruce Schneier’s book, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World (2003), offers some comfort in understanding the situation; however, that’s short-lived. As you read Samantha Power’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2007), you realize why our nation feels paralyzed dealing with these radical events, such as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; Power implores us to intervene and remain committed to preventing these sickening human catastrophes.

During the 1980s, at the height of our nuclear “M.A.D.ness” (Mutually Assured Destruction), Dr. Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician at Boston’s Children’s Hospital Medical Center, had interviewed scores of kids of who felt as though they had no future…that we’d all gotten lost in the Forest of Progress...

To find our way home again, I'd recommend reading Jonathan Schell’s sobering book, The Fate of the Earth (1983). In the last chapter of that book, Part III: “The Choice,” Schell writes: “Two paths lie before us. One leads to death, the other to life. If we choose the first path—if we numbly refuse to acknowledge the nearness of extinction, all the while increasing our preparations to bring it about—then we in effect become the allies of death, and in everything we do our attachments to life will weaken: our vision, blinded to the abyss that has opened at our feet, will dim and grow confused; our will, discouraged by the thought of trying to build on such a precarious foundation anything that is meant to last, will slacken; and we will sink into stupefaction, as though we were gradually weaning ourselves from life in preparation for the end. On the other hand, if we reject our doom, and bend our efforts toward survival—if we arouse ourselves to the peril and act to forestall it, making ourselves the allies of life—then the anesthetic fog will lift: our vision, no longer straining not to see the obvious, will sharpen; our will, finding secure ground to build on, will be restored; and we will take full and clear possession of life again. One day—and it is hard to believe that it will not be soon—we will make our choice.” (p. 231)

Finally…

“I See You.” Those three words sum up one of the more memorable messages of James Cameron’s film “Avatar.” But there’s a historical reality behind that wise expression that’s worth recounting here for all the reasons we’re participating in this Visual Culture and Evolution Forum.

When you open Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (1994), right up front you’ll read: “Among the tribes of northern Natal in South Africa, the most common greeting, equivalent to “hello” in English, is the expression: Sawu bona. It literally means, “I see you.” If you are a member of the tribe, you might reply by saying Sikhona, “I am here.” The order of the exchange is important: until you see me, I do not exist. It’s as if, when you see me, you bring me into existence.

This meaning, implicit in the language, is part of the spirit of ubuntu, a frame of mind prevalent among native people in Africa below the Sahara. The word ubuntu stems from the folk saying Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu, which, from Zulu, literally translates: “A person is a person because of other people.” If you grow up with this perspective, your identity is based upon the fact that you are seen—that the people around you respect and acknowledge you as a person.” (p.3)

Silence…

One of 37 multi-colored serigraphs on Arches 300gm paper, 16” x 24” Hand-written text reads: What do we want to evolve towards as an intelligent species growing free but directionless...

Ink and collage on paper; 18” x 24”

Bruce Shanks, Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist, The Buffalo Evening News (2-12-54 & 2-28-74)

RICK WELCH

04-16-2010 19:05:14
I was moved by Todd’s last commentary, as well as by the visual images he showed. I also liked his combined terminological usage of “art-science-technology.” In fact, it was Todd’s evocative book Breaking the Mind Barrier: The Artscience of Neurocosmology (1990) that first got me into the habit of combining the words as one.

“Fear” is such a powerfully emotive concept. Evolutionary psychologists tell us that the primal instinct of fear is “good” (i.e., ensuring survival of the species in the competitive struggle for existence). Unbridled fear, though, can be maddening, self-destructive, and even homicidal. Channeled or controlled fear, the psychologists will also tell us, can be potentially “good” (again, in the “Darwinian” sense of the word). Alas, so much of our fears today are conditioned by subliminally “creative” forces around us. As Todd addresses, how do we use Artscience to help our children deal with their fears of the future? Well, to begin, I would argue that we must guide our children through a “de-conditioning” process directed at the following influences: 1) Many of the fears that our children (and we adults) face are instilled by the news media, via their self-serving “creative” usage of visual imagery and technology. Sensationalism rules the news media, especially in the West; and changing the societal effect of the media barrage entails battling a corporatocracy that defends itself simply by retorting that it is “giving the consumerist populace what it wants.” 2) Perhaps more “creative” in its manipulation of public fear are not-so-benevolent government leaders, who (in the midst of today’s global conflicts) practice the politics and policies of “fear” as a means of steering public opinion. Open-mindedness and discernment of the multiculturalism of truth are vital. 3) Technology divorced from Artscience is manifest today. The addiction to (and dominance by) technology per se represents a clear and present danger (see Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology [1992]).

Todd closes with a lesson derived from the linguistic character of human interaction seen in some African tribal cultures. I learned similar lessons from my Native American ancestral heritage in the Appalachian region of the USA. I am part Cherokee, through lineages from both maternal and paternal sides of my family in that part of the country. My mother’s family passed along to me, my siblings, and my cousins, many stories and teachings of Cherokee life (which, in turn, were passed to them by word-of-mouth). One particular aspect I found touching at an early age: So I learned, should a stranger approach a Cherokee tribe and ask “Who are you?,” the response would be (in the native tongue) “I am a human being.” (The word “Cherokee” is not a native expression; it is a corruption of a term applied to this tribe by early European colonists.) As I have later found, many other Native American tribes have a similarly humanistic linguistic identity. I have made every effort to pass along this and other Cherokee stories to my children.

As working artists/scientists, as educators, and as parents, we must strive to instill in our children (and in our students) the motive power of Artscience in the self-fulfillment of human curiosity and imagination, as well as in defining our oneness to each other and to Nature. It is only fear of the unknown that is the worry.

Resonance…

PAUL VANOUSE
04-16-2010 23:01:27
I’m glad this crystal ball thread is still active, I had intended upon responding more. Particularly, I was happy to see Assimina bring Feyerabend into the discussion as his work opens up possible methodological contributions by the arts to science that I wish there was more time to discuss.

I’d like to add another thought about our expectations for how artists might increasingly engage the biosciences. I’m inclined to think that some of the stronger future works will deliberately eschew the powerful iconic forms we might expect.

The Vacanti mouse in 1997, made me understand that scientists (and/or visualization staff) were fully capable of creating totally seductive spectacle that could be read metaphorically, hyperbolically, and generally misinterpreted into varied urgent discussions. Thus, I don’t predict that the best biological or techno-scientific art since this will be that which tries to compete with such science-fiction imagery or indeed icons, but rather that which more humbly takes our thoughts in a different direction. If the Vaconti mouse fundamentally misled, making us believe that Frankensteinian transplantation had been achieved, I feel the most important new art may opt to take us away from such a spectacle. Oron Catts had an interesting way of describing this non-sensational practice as based in “the aesthetics of disappointment”.

… but I don’t want to end my response with the word “disappointment”, so I’ll end by thanking everyone for contributing so many thought provoking ideas!!!

Cheers,
Paul

TODD SILER:

04-17-2010 11:42:05
Rick, thank you so much for your incredibly thoughtful responses and reflections here…They give me hope… Honestly, I got choked up reading them…clearly, I’m not sanguine about our collective future. I wish I didn’t feel the weight of Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s intuitions about the human race, but I do. We seem destined to “succeed” in misunderstanding one another, because we “fail” to take the time to learn and grow from the richness of our diverse cultures’ unique perspectives that have shaped our individual philosophies of life.

On a positive note, in the discussion forum on “Visual Culture Today,” I proposed something constructive and optimistic [because I am, by nature, optimistic] that would enable us to “grow this conversation,” as the environmental artists Newton & Helen Mayer Harrison would say. Hopefully, the proposal will resonate with others, too…

Paul, thanks for reflecting further, too. It's always challenging to gaze into the future and not fear what we may see staring back at us.... I only wish we all had more time to gather our thoughts and suggestions. There’s so much refreshing material on all these threads to weave new worlds of wonderment!

4/12: Elegance in Science

2010-04-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-14-2010 11:22:29

JD TALASEK
We have all heard the popular story of Watson and Crick proclaiming that they knew that their discovery of the structure of DNA was right because it was so beautiful. This story is evoked often as an example of the importance of the visual in leading discovery thus begging the debate between art as a hand maiden to science or a cognitive tool for exploration. What is the role of art/visual culture as we advance in our understanding of evolution - past, present, and dare I ask, future?

NATHANIEL COMFORT
04-12-2010 09:24:30
Thanks, JD, for bringing this up. I am just beginning to think about this topic and will offer a few opening thoughts and look forward to the group’s reflections.

“Elegance” is more than pretty language in science; it is a term of art. Its opposite is “brute force”: where you learn the answer by, say, methodologically grinding through all possible solutions until you find the right one.

Here’s an example of an elegant solution: What is the sum of all the whole numbers from 1 to 100? The brute-force solution is to go, “One plus two is three, plus three is six, plus four is ten,” on up to 100. The elegant solution is to recognize the symmetry of the set of digits: 1+99=100, 2+98=100, 3+97= 100, and so forth. There are fifty such pairs, 1–49, folded about the number 50 in the middle. The answer, then, can be reached in seconds by anyone with 4th grade math skills: 50x100+50=5,050.

An elegant experiment has the same qualities of simplicity, cleverness, and incisiveness. As an experimental strategy, it values insight over effort. There’s an obvious mathematics envy here, but it is not just professional jealousy. The mathematical aesthetic—austere, simple, and effortless—imports more successfully into some sciences than others. Newtonian mechanics is elegant; quantum mechanics is not. The Copernican universe was accepted not because it enabled better predictions than the Ptolemaic model—it didn’t—but because it explained the behavior of the heavens with a smaller number of assumptions and principles.

In biology, genetics is more elegant than biochemistry. “Shotgun” DNA sequencing is brute-force; the Meselson-Stahl experiment, which proved the semi-conservative replication of DNA has been called the “most beautiful experiment in the world.” Part of what is so compelling about the tale of the double helix, I submit, is that it is doubly elegant. The double helix itself was too pretty not to be true, Watson crowed—it solved the problem of how to faithfully transmit genetic information to the next cellular generation. And Watson and Crick’s model-building approach to the double helix was the epitome of elegance. It relied on a minimum of data, which—adding a frisson of human fallibility—they didn’t even collect themselves!

Elegance is, in short, an aesthetic used as a principle of reasoning. I am starting to think about what elegance buys you, and what it costs, intellectually. What kinds of environments of equipment, funding, collaboration, and so forth tend to foster elegance, and whether certain types of problems lend themselves to this kind of aesthetic thinking. And, overarchingly, what is the role of aesthetics not just in the production of scientific knowledge but in thinking about nature and designing experiments?

The Copernican model

The Ptolemaic model, with epicycles

Celera's "shotgun" method of genome sequencing

The Meselson-Stahl experiment

JAY HOSLER

04-12-2010 11:41:03
I think that Nathaniel’s comments about elegance are quite interesting. One of my favorite stories of the visual being a tool for cognitive exploration is about Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Cajal was the father of modern neurobiology and an outstanding artist in his own right. His illustrations of the nervous systems are elegant and from them he was lead to draw accurate conclusions about how information flows through the cells in the retina (before our ability to physiologically test those ideas).

His skills as a microscopist were informed by his childhood desire to be an artist. As a young student, he spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to mix watercolors to effectively capture natural colors. If I recall his autobiography correctly, he even kept an watercolor “lab book” recording all the color samples and the combinations to create them. He was especially obsessed with the colors of flowers. This approach to drawing out nature through the manipulation of colors and stains in conjunction with his willingness to experiment artistically would eventually be the avenue he used to manipulate the Golgi stain and demonstrate the nervous system is constructed of discrete cells.

NATHANIEL COMFORT

04-12-2010 13:06:25

Jay--

Can you elaborate on the ways Ramon y Cajal's work was elegant? I see its beauty immediately, but how does it embody those notions of simplicity, parsimony, and incisive explanation that I was talking about? Are there other anatomists of the day who took a more "brute force" approach?

Help me see the way you're seeing.

JD TALASEK

04-12-2010 13:12:28

Jay,

As a visual response to your post about Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Golgi, I would like to insert a couple of images by Katherine Sherwood. We showed her work at the NAS in an exhibition entitled Golgi’s Door. Not only is her work interesting here because she uses visual references (medical technology – old and new, Golgi, and ancient healing symbols) but her own painting practices were developed as an act of necessity after suffering a stroke that left her partially paralyzed.

Katherine Sherwood, ‘Unfathomable Logic,’ 2003, mixed media on canvas, 62" x 51”

Katherine Sherwood, Golgi's Door, 2007, Mixed media on canvas, 20 x 20 inches

JAY HOSLER:

04-12-2010 14:45:04
Hi Nathaniel

I may be busted here. It is entirely possible (probable) that I am not using elegance as you have (i.e. I goofed). Allow me to scramble to explain what I had in mind when I made those comments.

First, because the Golgi stain only stains a handful of select cells (and to my knowledge we still don’t know why that is) what we see in Cajal’s drawing is actually a small subset of the numerous tiny nerve cells packed into the tissue. Prior to his innovations, the use of Golgi stain on nervous tissue produced slides that were just a gray blur (this is the brute force anatomy I was imagining). It was Cajal’s delicate manipulations of tissue and stains and his simplified drawings that I was envisioning as elegant.

Second, at time there were two prevailing theories of how the nervous system was structured. The Reticular Theory held that the nervous system was a network of tubes like the circulatory system. The Neuron Doctrine said the nervous system was comprised of discrete cells. Cajal’s illustrations confirmed the far more parsimonious Neuron Doctrine which more effectively explained how changes like learning arise in the nervous system.

So, that was what I was thinking, but upon reflection it doesn’t qualify as elegant like the Meselson-Stahl experiment does. Looks like I’m talking about elegance I perceive and interpret based on the background I know and not the simple, straightforward visual elegance of the figures you’ve supplied.

CHRISTINA COGDELL

04-12-2010 15:12:03

Interesting discussion. I don't have time to elaborate on my contribution here, but this is the cover image of a recent issue of the British journal Architectural Design, which takes this idea of elegance as the theme. Many articles in this issue attempt to adapt this idea from science into architecture, with greater or lesser degree of success. Image below.

A.D. 77:1 (January/Februrary 2007), guest edited by Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle of Contemporary Architecture Practice. Sorry for the blur - it's just a screenshot of the cover taken online.

NATHANIEL COMFORT

04-12-2010 15:46:37
Jay--
Thanks for the clarification. You're not busted at all. I see now how those images relate. They share the notion of parsimony, of trimming down to essences. I love the selective Golgi stain example, particularly. That stretches my notion of elegance.

Do you know of any references to Cajal's work (or Golgi's, for that matter) as "elegant"?

And Christina, thanks much for the journal reference. I look forward to seeing how the architects define elegance and comparing it to scientists' conceptions. Great stuff.

JAY HOSLER
04-12-2010 23:02:58
Nathaniel-

I haven''t seen anything on Cajal, Golgi and elegance, but I will keep my eyes peeled.

Has anyone written about Thomas Young and elegance? As I was trying to get to sleep (no luck yet), I kept thinking about his double slit experiments. The resulting images are so beautiful and simple and the idea they illustrate so profound that I wondered if they had been considered in this context. I am talking about his work in neurobiology next week and would like to share with the class some of the ideas I've been exposed to in this discussion.

NATHANIEL COMFORT

04-13-2010 07:49:46

Jay,
Beautiful! Sheesh, I've got a graduate degree in neurobiology and I didn't know about Thomas Young. Interesting guy; I wonder if his papers are still extant...

I'm seeing this come back around to visual culture (after this past week, I'm starting to think that *everything* does, eventually): I see how that image of the double-slit experiment conveys a great deal of information--information about *principles*, not just lots of data. That's exactly what I mean by elegance. There's an *eloquence* to this image. If you understand enough about it.

So, since you're talking about this next week and I'm probing the concept of elegance in science: if you have time I'd love for you to post a riff on why that double-slit image is elegant. What does it tell you--how does it speak to you? And how does it use the principles of parsimony, simplicity, grace, and insight to convey it?

RICK WELCH:

04-13-2010 15:43:31
On the subject (rather the personage) of Thomas Young... The famous double-slit studies showed that light behaves as a wave, contrary to the Enlightenment view (no pun intended) that it is corpuscular. What goes around, comes around: In the 20th century, similar double-slit experiments with electron beams showed that particles also behave like waves under some conditions... Hence the 'wave-particle duality' of quantum physics!

Add to Young's repertoire his seminal role in deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the Rosetta stone... Elegance, indeed!

NATHANIEL COMFORT
04-13-2010 17:14:41
Yes, I guess I wasn't clear, or maybe I asked for the wrong thing. I am aware of the double-slit experiment and its fundamental result, but I was hoping for a little exposition from an expert on how that experiment and/or its resultant images embody the principles of elegance. Do you feel comfortable with that?

JAY HOSLER
04-13-2010 18:35:34
Hey Nathaniel-
I’m certainly no expert, but if I am thinking about elegance correctly then I feel this result is elegant because it addresses a big idea with simple materials and design and the resultant image produced makes the answer almost intuitively obvious to anyone who has seen colliding ripples in water. Plus the image responds to manipulation of slit distance in a mathematically predictable fashion (see this web page for a cool demo that allows you to adjust slit length). For me, the result is a visual image composed of simple (beautiful) lines that provide insight (maybe kinda) into the fundamental nature of light.

Of course, before this discussion I really didn’t know much about elegance a formal way of viewing science, so I am trying articulate my clumsy feelings about these ideas. I hope I am not to far off base and I appreciate everyone's indulgence. Whatever the case, I have found this discussion particularly stimulating. I hope I can translate that excitement to my students! The cartoonist in me thinks this might be an interesting thing to address in one of my science comic books sometime…

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/interference/doubleslit/

BRANDON BALLENGEE
04-13-2010 21:06:16
Cant imagine discussing Elegance in Science without a mention of Ernst Haeckel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_forms_in_nature

RICK WELCH:
04-14-2010 05:04:08
Very pleased to see the work of Ernst Haeckel highlighted! Elegance and beauty personified. In the modern history of “evolutionary thinking,” in my opinion, he stands out amongst the very few who have integrated scientific principles with a deeply artistic vision of Nature. One of the heroes in the storyline of this symposium, for sure. Haeckel’s accomplishments are manifold. In the post-Darwin age, he produced the most elaborate evolutionary representation of the “tree of life” and pioneered the field of phylogenetics. See The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought, by R. J. Richards (2008), and Visions of Nature: The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel, by O. Breidbach (2006).

NATHANIEL COMFORT:
04-14-2010 08:06:32
On Haeckel:
Beauty, yes.
But elegance?
Would you say his aesthetic was one of stripped-down beauty, economy of line, incisive perception?
(I realize the answer may be in Breidbach--I definitely need to read that. I know Richards' book.)
In a more general sense, I do think that scientific and medical illustration often manifest some of the principles of elegance. Compare an illustration to a photograph: the illustration is often much more informative, precisely because it *leaves out* much of the detail. There's much greater economy, and it stems from the intervention of the artist's mind. She decides what to include, using the efficiency of thought rather than the approach of a photograph, which by "brute-force" includes all the information the camera can gather. I realize this is a simplistic comparison of painting and photography, but I think the general point is valid.

RICK WELCH:
04-14-2010 10:56:48
Nathaniel
As to your question of “elegance” in Haeckel’s work, I would say have to say “yes” it applies. Though, I can certainly see how it might not in the sense that you expressed the term. My own view is shaped (perhaps warped) by my training in physics. Alas, there is no universally accepted definition of “elegance” in physics (and I suspect in the world of art as well). I plugged the term “elegance in physics” into Google© just now, and the first item was an online article entitled “What’s wrong with this elegance?” (March 2000) in the journal Physics Today (from the American Institute of Physics) by the physicist David Mermin (Cornell University), based on a lecture he gave on “Elegance in Physics” at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis (see http://www.aip.org/pt/mar00/refmar.htm). Mermin explores the relativity of this word in the realm of physics. More often than not, the descriptor “elegant” is applied to an encompassing physical theory (though on occasion, as you suggest, it is applied to seminal experiments as well). Quoting the eminent physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Mermin states what I would call the “standard” conception of elegance in physics (referring to a physical theory or physical principle): “harmoniously organizing a domain of science with order, pattern, and coherence.” From this standpoint, much of Haeckel’s work would clearly be “elegant.” One example is his beautifully synthetic conception of the “tree of life” (albeit with some assumptions that we now know to be incorrect), based on the evolutionary thinking of the late 19th century. Another is his “recapitulation theory,” with its proposition that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” (which was later disproven). Viewing Haeckel’s work diachronically in its day, the expression “elegant” would be highly appropriate.

Quoting Mermin again, “Elegance in physics is as much in the eye of the beholder as it is in any other field of human endeavor.” Even quantum mechanics (with all of its “fuzziness”), Mermin argues, is “elegant” (and I would agree)…. Nathan, you stated that, “In biology, genetics is more elegant that biochemistry.” I would have to disagree there, as well. I think that both fields have their “elegant” aspects. Initially (just after getting my Ph.D. in biochemistry and for many years thereafter), I did not perceive any such “elegance” in biochemistry. After teaching biochemistry for more years than I’d like to count, I gradually came to see the beauty and elegance of many of the principles that underlie the biochemical character of life. Maybe I just needed the time to get my right brain talking to my left brain?!

I’d be interested in hearing about the relativity of “elegance” in the realm of art from some of the panelists?

MICHAEL SAPPOL:
04-14-2010 11:22:29
Just to chime in. Elegance has no single definition, is a word that traverses fields and domains, is used in mathematics, fashion, design, aesthetics, has some association with minimalism, efficiency, grace, beauty. It is often deployed in social descriptions, where it is associated with a kind of performance of social class that is not available to members of the working and lower classes, which requires capital and cultural capital.

The larger question for me is the relationship between aesthetics and science. Aesthetics is both a historical construct, a domain of philosophy and cultural commentary which developed mainly out of the writings of Burke and Kant and then spread to the emergent wider fields of philosophy, art commentary and criticism. But is also generalizable, so that we can speak of an Aztec aesthetics or even a NASCAR (racing car) aesthetics. And, in relation to evolution and visual culture, it might be useful to think about an aesthetics of scientific practice, theorizing and presentation which may mobilize evolutionary concepts, including directive streamlining and adaptive efficiency.

NATHANIEL COMFORT:
04-14-2010 13:01:35
Rick, your response is incredibly helpful. Thanks--you've given me a month or more's worth of leads to track down, and more than that of things to think about.

Your remarks raise the question of different notions or definitions of elegance. I'd assumed physicists had the same definition as biologists, but I see I can't take that for granted.

I expected to get popped by a biochemist for my crack about genetics being more elegant than biochemistry--but not by someone who is also a physicist!

And Mike, yes, you've nicely articulated the underlying idea of interest here. What is the role of aesthetics in science, to what extent can we generalize about it, and what impact does the choice of one aesthetic over another have on scientific knowledge production? A history of the art of science.

RICK WELCH

04-14-2010 16:59:37
Nathan...

Thanks so much for your inspiring comments and ideas, which have stimulated much thought by me and many other panelists in this symposium.

On another note, I share your fondness of (and affiliation with) D'Arcy Thompson. His On Growth and Form is truly a timeless classic. I have gravitated to his work and his personage so many times over the years. I tend to see in Thompson's work a blend of Goethe, Darwin, and Einstein. Let us note the ongoing 150th anniversary of his birth (see http://www.darcythompson.org/events.html).

NATHANIEL COMFORT
04-14-2010 17:30:05
My pleasure. And what a fine way to end the symposium. Let us raises our virtual glasses in a toast to D'Arcy Thompson—a true visionary. Cheers!

RICK WELCH
04-14-2010 18:24:41
Cheers, indeed...

TODD SILER:

04-15-2010 02:50:04
Thanks, everyone! It was inspiring to follow your adventurous thoughts and gather new resources...

JD, this is a terrific topic. “Elegance” is like the ‘archetypal hero’ in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). It’s that elusive thing we celebrate in our mythologies and real world experiences. We can easily point to elegance, and yet we struggle to describe what exactly we’re pointing to, since it seems to have some hidden characteristics that we can only know through our personal experiences of it. What artifacts or events would you highlight in the History of Visual Culture that you think show the essence of what elegance is…or is not?

Nathaniel, I like your realization about visual culture here ‘(after this past week, I'm starting to think that *everything* does, eventually)…

Essentially, that’s what I meant by “A.r.t.” (All representations of thought). It’s everything we’ve created as an expression-representation of our thoughts, feelings, emotions. It’s the embodiment of visual culture. A.r.t. includes everything from pure math (Algebraic Geometry) to masterful “performance art” in the sciences: I once watched MIT neuroscientist Dr. Ann Graybiel gracefully draw with two hands simultaneously these elegant scientific visualizations of the Basal Ganglia on a blackboard in front of an attentive audience of graduate and medical students. This impressive feat of ambidexterity, couple with her vibrant personality and kinesthetic intelligence, made for an enriched learning experience. It was a memorable example of an ArtScientist teaching a course on “The Human Nervous System.” The fact that this memory is as vivid and fresh today as it was refreshing thirty years ago suggests that elegance and grace leave lasting impressions.

Jay, given your passions for drawing and the fine art of cartooning, I’m sure you’ve filled many treasure chests with elegant cartoons that have inspired your work and research. I’d love to see any of your favorite ones that sum up evolution, and the evolution of elegance. Maybe you have a couple that envision what concepts of elegance may be in a hundred years from now. Are we heading towards a more – or less -- elegant future? What’s the future of elegance look and feel like?

Here are three related/unrelated images showing the “simplexity” of elegance.

JAY HOSLER

04-15-2010 16:39:40
Hi Todd

I do have a few cartoons and comics laying around, but none match the simplicity and power of this one, the first cartoon about evolution drawn by the man himself. Interestingly, it looks far more like a bush than a tree. Charlie was ahead of his time.

Oops, forgot to say thanks to Todd for including a Feynman diagram. When I give talks about using comics to teach science, I have a section that focuses on great visual representations that have helped advance our understanding of the universe and I always show a Feynmen diagram and feebly try to explain it (this is the part of the talk where a mumble really fast). This discussion has given me a lot of material to think about in that regard and I am grateful to JD for starting the discussion and to Nathaniel for propelling it along. For anyone interested in seeing how I tried to deal with explaining the evolution of the eye, below is a link to and excerpt from my book Optical Allusions. Think of it as a nice counterbalance to the concept of elegance...

www.jayhosler.com/nasoasample.pdf

4/11: Understanding how scientific ideas function in the cultural realm

2010-04-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-14-2010 09:24:42

JD TALASEK
04-11-2010 14:15:44
At Christina's suggestion, lets discuss " limitations of the social construction approach to understanding how scientific ideas function in the cultural/humanities realm."

As Christina commented in her last post, "Is there a middle ground between these two? Which authors in history and philosophy of science, or literary/visual theory, etc. negotiate these two domains well? This seems a great opportunity for our different disciplinary backgrounds to come together to point out useful theoretical models for research on the topics of this symposium."

DAVID HAUSSLER
04-12-2010 00:20:36
At the risk of changing the subject, restating the obvious or rehashing well worn-themes, let me add some comments on useful theoretical models for research on the topics of this symposium.

Science is concerned with repeatable outcomes, and with the reliable mathematical regularities in configurations of matter and energy. By and large the configurations studied by science are not static, but rather recreate themselves dynamically. Examples are Earth’s orbit around the sun, the regular pattern of crystal growth, the Krebs cycle of metabolic activity in a cell that uses oxygen, the global carbon cycle and perhaps certain economic cycles. These self-recreating configurations are highly exceptional in a statistical sense amidst the vast majority of configurations of matter and energy that exist only once in time and space and never repeat, be they naturally occurring or a product of human society. The latter are largely random and instinctively of little interest to us.

But where does this leave the once-in-time-and-space creations of art? Darwin and subsequent abstractions of his theories provide some interesting bridges (see e.g. the work of Jacques Monod that inspires these comments, and whose 100th birthday we celebrate after the 200th birthday of Darwin.) Consider the central cycle of life: biological replication. It has clearly repeated for billions of years, making it unquestionably a worthy object of scientific study, notwithstanding the fact that it lies at the heart the human experience, orchestrating the births of our children and their children, and the inevitable deaths of those we love. Yet the specifics of this cycle have not repeated for billions of years with simple mathematical regularity, but rather have been relentlessly elaborated by the process of random mutation and natural selection described by Darwin. If we look closer, we see that other cycles are elaborated by kindred evolutionary processes, including the Krebs and carbon cycles mentioned, the latter which we now seek to stabilize through international efforts, either including Freeman Dyson's carbon-eating trees or not, as Ellen Levy muses in a previous post. Each tick in the evolutionary ratchet that alters one of these cycles is a once-in-time-and-space event that leaves a profound legacy.

In its abstract form, evolution is the mix of creativity and regularity that leads the universe to an ever-richer set of self-recreating cycles. The specific future outcomes of evolution cannot be predicted by science, and this fact can be scientifically demonstrated. In particular, by evolving us, the game has changed, and now our own creativity, along with our science, is added to the mix. Roger Malina’s post in the artist/scientist collaboration thread mentions relevant work of Anna Dumitriu and Jane Prophet. But on the artistic side I loved Eduardo Kac’s comments on his works Genesis, Natural History of the Enigma, Cypher, and Alba, the GFP Bunny. “Suddenly in the context of art a new life form, a new being, exists.” These are instances of the audacious creativity of humanity, a creativity that will provide another tick in the evolutionary ratchet.

ASSIMINA KANIARI
04-12-2010 03:50:28
There are many answers and methods that could be applied to Christina's question according to the field each one is working. In approaching a question concerned at its core with the challenges of so pronounced interdisciplinary approaches I would like to bring in a comment by Ian Hacking and a definition of being interdiscipinary as appying one's discipline towards different directions. My discipline is history so I would like to translate Christina's question into 'how can we historicise' the relations between science and culture in given historical moments, periods and social contexts. This is far from a question pertaining to simply an exercise in thinking. Attention to techniques developed or subverted by artists themselves in response to scientfic techniques of represenation or imaging have been crucial in allowing for a dialogue between art and science as a historically meaningful phenomenon. Dioramas is one such example. Artists have produced work that referenced popular images of science, or have participated in the public aspects of science making, in a long time but have also referenced crucially the work of each other. The perssistence of the term 'natural history' from the surrealists to current work is one example of this internal dialogue. How one fixes impact in historical terms from an art historian's perspective aims ultimately at geneaologies of ways of seeing and poetics that while fixed in their cultural and historical contexts concern the works of art themselves rather than their accuracy or not to scientific ideas.

BARBARA CREED:
04-12-2010 09:45:22
I am interested in Assimina’s reference to the surrealists and May’s comment that animators more than other filmmakers are limited only by their imaginations and can take on ‘the challenge of visualising almost anything’. Darwin himself felt the pull of imagination in strange ways. In reminiscing about those things that affected him most on his travels he said: ‘In calling up images from the past, I find the plains of Patagonia most frequently cross before my eyes. Yet these plains are pronounced by all most wretched & useless…Why do these arid wastes takes so firm possession of the memory?...I can scarcely analyse these feelings. – But it must be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination’. So Darwin would probably not have been surprised to learn that he was to inspire the writings and art works of a number of surrealists who were also committed to the free scope of the imagination. Luis Bunuel,, the surrealist film director said that when he read ‘The Origin of Species’ his whole life took ‘a sharp turn’ and then dedicated himself to making a series of surrealist classics that defy the imagination in all possible ways. Comte de Lautreamont, a literary precursor of surrealism, saw literature and art as an attempt to confront the problem of man ‘the sublime ape’ who is grounded in the finite yet seeks the infinite. The surrealists revered Lautreamont because of his famous description of a young boy who was ‘as beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella’. In writing about the impact of Darwin’s anti-anthropocentrism on Max Ernst, Margot Norris said: ‘Ernst’s monstrous zoo reflects a free invention and distortion of form unthinkable in the pre-Darwinian age’ (Beasts of the Modern Imagination, John Hopkins, 1985). Like the surrealist, Rene Magritte, Darwin’s image of a respectable Victorian gentleman was at odds with his radical ideas. What I am trying to say is that Darwin would not have been the least surprised to find he had much in common with the surrealists and their pursuit of the unimaginable – or with animators, cartoonists and contemporary performance artists such as Stelarc who pioneered cybernetic body art. Darwin would probably also have been somewhat amused by the surrealist film, ‘Max Mon Amour’ (1986) a comedy of manners, in which Charlotte Rampling has an affair with a chimpanzee. The director Nagasaki Oshima treats the affair in a totally dead-pan manner, while satirising the bad behaviour of the bourgeoisie. Darwin’s radical ideas about evolution, change, emotions and the body made many things possible –particularly in the world of the imagination.

ASSIMINA KANIARI:
04-12-2010 12:36:53
Absolutely! The surrealist hybrid is an impossible-real, something that evades the order of nature yet could be witnessed as a material fact and in this light I agree with Barbara quite ‘modern’ and could be seen as compatible to Darwin’s own ‘thought-style’. Moral tales, comprising the early children’s literature, full of stories about transformation and cruelty, often across ‘species’, like 'primate children' to insects could be seen as a genre that the surrealists were fond of and a genre that Le Chants de Maldoror by Lautreamont illustrated by Dali as well as many others certainly takes notice of. Dali’s own The secret life of Salvador Dali could be read as a natural history where the conscious state of Dali the painter emerges out of his subconscious and fragmentary memories paired by a series of bizarre drawings that attest to his taste for hybrids and natural facts at one and the same time. Natural history and natural history books were part of surrealists’ readings- Natural History literary occupied the space of Picasso’s drawings in an artist’s book he did with texts drawn from Buffon’s Natural History- a number of Dali’s sketches surviving intact in the pages of his 1885 copy of Our living world (New York, Selmar Hess, pp. 110 and 438-439) overlaying images of reptiles and crustacea depicted in old style line drawings in the book (something which he liked, like Warhol also did). His Gala-Minotaure, so well grasped in Niki Loisidi’s work on surrealism, and the differences between his forms and those of artists he admired and who also used imagery of natural facts and evidence reminiscent of the idea of natural history yet placed to different uses and contexts, like De Chirico so well described by Nikos Daskalothanasis, attest to both the historicity of surrealist hybrids as well as to their possible uses in allowing us to elucidate, like Barbara just did, an understanding, culturally based as it is, of evolution in its modern dimensions.

MARCEL CHOTKOWSKI LAFOLLETTE
04-12-2010 12:41:55
As I have read through the posts by the artists and art historians participating in the forum, I cannot help but conclude but that Darwin achieved the ultimate success…his ideas have been considered interesting enough, fascinating enough, to spark the creative imaginations of extraordinary people, to be incorporated within their engravings, paintings, sculpture, installations, films. So, let me pose a question important to those of us who study the history of mass popularization of science: must accuracy matter?

Many scientists rightfully rant and rage whenever film documentaries or television programs or books knowingly distort or misinterpret scientific data. Certainly, questions about inaccuracy and willful misinterpretation have bedeviled the political debates over the teaching of evolution, climate change, genetic manipulation, and so forth. In one of Suzanne Anker’s first comments, she included what she described as early examples of deliberately “crude” and “brutish” satirical reactions to Darwin. Yet those and other powerful and often wildly inaccurate images “traveled” within the wider culture. They took hold. And it quickly became darn near impossible for popular, mass culture to approach evolution without attention to “monkeys”…even when such references were inappropriate to the context. So, should scientific accuracy in the visual representation of evolution matter? Or (as the creators of mass culture have argued) are we attempting to quench or "censor" the imagination by even posing such a question?

JD TALASEK
04-12-2010 13:29:40
Suzanne and Marcel:
What about that area of visual culture between art and science that includes journalism and documentaries (as Marcel mentioned)? On one hand such media require correct information but on the other one does try to create such things with the idea of grabbing one's attention and communicating information.

TRACY HICKS:
04-12-2010 13:55:48
Marcel and Suzanne,

This conundrum of truth has driven a decade long conversation between a group of scientists and artists I started to establish a base for the science merge into my art. At the time the group started I was focused on a confrontation resulting from the interpretation of an installation/exhibition wrapped around a summer I spent in Central America as artist in residence collecting reptiles and amphibians for a UT natural history museum collection.

Realizing my process was pushing the boundaries of the natural history collection process to a limit, I found a group of scientists willing to advise me in a very intimate and conversational format. We call the group the Chorus relating to the dwindling frog choruses not found on the collecting trip.

To say the Chorus has been active and occasionally overactive would be an understatement. We have driven each other to continually readdress issues previously addressed from new perspectives as they arise. Weather the Chorus makes my work any more honest on a scientific level could be debated, The visceral content is always present and can be interpreted by the viewer anyway they choose. But the Chorus has drawn me back to keep a factual reference point when needed.

salt cured eugenics books with corn from Correlation Collection installation

clear cast frog from Correlation Collection installation

Correlation Collection installation in 2000

CHRISTINA COGDELL:
04-12-2010 14:52:18

To clarify my question in the post that starts this thread, the phrase “materialist philosophy” accidentally got left out, so I was asking: Is there a middle ground between “social construction” and “materialist philosophy”? The few responses so far (even without reference to materialist philosophy) hint at some of the reasons for my question.

On the one hand, David Haussler points to how humanity is changing the course of evolution – using Kac’s GFP Bunny as one example, – yet he does so within the current framework of a complex systems, which presumes: regularity yet nonlinearity; contingency (“cannot be predicted”); eternal drive toward ever-greater complexity (“leads the universe to an ever-richer set of self-recreating cycles”). In this instance, art & culture are conceived as material entities that arise from and affect the course of the evolution of matter in its presumable self-organization towards more and more complex systems.

In some ways, this is not so far from E. O. Wilson and Bert Holldober’s narrative in their new book The Super-organism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies (2009), which argues for the power of self-organization and emergence to produce complex societies (where ant colony architecture, for example, is interpreted as the “extended phenotype” of each particular species’ genotype) (Two images below from a recent talk I gave, with my comments added – the ant colony architecture is from The Super-organism, whereas the other is the cover of the April 2009 issue of SEED magazine featuring “The Hive Mind,” a review of The Super-organism). In Wilson’s and Holldobler’s work (and not in Haussler’s comments, by the way), sociobiology (as “eugenics” was renamed in 1969, in the transition in the name of the journal Eugenics Quarterly to Social Biology indicates) meets self-organization, and the genetically-determinist underpinnings are never far from the surface. The corollary is that human architecture and culture are also the extended phenotype of our evolving genotype, an idea that takes us right back into the early-twentieth-century, the idea that style mirrors evolutionary change, and the ideas of eugenics (with the added focus from mid-to-late-century molecular biology).

On the other hand, Assimina Kaniari (bringing Ian Hacking’s work into the discussion – I’m guessing in part a reference to his book The Social Construction of What?) describes how, for an interdisciplinary historian, her goal is to historically contextualize art and science and their interrelations within particular moments/places. If we move from history to contemporary criticism, how can we best contextualize today’s crossovers between art and science, yet without the benefit of hindsight? Some historians of science examine ideas within their institutional contexts: schools, funding trends, who wants to know what, what effect do certain ideas have in society (and so therefore are funded projects), etc. I am reminded of Richard Lewontin’s lecture/book Biology as Ideology, where he explicitly positions biological science within the social realm to question the presumed objectivity of science, especially when used to legitimate power and inequality in human society.

My current thinking is that complex systems is functioning as the new ideology. For me, a telltale sign of something functioning ideologically is its diffusion into numerous facets of culture, its trendiness as an explanation for almost anything, and a rhetorical pervasiveness into the social sciences, arts, and popular culture. Complexity, emergence, and “bottom-up” self-organization seem to be the new hot lingo. This popularization stems from the diffusion of a scientific paradigm change into the arenas beyond science itself: society and culture. (A diagram showing this paradigm change is posted here, made by microbiologist James Shapiro, U. Chicago).

James Shapiro, “Genome Organization and Reorganization in Evolution: Formatting for Computation and Function,” in From Epigenesis to Epigenetics: The Genome in Context, eds. Van Speybroeck, Van de Vijver, and De Waele (2002), 113.

Cover image of SEED (April 2009 issue), featuring its story "The Hive Mind," a review of The Super-Organism. Excerpts from the review are on the side. Note SEED's caption: Science Is Culture

E. O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler, The Super-Organism (2009), 460-61.

Why do we presume that evolution moves always toward greater complexity (or ever-greater richness, as David Haussler writes), with perhaps just a few phase-change blips? Can we discount Stephen Jay Gould’s intepretation of the Burgess Shale? It has its critics, I know, but I’m not convinced that everything in the universe shows a common pattern of moving from so-called “primitive” “simplicity” toward “advanced” “complexity” – this seems like an updating of Spencerian teleological “progress,” revised to accommodate current nonlinear theorizations. We act as as microorganisms are “primitive” or simple because we have focused our attention on their individual structures (Richard Lewontin, in Biology as Ideology, describes the historical parallel of political individualism in the west with an “atomistic”/isolated framework in science and laboratories), and in contrast, a human individual seems infinitely more complex. But what if we were to look at their “super-organism”/colony/systemic structures (preferably, without the genetic determinist bent of EO Wilson), especially if there were a way to do so in the fossil record? Such complexity may be way “older” than we presume.

James Shapiro challenges the idea that bacteria are simple in his 2007 article, “Bacteria are small but not stupid: cognition, natural genetic engineering, and socio-bacteriology.” He concludes: “The take-home lesson of more than half a century of molecular microbiology is to recognize that bacterial information processing is far more powerful than human technology. The selected examples of bacterial ‘smarts’ I have given show convincingly that these small cells are incredibly sophisticated at coordinating processes involving millions of individual events and at making them precise and reliable. In addition, bacteria display astonishing versatility in managing the biosphere’s geochemical and thermodynamic transformations: processes more complex than the largest human-engineered systems. This mastery over the biosphere indicates that we have a great deal to learn about chemistry, physics and evolution from our small, but very intelligent, prokaryotic relatives.” (816-17)

Similarly, horizontal gene transfer (HGT) also suggests a complexity and adaptability in microorganisms that is far from simple or primitive. This new knowledge led the New Scientist to host a contest for visual reconceptualizations of the “tree of life,” putting one such image on the cover that boldly proclaims, “Darwin Was Wrong: Cutting Down the Tree of Life.” Instead of the tree, they suggest a “tree with vines” or web or net - bringing in both horizontal gene transfer at the microbial level (and suggesting it also happens in “higher organisms”) as well as complex systems imagery. (Image here: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s 2005 diagram showing a microbial web, owing to HGT.

It’s very hard to separate science from culture; how we look at the data, what we see or don’t see, is strongly influenced by culture/belief/training. The history of science shows this so well. It is equally difficult to separate culture from science, at least in our current scientific age.

It seems therefore that this difficulty of separation is similar to the tension between the two main current theories of social construction or materialist philosophy. Which returns me to my lingering question, one that is troubling my own work now as I examine the interrelationships between contemporary architecture and complex biological systems: Is there a middle ground or alternate approach that negotiates these two theoretical models?

Source given in image. Sorry this image isn't visual. I attach it because I find the abstract and article very interesting.

Source in image, with my own text; from a talk I gave recently.

Source in image - January 2009.

ELLEN LEVY

04-12-2010 16:59:29
I am interested in returning here to Barbara’s post about Semir Zeki’s analysis of Mondrian, which responded to the topic of new imaging technology and visual culture. I believe that it also says a great deal about how science functions in the realm of visual culture as well as the reverse. Some of the work in neuroaesthetics (mentioned also by Roger) is based on the reasonable assumption that art tells us something important about the brain. This approach has resulted in some wonderfully insightful comments (e.g., Zeki’s observations about ambiguity actually being the brain’s choice among equally valid interpretations, each of which is clear). However, upon its “re-entry” into the zone of visual culture, the term “ambiguity” necessarily includes other elaborated visual cultural meanings, including “open to several interpretations or of uncertain significance.” The fact that terms like “ambiguity” and “complexity” overlap but are not equivalent in science and art suggests only a small part of the difficulty in spanning the cognitive and visual cultural spheres. In considering neuroaesthetics, some of the questions for are, first, whether one can find neural mechanisms (presumably higher order sensory neurons) that link private experience and visual cultural meanings (as a social repository of experience), and second, what sorts of construction of meaning can make their translation possible between cultures.

Barbara pointed out some of the problems (e.g., history, meaning . . .) Both cultures, as we have seen from various posts are rooted in politicized systems of motivation, valuation, and preferences. Imaging tools are important but interpretation plays an equal role. Zeki’s work with color and Mondrian, reminded me of a similar problem when Richard Taylor, a physicist, undertook a fractal analysis of Jackson Pollock paintings to judge their authenticity. My understanding is that he was well aware of the possible differences surfaces and reproductions would make to his analyses and had allowed for this. But the problems raised are enormous and speak to the difficulties in transdisciplinary communication.

MICHAEL SAPPOL:
04-12-2010 17:24:40
Christine observes that "It’s very hard to separate science from culture.... It is equally difficult to separate culture from science, at least in our current scientific age."

For me, what gets messy is the notion of "culture". Where does "culture" come from? How is it produced? Some of the posts imply that there is a domain called "science" and another called "culture". But we could also categorically nest "science" within "culture".

The Free Online Dictionary lists 8 meanings for "culture", including:

"1.a. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
b. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian culture; Japanese culture; the culture of poverty.
c. These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression: religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture.
d. The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization.
2. Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it."

So what I see is that: (a) both artists and scientists make truth claims, (b) scientific discourse and practices, especially those relating to molecular biology, neuroscience, and computer science, have a very privileged status in our society, and that artists have appropriated the discourse and look and topics and technologies of science to make art that sometimes functions as a critique. And (c) at the same time scientists have appropriated art technologies and aesthetics to transcribe, illustrate, model and theorize their data.

SUZANNE ANKER:

04-13-2010 11:00:54
The heading of this post is "understanding how scientific ideas function in the cultural realm." I would like to point out an early example of "scientific ideas" in the context of the Everson Museum, in an exhibition curated by James Harithas. By the way, Mr. Harithas was invited to resign from his post as Director about a year later. Mr.Harithas had devoted the museum's annual budget to "Process and Metaprocess," an exhibition featuring the seminal work of Frank Gillette. This exhibition included multi-channel video (55 Channels in total,) live chicks hatching on a daily basis, behavioral studies between tarantulas and wood tortoises, as well the development of termite nesting. The audience response ranged from indignation, in that, the museum was filled with electronic equipment and botanical and animal life. On the other hand, the exhibition was very well received by the critical art established. The exhibition was viewed as being revolutionary.

MICHAEL SAPPOL

04-13-2010 12:12:10
In a performative sense, are such works of art "evolutionary" as well as "revolutionary"? Do they mobilize the technologies and "aesthetics" of science to perform an evolutionary sequence? Let me explain...

For many decades now artists have been making “experimental art”, in the “art lab” or "in the field" (no longer in a studio). The artist wears a lab coat not a beret. On a performative level, what is the contemporary art of molecular biology and neuroanatomy and computer science producing? One answer: it performs a truth claim for Art, insists that the Artist produces in Art a species of truth that is equivalent to, or even trumps (tells the hidden truth about), Science. Or perhaps makes common cause with Science and Technology, attempts to annihilate the boundaries, and adopts the research agenda of molecular biology, neuroanatomy, computer science--and invites scientists to reciprocate.

Larry Shiner, in The Invention of Art, describes a centuries-long process in which "Art" is an ensemble of institutions, practices, and ideas, which was first defined in opposition to artisanal craft production, and then in various ways, as opposition to the quotidian, to everyday life. At the same time, all along the way, the new movements in Art, defined themselves in opposition to the old movements, while at the same time insisting in some way that there was a lineage or progression, so that it was possible to define Pop Art, an anti-art critique, as belonging to the same category, the same family, as Raphael, Goya, Van Gogh, etc. There was implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, an evolutionary logic that was deployed by the exponents of the “new” and “modern” (and “postmodern”?). At various moments this constituted something like Loewy's naturalizing evolution of objects, but with the objects being "revolutionary" art movements which successively critiqued and conceptually improved upon (at least according to their own rhetoric) their predecessors—an Art evolution.

So: We're fading. So many ideas and examples have been tendered, but do any of my fellow panelists want to take this on? Has evolutionary discourse, evolutionary ideas structured the succession of art movements? Does it still do so, in ways that adapt and assimilate the changing emphasis and research agendas of contemporary evolutionary science?

SUZANNE ANKER:
04-13-2010 13:54:17
Dear Michael,
A few thoughts about art and science, evolution and revolution:

1.0) I don't believe in the "construction" of science" as a practice absorbed in relativism. Obviously are are a number of ways that the social, or cultural, affects scientific practices, particularly in its funding mechanisms. All research studies are not granted the same level of funding. There are social and ethical constraints that operate within research that impact what in fact will be researched and hence receives money and institutional support. Politics is an issue.

1.1) All scientists do not share the same sensitivities or nuanced intuitive perceptions. All scientists do not recognize the concept of "chance" in the same way. (i.e., the discovery of mirror neurons

1.2) All scientists do not share the same sense of tenacity about their work. The "production" of Dolly, to say the least, required an enormous amount of trial and error.

2.0) The artist neither wears a lab coat nor a beret. The characterization of "the artist" can no longer be specified. The discipline of visual art ranges from mimetic exactitude to feats of endurance. Each discourse within art brings with it, its own set of qualifiers, from the rag-tag pervert to the philosophically astute dandy.

2.1) Artists do not produce truths about the laws of nature. Artists produce subjective and inter-subjectivepropositions in relation to the way they see the world. Distortion, irony, the grotesque can have equal footing with elegance, efficiency and structure within the discourse of art. Art is an open code, as Umberto Eco maintains, that shares confluences with the ideas of its time.

3.0) The question of art as research is be bandied around right now. From Ph.d degrees in Studio Practice to government funding for art institutions that call themselves research institutes.

3.1) The lineage of movements from one ism to another is a misnomer. There is always more than one kind of practice operating at the same time. For example, Picasso was making Cubist paintings at the same time as his large-bodied nudes. It is easier to tell a story that has a discreet beginning, middle and end, but a more archeological approach would garner other information, particulary in the discipline of Art History

3.2) A proliferation of media, both new and old, has infiltrated the art world, bringing to the fore alternative combinatory practices. There is no clear direction for art to go in as it is practiced today. Arthur Danto terms this time of a period of "historical entropy."

3.3) Although there is no evolutionary mandated direction for art, its practice is heavily influenced by historical determinsm and the reframing of extant images, ideas, sensibilities, etc.

MICHAEL SAPPOL
04-13-2010 15:39:38
Dear Suzanne:
If Arthur Danto is correct, and this is a period of "historical entropy", then the old linear narrative of evolutionary progress in art, no longer persuades, and this is the period to end periodization.

I was not even remotely suggesting that there was an "evolutionary mandated direction for art", but rather that artists in their work, manifestoes, critical commentaries, and performances in the role of artist, were participating in the construction of, and mobilizing, narratives of evolutionary progress in art.

My not very theorized intuition tells me that many artists and many of us in this discussion are--in the age of lateral transfer, proliferative cladistics, neuro-science, molecular biology, genetic engineering, etc.--also participating in and mobilizing evolutionary narratives--but not the same ones as were mobilized in abstract expressionism and modernist architecture.

DAVID HAUSSLER

04-13-2010 18:25:22
Concerning ever-greater richness, while complexity is difficult to define, under most definitions it appears that our universe is more complex now than it was moments after the big bang, and that this greater complexity has accumulated steadily. In life on earth, the progression is not from bacteria to animals, but from the simpler common ancestors to the complex world of modern bacteria, animals and other contemporary life forms and ecosystems. Today's bacterial communities are complex, as Christina correctly points out, and this is consistent with progression toward ever-greater richness. I see this progression in my work every day as I sift through genomes of different species and study the historical record of new genetic innovations they contain, one built on top of another through the eons. This observation of nature is not merely a contemporary social construct. That human culture is both a product of this mysterious process and a profound contributor to it through art and science I find to be a cause for celebration.

BRANDON BALLENGEE:
04-13-2010 20:53:01
Scientific ideas have always functioned within the cultural realm. The ancient artists of Lascaux certainly had a systematic knowledge of animal anatomy and even behavior gained through observation in order to create such accurate depictions. Likewise, artists and scientists have always been inspired by nature and living systems. Numerous hybrid artist-scientists are found throughout Western History. In our time, Suzanne mentioned the "Process and Metaprocess" exhibition involving artist’s working with living organisms. Interest and utilization of life-forms and living systems as artistic material itself beyond depiction has been a growing stable in arts practice since the 1960s’s. A basic understanding of scientific knowledge is required to maintain living material in artificial conditions (e.g. Museums, Galleries, studios). Likewise a knowing of plant and animal husbandry is inherent to sustaining an arts practice involving living systems.

Much of the Ecological arts practice over the past four decades has sought to share understanding of living systems with a larger non-specialist audience (For review see Spaid ‘EcoVentions’ 2002). Here there is a history of artists directly implementing ‘scientific ideas’ into their practice, even making scientific ‘discoveries’ along the way. For example the ‘Lagoon Cycle’ pieces by Helen and Newton Harrison http://www.theharrisonstudio.net/lagoon_cycle.html

, whereby the artist team developed an aqua-culturing technique for rearing Sri Lankan crabs in artificial habitats. This began as artist inquiry into a subject, along the way relationships with the animals formed increasing the artists’ knowledge of the arthropod behavior and inspiring the artists processes. Poetic narratives were created, drawings, photographs, collages were generated to make a kind of ‘journal’ of the multi-year project. The Harrison’s presented ‘Lagoon Cycle’ (even the breeding tanks and live crabs) at art venues, sharing their acquired knowledge with a larger audience and breeding methodologies were shared with the scientific community.

Many practitioners in today’s BioArt field by necessity have a high-level of understanding of biological sciences, techniques and methodologies. A fundamental difference is that professional biologists typically have a background of training for perceiving living systems through a focalized viewpoint and rationalism that is fundamental to this approach. Whereby generally arts education (would be nice to hear Suzanne’s opinion here) are sensory-based investigating by looking, hearing, touching---experientially- the approach is different as is the perspective. In current art and science collaboration (and cooperation) potential new models for understanding and influence are emerging though, Jonah Lehrer refers to this as the “Fourth Culture” even suggesting works of art may inspire future science experiments inspiring more art, etc. to etc! http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/02/the_fourth_culture.php

My own work with amphibians falls into a transdisciplinary approach. This way of working involves both the utilization of artistic and scientific techniques. There is a constant mental feedback loop for me between the art making and scientific inquiry- neither could happen without the other. The art is an expression derived from the experience with animals in nature or even artificial conditions. Scientific methods and standards are rigorously followed while conducting primary research biological studies and question are answered through experimentation. The creation happens from the seemingly divergent techniques informing one another. I can achieve a better understanding of natural phenomenon and organisms in nature through scientific techniques, thus further substantiating my art about these organisms. Although my field trip and much of lab work is open for public participation, the physical artworks (such a photographic prints) can carry knowledge to a wider lay audience. This dualistic practice has continued throughout my professional career.

http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/detail/thecaseofthedevianttoad/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8116000/8116692.stm

Another thought…One potential danger that arises from the utilization of scientific ideas in art is the work falling into pure science communication or mono-interpretative illustration. Though art can deliver messages and share knowledge, being open to interpretation is fundamental. Although, an important social function to both EcoArt and BioArt is the creation of public discourse around often complex ‘real-world’ subject matters. Art historian Lucy Lippard calls this ‘Framing’ of environmental and other issues and delivery to the realm of the public. Proximate to our discussion is Eduardo’s glowing green bunny, which worked to captivate hundreds of thousands of people through reproductions in newspapers around the world. Here the artist became provocateur, even if not inventor, that relayed biotech reality to people’s everyday lives. The photographs were experienced- so the readings were open-ended- the ensuing discussions, debates and overall reactions demonstrate a value of artistic images beyond didacticism.

ASSIMINA KANIARI:

04-14-2010 04:06:45
To add another footnote to Michael's and Suzanne's discussion on evolution, revolution and entropy, the word entropy as a descriptive tool for art is historiographically significant as it ties to post 50s attempts to rethink new forms of art derived from experiementation as art historically significant categories. Arneheim's work Art and Entropy is an example in this direction and it is also important that Arnheim references and is linked to L.L. Whyte physicist and 'art theorists' and his writings on science's own turn to complex phenomena which should, he advises, also inform art education. Whyte was involved in the Journal Leonardo as well in which a few things became published but in which he was a significant point of reference.

To say also that one of the earlier incidents in transfers of evolutionary ideas from the domain of 'nature' into art, Pitt River's excercises in classification, to some extent intact in the displays of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, mobilized, and I like this word Michael uses, this very rhetoric of evolution, as manifest via the re-ordering of things and material things rather than natural specimens, as revolution. The rhetoric of progress that invested much of the social aspirations that Victorian science was seen to possess has been discussd by many authors and it is one that to some extent might seen to inform current discourses on science's impact on culture. In this respect Danto's entropy is a break, historiographic, if not actual.

BARBARA CREED
04-14-2010 07:59:31

I think Michael’s question about whether or not evolutionary ideas have influenced the succession of art movements is an important one. I am particularly interested in the degree to which ‘chance’ might have played a key role. I am also interested in the way artists represent chance in their art in the context of evolution. Groups such as the dadaists and surrealists certainly placed great emphasis on the part played by chance and randomness as distinct from the idea of purpose on their art works. Darwin of course placed great emphasis on the role of chance in evolution. To what extent has evolutionary theory placed a new emphasis on the important of chance in art and science? The artist Julie Rrap has drawn attention to this in her work, ‘Overstepping’ (2001) which offers an image of a woman’s legs whose heels have extended to form fleshy stilettos – they have literally evolved into high heels. Has this happened by chance? Or has this strange form of evolution taken place in response to sexual selection. If men find spiked heels so attractive, then it makes evolutionary sense for woman to grow her own pair of stilettos. Another Australian artist, Patricia Piccinini, who has acknowledged the influence of evolutionary ideas on her work, explores the vexed issue of created life-forms through her creation of a post-Darwinian bestiary. She believes that we have a responsibility to look after the creatures that we create now and in the future. In ‘The Young Family’ (2002-2003), she explores the issue of creating species through genetic engineering to farm human organs. A mother lies on her side feeding her litter of babies. She is both human and animal – a human body with a porcine face. Three of her babies suckle while a third rolls on its back looking adoringly up at its mother. The scene is somehow grotesque yet elicits a strong sympathetic response. Piccinini describes this as ‘human-assisted evolution’, and asks how does this differ from ‘natural evolution’? This is not the kind of evolution Darwin had in mind. There is room for chance to play a part here, which is one of the reason why the scenario is also quite chilling.

Julie Rrap, ‘Overstepping’ (2001), digital print.

Patricia Piccinini, ‘The Young Family’ (2002), silicone, polyurethane, human hair, leather, plywood.

ASSIMINA KANIARI

04-14-2010 09:24:42

Barbara is right, chance played an important part in the making but also re-presentation of surrealist hybrids in the context of surrealists' own discourses. The use of chance associations at times referenced earlier forms of literary based games such as the cavadre exquis but assumed a viewer who could not be possible in the pre-Freudian world and notions of visual evidence that in the example of found objects drew heavily on the imagery but also rhetoric as Breton's own writings show of natural facts.

On another point, I think Art History had its own internal share of controversy with regard to the acceptance or not and its precise form as a means of expanation of evolutionary narrative and one such instance is the Kubler-Ackermann controversy over 'style' of the late 60s, quite appropriately for the art and science context of the discussion, witn regard to Thomas Kuhn's work and his new take on historical time and periodisation in the Structures.

MARCEL CHOTKOWSKI LAFOLLETTE:
04-14-2010 17:08:08
Brandon’s remarks earlier about the “new models for understanding and influence” in art and science “collaboration (and cooperation)” and his description of “seemingly divergent techniques informing one another” offer powerful images to fold into our final discussions. Added to Suzanne’s comment that artists produce both “subjective and inter-subjective propositions in relation to the way they see the world,” Brandon’s remark that “being open to interpretation” is fundamental to his work demonstrates the essential creative role played by intellectual receptivity in the arts, science, and humanities.

Similar openness applies (or should apply) to history. We follow evidence, confirm, triangulate, reconfirm, but should always remain open to regarding an accepted narrative as re-interpretable … or reframable, as I have said in my work on John Thomas Scopes, who turns out to be a far more complex character in the anti-evolution fight than historians had assumed. If I had the skills of an artist or filmmaker, I might develop a new interactive biography of the man, with old versions and new evidence viewable through a prism (perhaps I should collaborate?), rather than follow the accepted academic style of either “accumulative” history or using Scopes like an ideological weapon (historian Gordon S. Wood has made this point much more eloquently in the April 2010 issue of the American Historical Association’s newsletter).

Each of us works, therefore, according to our discipline’s current standards, attempting to convey an “accurate” representation of whatever corner of the universe we study. Brandon, however, then added a provocative postscript about the “potential danger that arises” when scientific ideas are utilized within art yet perceived by audiences (or perhaps misrepresented by someone other than the artist?) as “pure science communication or mono-interpretative illustration.” Here is where the issue of perceived accuracy (as opposed to internalized standards) becomes so important, because within our disciplines and specialties we too often speak primarily to our peers, and many of us do not always convey clearly the standards that inform our work (I believe this is something that several people have now mentioned in the final group of posts). We do not always emphasize to outsiders the extent to which we continually re-evaluate standards (it seems so wishy-washy to be re-considering and re-evaluating…so much more comforting to appear sure of ourselves). Acknowledging science’s own deep receptivity to change is an essential step for improving public understanding of the larger political and social debate that has long dogged the study and teaching of evolution, just as it is in writing the narrative of that debate or capturing its complexity within a piece of art.

TODD SILER:

04-15-2010 15:52:17
Christina, your observations here makes so much sense to me: ‘It’s very hard to separate science from culture; how we look at the data, what we see or don’t see, is strongly influenced by culture/belief/training. The history of science shows this so well. It is equally difficult to separate culture from science, at least in our current scientific age,’ as you’ve said.

I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on how the current culture of science, or today’s “science culture,” still describes and models its conceptions of natural systems using idealized, classical [Euclidean] geometry rather than Fractals—specifically, statistically self-similar structures—that more closely represent a realistic, or true-to-life, geometry of nature. (I’ve included a few visual aids here to highlight what I’m trying to say as clearly as I can with my clumsy words.) Anyway, I think this antiquated conceptualization of nature continues to create some significant problems in the way we see, understand, represent, and contribute to the design of material systems (physical, biological, technological, etc.). Invariably, this problem of perception tends to influence the way we think about the relationship between all of our binary, complementary concepts, such as “simplicity / complexity,” “order / chaos,” “predictability / unpredictability,” “generalization / specialization,” and so forth.

I don’t want to assume that everyone reading this post knows what Fractals are, so I’ll just add this quick definitional note: “A fractal is generally ‘a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is, at least approximately, a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured." A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion.’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal ; For further reading: Benoit B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. (W.H. Freeman and Company, 1982) ; John Briggs, Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos. (Thames and Hudson, 1982); and WolframResearch & webMathematica3 ( http://www.wolfram.com/).

To return to my point: Consider our “Artist/Scientist Conceptions” of viruses. The way these visualizations are drawn, you may be inclined to see-n-believe [as many people do] that they’re pretty “simple” looking things. Surely, their elegant simplicity must be one reason why they’ve been so successful since the beginning of life on Earth. But maybe we need to rethink our notions of simplicity altogether, beginning by using a different geometry of thought to help re-envision the complexity of this “process/structure,” which is anything but “simple.”

When you consider the fact that “we’ve only discovered over 2,000 species of viruses,” and that “the origins of viruses is unclear”—and, that the life cycle of viruses differs greatly between species but there are six basic stages in the life cycle of viruses” (Collier et al., 1998, pp. 75–91)--- it’s probably a good time to go back to the drawing board with our intuitions, open minds and new data to mine.

I won’t venture any further down this path at the moment, but I’m hoping this exchange will spark some other thoughts and insights into your question: ‘Why do we presume that evolution moves always toward greater complexity…’

Michael and Rick, could you please percolate on this, too... I'm curious to know if this arrow of thought is heading towards the right target...

A simplified diagram of the structure of a virus (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_viruses ; GrahamColmTalk )

Two rotaviruses: the one on the right is coated with antibodies that stop its attaching to cells and infecting them (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus)

4/11: Visual Culture Today

2010-04-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-11-2010 15:08:33

JD TALASEK
04-11-2010 15:08:33
Up until this point in the symposium we have looked at visual culture historically and asked the quesiton what was the intent of the artist? What was the impact? What was the context? Let us turn the same intense examination towards contemporary practices. On our panel we have a number of artists and illustrators. This is your time to shine! Please tell us about your practices and let's invite the scientists and cultural experts to respond and engage. In this thread we can also include visual culture in all of its manifestations including design and architecture to name only a few. How are thoughts of evolution manifested in visual culture today?

TRACY HICKS
04-12-2010 02:22:01
JD's prompting question deserves the best fully layered response I can provide ---including intent and context in contemporary terms correlated to the past week's historical grounding. But first as a way of grounding myself in the symposium I approached it as a visual project by making a series of animated studies from high resolution still images.

Described on the index page as:

Paralleling the Visual Culture and Evolution Symposium over the past week I have created and collected these few webpages, words, and thousands of images shaped into animations all correlating the collective symposium thoughts with collecting, collection, human body, landscape, scientific glassware, a glass box-like vessel and frog bodies - while continually filtering the collected imagery for visual signs of interpreting evolution to reinterpret.

http://www.tracyhicks.com/visevol.htm

ELLEN LEVY
04-12-2010 05:38:16
In response to JD, I have included a selection of works from an exhibition called evolutionn that took place at the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University (CT) and Steinberg Fine Art (NYC) in 2005-6. In these works (spilled oil, acrylic over digital prints) I reflected on the (unsuccessful) attempt to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil-spill with genetically-engineered bacteria. Some of the forms have been ‘mutated’ with a cellular automata program, and other areas incorporate photographic images of bacteria I and others had grown in a microbiology lab. They are printed over selections from patents, including Chakrabarty’s landmark 1980 bio patent.

http://www.complexityart.com/

TRACY HICKS:

04-12-2010 11:29:40
The large end of the funnel, manifesting artist driven ideas on evolution is as gigantic as the number of artists striving to question their work. So the volume of original art work on evolution varies from the obvious and overt to lost in the process. The art process itself evolves through natural selection. Some adaption works and is repeated to become part of a new generation of work.

The academic and science communities NAS has gathered here provide the most significant stage I have found for visual artists to create and present their work and ideas on evolution. So this network represents the small end of the funnel.

To a major degree Visual Art today has been hijacked by an art gallery market driven by the economy to produce safe products for consumers. So to define or even find evolution manifest in visual culture outside the academic community requires some judicial searching.

This vast sea of artists generally try, but do not fit into the gallery market resulting in an alternative network of artist driven exhibition spaces where evolution is addressed from all perspectives. By their egalitarian nature, these alternative spaces show a full spectrum of socially relevant visual art.

Visual art and artists mirror evolution in ways science cannot. As an example, a scientist's work is validated when another scientist can replicate the original science. Art looses validity when replicated.

GUNALAN NADARAJAN
04-12-2010 11:52:25
To set us off on a slightly different path to thinking about evolution as it figures in contemporary visual culture, I would like to suggest that we explore the evolutionary logic embedded and sometimes explicitly articulated by artistic and scientific explorations in bio-machinic interactions. There are a rich array of artistic works that could be cited to exemplify this including, most prominently, that of the artist, Stelarc who explicitly articulated his embodied interactions with and integrations of the machinic as attempts to both announce and go beyond the 'obsolete body'.

However, in the interest of getting us to focus on a different set of questions about evolution, I would like to propose that we discuss works that seek to enact associations between the biological and machinic so as to rethink and expand the mutability of both while signaling evolutionary continuities between them.

One important trend in such investigations are those that explore plant - machine interactions. A key reference point for such explorations has been and continues the idea of plant movement which itself was measured and studied by Darwin in his book, The Power of Movement in Plants (1880). While the scientific study of plant movement and irritability through the careful measurement of their electric potential began in the late 19th century with the work of Jagadis Chandra Bose, it was not until the controversial work of Cleve Backster in the 1960s using lie-detectors to record plant galvanic responses to a variety of cues and the popularity of the Bird and Tompkins book, The Secret Life of Plants (1973) that artistic investigations of plant sensitivity began. The work of Richard Lowenberg and Tom Zahuranec in 1972 on plant music using galvanic skin responses of plants are particularly noteworthy pioneers. The peculiarly evolutionary aspects of this sensitivity was explored, I would suggest, with Eduardo Kac's 1994 work, 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding'. In this work a plant and canary were in remote dialogue through the internet where the canary's singing formed the cues for a plant's responses that were measured by an brain wave analyser and sent to the canary. I would suggest that Kac's work was exploring the possibility and emergence of cross-species communication systems. Another body of works worth considering in this discussion, is Masaki Fujihata's Orchisoid (2001) where he had created a plant-robot that used EEG recordings of plants to drive the robot. The notion of the 'Orchisoid' - this plant-robot - clearly suggesting the emergence of a new species of sorts.

JD TALASEK
04-12-2010 11:52:32
I’m intrigued with Tracy’s process. He is a collector and spends a great deal of time moving objects around, observing and making connections. The process of photographing objects and using them to create videos is an allusion to a naturalist’s proces of journaling - a process of discovery using the visual. I’m reminded of the debate that occurred between Stephen Jay Gould and Rosamond Purcell at MICA, one of the last times that Gould spoke in public before his death. Gould argued that an object/artifact without a label had no meaning. Purcell argued that there is visual meaning as well and that this can lead discovery. I think Tracy’s work reflects the truth in what Purcell argued. As an artist, Tracy is able to make and present discoveries that are personal and fantastical in nature if he desires, a luxury that he might not enjoy fully if he wore the hat of a scientist.

Tracy recently received notice that he will be the recipient of the Smithsonian’s fellowship program in 2010. As artist-in-residence he will be able to access a broad range of the museums many collections. This is an interesting point within the context of a discussion on collaboration because this program was designed as part of the Smithsonian’s overall strategic plan to find creative and effective ways to build bridges between the various collections. This applies not only to public exhibitions within the many museums within the Smithsonian complex but also for the curators who work in collections that are often located right across the street from each other but seldom know what is happening in the other “silo.” The artist acts a conduit of information between curators. In the same vein, I will mention that the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum has formed an advisory panel to begin incorporating art exhibits within the museum’s building. One only needs to look at the work of Bergit Arends, the full time art curator at the Museum of Natural History, London to see how effective this type of program can be.

MICHAEL SAPPOL:
04-12-2010 12:15:39
The works of art are richly imaginative, evocative and even critical (in the theoretical sense). But I wonder if we could broaden the discussion. As we all agreed, visual culture is more than just "art". In what ways does current evolutionary theory (after the population biology, molecular biology, and ecological turns)--and also older evolutionary ideas about adaptation, mutation, deep time, etc.--structure, influence, provide discursive logic for, other, "non-art" (or non-high-art) visual productions in our world today. I'm thinking about things such as product design, cuisine, advertisements, gardening, fashion, magazine and newspaper art, vernacular motion pictures (Avatar) and television shows (Survivor, Lost, forensic procedurals, etc.), video games.

TRACY HICKS:
04-12-2010 12:58:19
You are right to broaden the topic, Michael, and I hope to see a wide discussion on this Visual Culture Today thread. But I would be amiss not pointing out that visual art is a physical manifestation of Visual Culture that condenses and presents the other "things" you suggest we discuss.

GUNALAN NADARAJAN

04-12-2010 15:26:52
To follow Michael's call to expand the notion of visual culture to other objects and experiences as well as to maintain and extend the connection to my previous point about plant-machine interactions indicating interesting trajectories in evolution, I would like to point to three examples of 'techno-botanical' products:

- Click and Grow - http://www.gizmag.com/click-and-grow-pots/14274/ - which enacts a plant machine interaction to enable the plant to 'proactively' (obviously raising questions of 'intentionality') and dynamically support its nutritive needs by machinic capacities it is connected to.

- Digital Pot - http://www.gizmag.com/digital-pot-turns-your-plants-into-pets/9399/ - that seeks to make evolve a pet out of a potted plant by providing the plant with a sign system that makes sense to and engages humans.

- Botanicalls - www.botanicalls.com - a device that enables your potted plants to make its nutritive needs known by calling you on the phone when necessary.

While these might seem like rather trivial gadgets and gizmos, it is useful to remind ourselves such quirky products signal anomalies in our cultural and scientific reckoning with plants.

MICHAEL SAPPOL:
04-12-2010 17:43:02
Re Gunalan's post on techno-botanicals (quoting Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy): "!!?!?!!"
(Seriously, nice to see these "gizmos" produced as examples of visual culture. But I wonder if we're not straying from the agenda. In what ways are these "evolutionary"? Or, as I argued in a previous post, is evolutionary discourse (broadly conceived) now so vast as to encompass nearly every performatively innovative human production?)

SUZANNE ANKER

04-12-2010 18:25:14
Dear Gunalan and Michael,
Here's another "techno-botanical" for you. It's a piece that I fabricated from repurposed housewares and LED lights. It was a project exhibited in an exhibition at Exit Art in NYC, entitled "Corpus Extremus+." Many of the usual "bio" artists also participated in show, including our colleague Paul Vanouse. My mission was to grow vegetables in the gallery by using red and blue LED lights. The harvest was green, green beans in fact, appearing , however, in hues of fuschia. As an homage to NASA, and the practice of Astroculture, I think every home should have one. So much for a green revolution.

GUNALAN NADARAJAN
04-12-2010 19:16:13
Re Michael's incredulity as to the connection between the techno-botanical gadgets and evolutionary theory, my point was to see these in connection to the discourses that see bio-machinic hybrids as constituting emergent and/or evolutionary developments, I referred to in my earlier post. I do not think there was any suggestion that any innovative creation constitutes evolutionary discourse, but hybrids that purport to enhance the capacities of biological entities and machines by their mutation do indeed draw on the tropes of evolution.

BARBARA LARSON
04-12-2010 20:02:15
Hello Gunalan,

I wanted to give some historical background on plant senstitivity and art. The Symbolist Redon created fantastic and melancholy plant-humans inspired by the work of the botanist Armand Clavaud who sought sensate plants that could be connected to the animal kingdom (in the search for origins). This work in plant physiology entered literature as well as in Michelet's La montagne (1868) in which he writes poetically about a type of algae that "becomes man" through "love" (reproduction, some forms of algae having sperm and ova) for several hours a day under the effects of light. Scientific research on plant sensitivity drew on many things--animal and plant protoplasm/sarcode being found to be similar, plants and animals now being found to have similarities in respiratory and metabolic systems, etc. There is a chapter in my Redon book that deals with this. The contemporary model of the brain by Ribot traced evoution of the mind to plants where parallels were drawn between tropism in plants and reflexes of the spine and lower brain stem. This too was influential.

Art nouveau artists were profoundly influenced by ideas of plant senstivity and energies , especially in the "whiplash" forms. (See the Horta in a past post). Surrealists made use of plants like the venus fly trap, at least in one case installing them in an exhibition.

CATHERINE CHALMERS:

04-13-2010 17:10:20
J.D. emailed kindly asking me to contribute something to the dialogue. At such a high level of discourse I’m not sure I have anything intelligent enough to add.

So instead, I will contribute a few images from my current project with leaf cutter ants (Atta colombica). I just returned from six weeks in Costa Rica lying on my belly filming and photographing. This is my third trip. If there is a relationship to science in what I’m doing, it is perhaps that the poor field biologist is also sweating it out on the jungle floor being bitten by their subject (and being pooped on by the howler monkeys).

The colony I was filming was attacked by its larger neighbor. Isn’t that always the way? My team lost, but in the meantime I did manage to get some pictures of the mini-gladiators locked in epic battle.

CATHERINE CHALMERS, Ant wars

TRACY HICKS:

04-14-2010 15:01:47

I am delighted to follow Catherine's kindred spirit post. Sweaty field work is where all this collection of thought originates. Her images are intensely exhilarating. Plus we were both in the exhibition I'll describe below.

JD's observations on my work are appreciated of course but astutely he made the connection with Steven Jay Gould and Rosamond Purcell whose individual and collective works are deeply influential to the current of art science merge. Their book Crossing Over in particular affected me.

In the Visual Culture Today concept I will describe an exhibition installation project In Dayton Ohio Nov 2009 through Jan 2001 I had the honor of participating in, Benjamin Montague curated an exhibition titled Reflections on Darwin an hours drive north of the Creationist Museum. My contribution to the well rounded exhibition was an installation presenting a collection of artifacts collected specifically for the installation. All the artifacts were catalogued and presented on a two story tall scaffolding allowing viewers to interact with the scale of presented collection. The title for the installation. On the Scaffolding of Collecting obviously alludes to Darwin's publication but also to collecting and interpreting from real objects. The visual signs of life we often choose to step over and dismiss.

From here, like Catherine, I'll let the images speak:

4/11: Back to the present: artist/scientist collaboration

2010-04-11T03:55:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-12-2010 20:16:11

KEVIN FINNERAN
04-10-2010 23:28:16
When I realized that at some point today we were talking more or less simultaneously about eugenics, Carmen Miranda's head gear, and the triple jump, I had to ask what type of incompetent is moderating this intellectual mayhem. Apparently a fortunate incompetent because--thanks to the erudition and imagination of the participants--beneath the superficial incoherence is a rich and fascinating discussion, a jazz improvisation that no moderator/conductor could possibly have conceived.

So I will continue with minimalist moderation. We are moving into our third major section, and we are now ready to talk about what is happening now and what we expect to see next. I expect to hear from a significant number of panelists who have been observing the historical discussion from the sidelines and are now ready to get in the game. There is no end to the number of directions this could take, but to provide some shape to the discussion at the beginning, let's start with what is happening with collaborations between scientists and artists.

DAVID EDWARDS
04-11-2010 06:10:46
Sorry I am just now joining the conversation. I returned this morning - to the subject of the discussion - from Bahrain. Near the end of 2012 a new cultural center opens in Saudi Arabia, near Bahrain, called Ithra. Supported by Aramco and the Saudi King, it will hold the country's first cinema, first public theater, museums, and a catalyst for innovation called Keystone. It is, to add to the singularity, led by a Saudi team that is mostly female, a stunning site - a first YouTube video is available, some images of the design - and an ambition grounded in propagating ideas of tolerance and cultural exchange. All this to say that it is going to be a new opportunity for artist and scientist collaboration with cultural ramifications that are hard to guess at. I met yesterday with a team of young Saudis, the ones behind the making of the YouTube videos that will be increasingly appearing. The conversation was not so much around art and science as around ideas, around the future, around connecting their country freshly to new places It seems artists and scientists can go - creatively speaking - together where neither can easily go alone, find unique and common ground creating questions that require unconventional thinking, and this makes artist and scientist collaboration as relevant to addressing issues of a bioengineered future as issues of a new Middle East. All this is clearly an experiment - the evening conversations over the last week in Bahrain were characteristically dreamy - but so is what is happening in at newly emerged art and design centers, where creation is happening at frontiers of science, a cultural phenomenon that is gaining force. An experiment obviously engaged with the broader experiment of contemporary times.

ELLEN LEVY

04-11-2010 08:15:05
David’s comments about new opportunities for artist and scientist collaborations in Saudi Arabia being ‘as relevant to addressing issues of a bioengineered future as issues of a new Middle East’ are of great interest. Some of unintended consequences of our technological/cultural evolution are unfortunately entrenched. For example, it is hard to share Freeman Dyson’s optimistic belief that within the relatively brief period of 20-50 years we will have solved a major environmental problem by genetically engineering carbon-eating trees. As another example, corporate ownership of the BRAC gene (now being legally contested) makes medical testing only possible for the wealthy. It stems from the Chakrabarty patent (genetically-engineered oil-eating bacteria), which has enabled the ownership of life forms since 1980. On the positive side, to counter these developments and inequities, we are seeing a renewed emphasis in education and in art practice on remediation, eco-activism, and responsive innovation with the aims of heightening environmental awareness and fostering change. And many of these practices support art and science collaborations (e.g., Artists in Labs program) or the involvement of non-scientists (e.g., Citizen Science) as being central to success.

JAY HOSLER
04-11-2010 09:04:18
I was very happy to hear Kac recognize cartoons and cartooning as an important visual art. Obviously, cartoonist have been incorporating ideas about evolution for social commentary since the publication of Darwin’s Origin and have had a significant effect of public understanding and perception (see J Browne - Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2001). Done correctly, they are terrific agents for what Matt Ridley has called “wonderstanding.”

Comics are terrific ways to engage and excite readers about science and evolution (we’ve actually demonstrated this experimentally in our lab). Larry Gonick lead the way with his Cartoon Guide series and Gary Larson frequently inserted evolutionary ideas in his Far Side cartoons. There are lots of interesting collaborations between scientists and cartoonists. Jim Ottaviani, a science librarian with a Masters in physics, has collaborated with several cartoonists (including myself) to tell graphic stories of about scientists (see his Bone Sharps, Cow-Boys and Thunder Lizards for a story about dinosaur artists Charles Knight). Biopsychologist Paul Aleixo has collaborated with artist Murray Baillon to make a cartoon biopsych text book. Felice Frankel has developed an NSF-funded program called Picturing to Learn, part of which involves scientists and college students collaborating on comics designed to explain science to high school students.

I have worked in three different capacities: 1) as the writer/cartoonist I have made five science graphic novels including a comic book text book on the evolution of the eye and a story about Darwin, 2) as an artists collaborating with a scientist, most recently illustrating May Berenbaum’s excellent Earwig’s Tail and 3) as the biologist writer working with cartoonists and a book about Evolution for Hill and Wang. Each has its challenges and those may be interesting to discuss in future posts along with why evolution can be tough to capture visually.

MAY BERENBAUM
04-11-2010 09:39:55
It's interesting that cartoons have come up in discussions of evolution. Evolution seems to hold a special fascination for animators. this may result from the fact that change is essential both to evolution and animation. Evolution results from small changes over time and, similarly, animators create sequential images, each of which is slightly different from the previous one. Also appealing is the fact that animators are limited only by their own imaginations and, more so than other types of filmmakers, can take on the challenge of visualizing almost anything, from moving breathing extinct life forms to geological processes that take millions of years. Perhaps the best example is Bruno Bozzetto's Allegro Non Troppo, a spoof of Disney's Fantasia that depicts the fate of a Coca Cola bottle discarded by a careless astronaut as it evolves...

With respect to "Fantasia," which depicts the evolution of life, the Disney studio touted that scientistswere consulted on the making of the film and in fact the printed program for the film stated “In picturing a primitive world Disney has let science write the scenario. Such world famous authorities as Roy Chapman Andrews [an explorer and naturalist who was director of the AMNH in New York 1935-42], Julian Huxley, Barnum Brown [an eminent paleontologist who discovered the first complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in 1902], and Edwin P. Hubbell [the astronomer who advanced the theory of an expanding universe] volunteered helpful data and became enthusiastic followers of the picture’s progress.” This claim of scientific input, however, was disputed later by some of the filmmakers, claiming instead that the principal input for the film was content from illustrated booklets illustrated by Charles Robert Knight for the Union Oil Company...

JAY HOSLER
04-11-2010 10:03:25
That is a very interesting insight about the gradualism or evolution and animation. It reminded me of how profoundly I was influenced by a segment from Carl Sagan's Cosmos in which we see the steady morphing of animal forms as we move through evolutionary time. I can even recall Sagan pointing out lines that didn't lead to us. I was dumbstruck and thrilled as an 9th grader in biology to see the elegant transitions between the line drawings of similar body plans.

Ah! I found the clip on YouTube for those interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV3Xa3jPxsg

MAY BERENBAUM

04-11-2010 10:28:44
Morphing is a powerful visualization of evolution and animators have used it to great effect. Faith Hubley's 1977 animated short "Enter Life" compresses four billion years of evolution into six minutes. This film was actually the result of artist/scientist collaboration; it was produced in partnership with the US National Museum of Natural History and Kenneth Towe from the Smithsonian was an advisor...

Following Jay's lead, I, too, went looking on YouTube and found the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HXOgqmRcyQ

MICHAEL SAPPOL

04-11-2010 12:45:44
My sense, in the present moment is, notwithstanding the contrarian resurgence of creationism, that evolutionary discourse, evolutionary assumptions, are the air we breathe. Or to use another metaphor, the vocabulary and grammar within which we experience the material and social world. Competition, radiation succession, ecological niches, random variation, selection, catastrophism, extinction, and especially proliferation.

We are now in proliferative moment. Evolutionary discourse explains, provides a logic for, an understanding of the proliferation of life forms, and also a structure of feeling that converges with the proliferation of objects in "late capitalism", "postmodernity", whatever you want to call it. Even as the accelerating proliferation of persons, objects, ideas, technologies, categories, disciplines, transactions surpasses human understanding and control. And in this moment the linearity -- and progressivity -- of the old-fashioned evolutionary sequence looks quaint, inadequate, laughable. Which is precisely the charm of this little video animation, which shows the evolution of Homer Simpson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faRlFsYmkeY

DAVID YAGER
04-11-2010 13:37:05
Can I move this discussion in different directions? I think we are talking about some of the tools and techniques artist and scientist share, but what interests me is the content of the work and how that work is developed. Artists have engaged in many strategies that focus on the use of scientific information, imagery, equipment, and stories to contribute to their content. Certainly this applies not only to Eduardo’s work, but many contemporary artists who have used other strategies in applying and/or responding to scientific information.

Artists have responded to current and important data such as air pollution, energy, water pollution, as well as past scientific information—any of which might be proven incorrect over time. Artists can create work that uses scientific information that may point to a new moral compass, a different direction of thinking, engage a different audience in the debate, or discuss how information may be accessed in many new ways.

It is always interesting to take a look back at those things we thought were the empirical scientific thoughts of the day and how we view them, now. Did artists participate in any visual dialogue relative to the research, i.e., to frame or interpret the development of decisions for the public, or in any way influence the conclusions the public reached?

JAY HOSLER:
04-11-2010 13:44:45
JD suggested I post some artwork and my massive ego is more than happy to oblige. I thought I would do so in the context of what I see as challenges in visualizing the process of evolution in comics.

First, representing the process of evolution presents the narrative challenge of a story that takes place over millions or billions of years. Second, this million-year epic occurs at the population level. Since individuals don’t evolve this can make it tough to focus on a single central character. Third, if you do have a protagonist, you run the risk of creating a false sense of evolutionary good guys and bad guys as well as falling into the physiognomist’s pitfall of exaggerating their anatomy to underscore their narrative status. Finally, there is the problem of presenting the process as a teleological March of Progress. I have wrestled with these ideas in a number of ways

In the Sandwalk Adventures, Charles Darwin and has a conversation with two follicle mites living in his left eyebrow. I used the image below to address the idea of evolutionary teleology (I hope its below). In it we see Darwin getting up after tripping and re-enacting the classic March of Progress while at the same time his dialogue is explaining why this is not the way evolution works.

In Optical Allusions, I have the central character (Wrinkles the Wonder Brain) experience the evolution of eyes in real time. I used what James Kakalios in his book The Physics of Super-Heroes called the “miracle exception.” In this case, the miracle is that Wrinkles was traveling through a magical brew of human imagination where he did not age. In this story, Darwin demonstrates how an eye could evolve rapidly under predatory pressure. I made use of the computer modeling of eye evolution done by Nilsson and Pelger. You can download a pdf of the story here: www.jayhosler.com/nasoasample.pdf

DANIEL GLASER
04-11-2010 14:20:12
I was really pleased to see Michael referring to the Homer Simpson evolution video since it and the famous Guinness ad were both inspirations for the Tree of Life David Attenborough animation we commissioned last year http://www.wellcometreeoflife.org/

Our intention was to generate an enduring visual expression of an aspect of evolution but to release the code and the graphic under an open source license to enable mashups.

ROGER MALINA
04-11-2010 15:43:41
OK, first let me give a plug for a new art science residency program we have set up here

in Marseille at IMERA, Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies:

http://www.imera.fr/index.php/en.html

As an example artist Rachel Mayeri is arriving this week and will be working with the Primatology Lab here and also neurobiologists

http://www.imera.fr/index.php/en/component/content/article/109.html

IMERA provides research residencies for artists who want to work with local scientists , or for physical scientists who want to work with social scientists etc

let me give a second plug more relevant to our discussion here:

Leonardo Books just published the book by George Gessert that looks at many of the current art-science work in biology:
http://www.leonardo.info/isast/leobooks/books/gessert.html

Green Light: Toward an Art of Evolution

by George Gessert

Humans have bred plants and animals with an eye to aesthetics for centuries: flowers are selected for colorful blossoms or luxuriant foliage; racehorses are bred for the elegance of their frames. Hybridized plants were first exhibited as fine art in 1936, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed Edward Steichen's hybrid delphiniums. Since then, bio art has become a genre; artists work with a variety of living things, including plants, animals, bacteria, slime molds, and fungi. Many commentators have addressed the social and political concerns raised by making art out of living material. In Green Light, however, George Gessert examines the role that aesthetic perception has played in bio art and other interventions in evolution.

at the forthcoming conference on Arts, Humanities and Complex Networks

http://artshumanities.netsci2010.net/

two artists, jane Prophet and also Anna Dumitriu working with contemporary biology will present:
Jane Prophet:

CELL was an interdisciplinary collaboration exploring the ways that research into adult stem cells re-addresses the complexity of human biology. As part of the collaboration, medical scientist Dr Neil Theise, a researcher in adult stem cells, based in New York, worked with artist Jane Prophet, mathematician Mark d’Inverno, computer scientist Rob Saunders and curator Peter Ride. One aim was visualise newand contentious theories of stem cell behaviour, and to feed these visualisations back into scientific research. Another was to generate a range of artistic outcomes that are under-pinned by the emerging understanding of cellular activity.
and

Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0

Authors:
Anna Dumitriu – University of Brighton< annadumitriu@hotmail.com>
Dr Blay Whitby – University of Sussex blayw@sussex.ac.uk
“Life did not take over the globe by combat but by networking” (Margulis, 1997)

The transdisciplinary art project Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0 brings together an artist, a
philosopher, a microbiologist, an artificial life programmer and an interactive media
specialist, to investigate the relationship of the emerging science of bacterial
communication to our own digital communications networks, looking in particular at
‘packet data’ and bacterial quorum sensing.
Incidentally, network theory is introducing new ideas into the theory of evolution, for instance:

http://complex.upf.es/~ricard/INFONETS.pdf

Information Theory of Complex Networks:

on evolution and architectural constraints
Ricard V. Sol´e1, 2 and Sergi Valverde1
1ICREA-Complex Systems Lab, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (GRIB), Dr Aiguader 80, 08003 Barcelona,
Spain
2Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe NM 87501, USA

Complex networks are characterized by highly heterogeneous distributions of links, often pervading the presence of key properties such as robustness under node removal. Several correlation measures have been defined in order to characterize the structure of these nets. Here we show that mutual information, noise and joint entropies can be properly defined on a static graph. These measures are computed for a number of real networks and analytically estimated for some simple standard models. It is shown that real networks are clustered in a well-defined domain of the entropynoise space. By using simulated annealing optimization, it is shown that optimally heterogeneous nets actually cluster around the same narrow domain, suggesting that strong constraints actually operate on the possible universe of complex networks. The evolutionary implications are discussed.

They conclude:
Such a constrained set of possibilities fits very well the view of evolution as strongly dominated by intrinsic constraints (Jacob, 1976; Alberch, 1989; Kauffman, 1993; Goodwin, 1994; see also Gould, 2003 for a critical discussion). Under this view, the outcome of evolutionary searches would be not any possible architecture from the set of possible patterns but a choice from a narrow subset of attainable structures. In this context, in spite of the contingencies intrinsic to evolutionary dynamics and history, the same basic repertoire of architectural motifs would be observable if the tape of evolution were rewound and played again (and this includes the evolution of technology).

Although monsters are in principle possible (figure 10) they are unlikely to occur (the software graph shown in figure 8b would be an example). The surprising convergence of complex networks towards heterogeneous, scale-free graphs.

they show a figure of possible monsters:
FIG. 10 The logic of monsters. Mythological creatures, gargoles and other imaginary creatures define a
parallel universe of structures that are often mixtures of real creatures. Although possible in principle,

they are not observed in nature:
http://complex.upf.es/~ricard/INFONETS.pdf

a number of artists have been exploring such ideas in the field of artifical life

JD TALASEK
04-11-2010 16:42:14
I am glad to see Daniel's post about the Wellcome Trust's commissioning the Tree of Life animation. I hope that Daniel will talk more about their programs here in this context of collaboration as they really started the ball rolling on forming and supporting this type of work. The term Sci-Art is credited to them although the simple division is something I know that Ken Arnold has tried to move away from.

Daniel, what are other programs and events that have been developed specifically during this past year of Darwin celebrations? More specifically I’m curious as to what these collaborations look like and feel like? What are the challenges? Benefits?

PAUL VANOUSE

04-12-2010 01:54:29
Thanks JD for nudging me to contribute more and introduce my work. I’d like to begin by making a point that may be counter intuitive for some, but I think will shed some light on a lot of contemporary techno and biological art and also… prod discussion.

A few times in the discussion, the notion came up that artists working with science would naturally gravitate toward creating rich metaphors of evolution or related ideas to expand the scope of that imagined by scientists. This has certainly been one of the things that artists have historically done. However, I find my own practice doing just the opposite. My work has primarily functioned to expose metaphors that create false narratives—often created for commercial or ideological purposes.

To go back to an earlier example I’d posted, the term “DNA Fingerprinting” is a metaphor. It makes laypersons think of “Fingerprinting”, the proven practice of inking fingers and making identifications, that is fairly well trusted in the courtroom based on the understanding that our fingerprints are unique. When the inventor of that technology, Alec Jeffreys, points out that had he named it something different no one would have cared this is deeply problematic. The metaphor nicely covers the fact that DNA images are constructed in laboratories, using a myriad of techniques (primers, probes, enzymes, etc) and that unlike an actual fingerprint is in no way a direct impression of the body.

This is just one example of course. I became interested in such metaphors when making an educational show about the living cell in the early nineties. As an artist living in a post-modern era I was horrified by all the ways that the cell’s organelles had been described. For instance, how might the analogy of a cell to a factory be problematic in a factory town like Pittsburgh, in a Carnegie theater? Well, it would “naturalize” the notion of wage-labor, modern capitalism, etc. I want to be clear that my work isn’t anti-science any more than someone who a Century ago policed the slippery use of Evolution analogies by the Eugenicists, Social Darwinians, etc.

Anyway, this is just to prod discussion toward maybe a different type of critical artistic practice (I don’t think mine is unique by the way). I’ll include a DNA image that I created to show just how “un-natural” DNA images are—how many different ways that they can be constructed…so many that I could practically make anyone’s DNA image look like whatever I wanted it to using standard laboratory enzymes.

I should also leave a link to an online project I just did for NYFA, where I look at lots of iconic bio images and explore the narratives they create. Curious what you all think;-)

http://www.nyfa.org/nyfa_current_detail.asp?id=17&fid=1&curid=839

"Latent Figure Protocol", 2007, DNA image with actual recipe (open source) for creating your own.

"Relative Velocity Inscription Device", 2002. Ok, this is a very strange analogy that I've set up... racing my family's skin color genes to compare genetic fitness??

SUZANNE ANKER
04-12-2010 05:12:35
Dear Paul,

Can you say more about about constructing a DNA image? How can this be done?
What relationship does its visual arrangement have with its underlying scientific data?
Can this construction be repeated repeated ad infinitum or is it a unique artifact?

PAUL VANOUSE

04-12-2010 10:51:12
Hi Susanne--thanks for your question,

Yes, I must figure out a concise way of explaining this. What I mean when I say that “the DNA Fingerprint is constructed” is that A. Jeffreys publishes an article in Nature in 1985 where he notes that DNA images can be used to identify specific individuals. He includes a sample image (that he calls a DNA Fingerpring) that uses three different variations on a basic DNA imaging protocol that highlight differences between three individuals.

The procedure begins by first obtaining a sample of cells and extracting the DNA. The long strands of DNA are then subjected to an enzyme that cuts each strand at specific locations--a distinct base-pair sequence (for instance CTTAAG). These DNA fragments are then separated by size using a process called “gel electrophoresis”—each sample is loaded into the top of its own lane in a porous gelatin and is subjected to an electrical field, which pulls the DNA toward the positive pole—small fragments move the fastest and larger fragments more slowly. The DNA is then transferred to a special paper called a membrane and fixed into place.

This membrane is then washed with a radioactive “probe”. Probes are essentially DNA or RNA fragments that are complementary (meaning they form bonds) to highly variable regions in human DNA. The bound probe sticks to areas on the long DNA smear produced by electrophoresis. After rinsing off unbound probe, the membrane when exposed to x-ray film produces the iconic images with horizontal bands resembling a barcode. Since not all individuals will have the same sequence at the same points in their DNA strand, the probe will produce a different banding pattern. And provided the experiment is performed with the same enzymes/probes/gel combinations the pattern for an individual should never change. While all human DNA is 99.9% the same, Jeffrey’s method targeted the locations that are the most subject to variation, “VNTR”s—variable nucleotide tandem repeats. These locations are predictable (the same in every strand of DNA in each individual), but often vary between individuals. While Jeffreys developed the protocol during his research on genetics, he quickly recognized its implications for personal identification, patented the technique, and offered it to British police to aid in a rape and murder investigation.

Most any enzyme (of at least 100 commercially available) or molecular probe (nearly limitless) can be used in this process. Additionally, nowadays, we use a much simpler procedure in most cases that bypasses the costly, timely radioactive probe stage. There are alse variances in different countries, or when DNA is compared for different purposes, such as paternity. Different companies also use different, often proprietary complinations of things that chop, amplify, etc. your DNA to make an image.

So, when I say that a DNA image is “contructed” in a laboratory, rather than being “natural”, that’s what I’m referring to;-)

SUANNE ANKER:

04-12-2010 13:04:20
Dear Paul,
Great explanation! Thanks.

ASSIMINA KANIARI:
04-12-2010 14:03:59
And could I also refer to the workshop I am organizing at Oxford, Department of Art History on 14th May on D’Arcy Thompson and interdisciplinary thinking looking at the ‘impact’ of his ideas from the perspective of modern science (Tim Horder) as well as art (Susan Derges, Ellen Levy) and various historically and theoretically minded people which you can find in the flyer (Roger I did it!)

Disciplines, Objects and Interdisciplinary Thinking in Art History 1950-2000
Biology, D’Arcy Thompson and the Historical Explanation of 20th Century Experimental Art Form
Workshop 14th May 2010: 9.30
Department of the History of Art, LittleGate House, St Ebbes
Martin Kemp, Susan Derges, Ellen Levy, Tim Horder, Michael Weinstock, Matthew Jarron, Assimina Kaniari
Convener: Dr Assimina Kaniari, (Art History, Oxford)

This event is free. To book a place RSVP assimina.kaniari@hoa.ox.ac.uk

Celebrating the 150 years from the birth of Thompson, the workshop will explore the impact of his conception of form, and ‘acts of seeing’ first presented in his seminal 1917 book On Growth and Form, on post-war theories of vision, and the writings of Gombrich and Read, as well as their figurations in avant-garde art of the 50s (Assimina Kaniari, Oxford), (Mathew Jarron, Dundee) and their later legacies in contemporary architectural theory (Michael Weinstock, AA), visual arts (Ellen Levy), photography (Susan Derges) and science (Tim Horder, Oxford). Martin Kemp (Oxford) will offer closing remarks and will act as discussant.

To rethink interdisciplinarity in art history we will adopt Ian Hacking’s formulation of being “interdisciplinary” as “applying my discipline in different directions”. Thus in tracing the development of post war art historical discourses, and their figurations in avant-garde art, as well as their later legacies in art, architecture and photography in dialogue with Thompson’s form, we will focus on the problems, tensions and questions that post-war domains of visibility, orders of vision and aesthetic hierarchies, fixed in the every day experience of 1950s modern culture yet drawn from visual cultures distinct from art, narrowly defined, posed for historical method and its boundaries in post-war as well as current art historical practices of revision (Ian Hacking, ‘The Complacent Disciplinarian’. http://www.interdisciplines.org/interdisciplinarity/papers/7 )

SUZANNE ANKER
04-12-2010 14:57:17
This looks great. Will there be a web presence or publication?

ASSIMINA KANIARI

Dear Susanne,
Thanks! (I hope that message was for me!) I would love to publish it and would be great to have you contributing (it would certainly make the case a stronger one for a publisher!) I have also been trying to pursuade Guna!

DANIEL GLASER
04-12-2010 16:13:08
In response to JD's prod, here are three quick posts first about Wellcome's Darwin initiative, some SciArt stuff and finally a bit of personal theory about frameworks for collaboration.

Most recently we've done a big initiative around the Darwin bicentenary, under my department which is Special Projects. The thought is to take large scale cultural opportunities and engage with them to bring cutting-edge biomedical content to a wide audience in the form of a conversation which they control. We held a number of consultations with the great and the good of evolutionary biology and the arts and came up with some simple high-level concepts such as a Darwin experiment for every schoolchild in Britain, an enduring visual symbol, something in the online realm and then spent two years and a few million pounds on making them happen. We reached all 23,000 primary schools in Britain and 65% of the secondary schools with a series of hands on experiments (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/darwin200) which are kind of what we imagined Darwin would be doing now (sexual selection in brine shrimp, breeding new antibiotic resistant bacteria (in the classroom, really)) and all lodged in a contemporary cultural vernacular, in this case TV game shows. I've already referred to the Tree of Life video and its remixable potential. Finally, in collaboration with Channel 4 in the UK we commissioned a project for teens and young adults online at http://www.routesgame.com/ which is really about genetic testing. It takes the form of some rather poppy minidocs, an alternate reality game and some trivial and in some cases disgusting video games, one of which has had over 15 million online plays.

The initiative was very successful in embedding the content in cutural forms, especially gaming, which are often excluded from the high cultural mainstream (for an excellent discussion of this, see John Lanchester's lovely LRB piece: Lanchester, J. (2009). Is it Art? London Review of Books, 31(1), 18-20. Retrieved from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/john-lanchester/is-it-art)

Set texts here would be online, particularly http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/sciartevaluation

Briefly for context, the Trust was founded by the pioneering drugs baron Sir Henry Wellcome who believed that medicine could only be seen as part of culture http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node615.html and therefore collected not only remedies from around the world, but also the bottles in which they were stored, the masks which were worn by the prescribers, in some cases the canoes in which they travelled to work and the shrouds in which their patients were buried. This legacy allows us to fund around a billion dollars worth of medical research a year but also to fund collaborations between artists and scientists. Some key points to note about what we commission and fund are that we expect the science and the art to pass the highest standards of peer review in their respecitve disciplines (I'll give some personal notes on this in the final post) and that there should be a meaningful and substantive process of interaction at the heart of the piece, but that we do not necessarily expect the outcomes to be symmetrical.

Finally some deliberately provocative thoughts of a personal nature about interdisciplinarity and therefore artist/scientist collaboration. I do try to embody these in the work that I commission at Wellcome, but the musings are not official policy ;-) I'm on the record at greater length on these issues for example at a meeting of ResCen at Middlesex University, London: http://www.rescen.net/archive/mis-seeing204.html

First, I am a fan of disciplinary boundaries, and I have sort of self-similar fractal theory about how they work which says that the forces which keep groups apart are the same at many scales. This is to say that the social and cultural mechanisms which separate artists and scientists are the same as those which separate biologists and chemists, neurobiologists and immunobiologists, visual neuroscientists and motor neuroscientists, and these are things like lingo, jargon, publishing coteries and conferences/parties. I'm a fan because I think effective collaboration often involves people who come from explicitly different disciplinary traditions and who are clear about where they come from.

I have developed a 'convergent-divergent' theory of interdisciplinary collaboration which starts with these different disciplinary origins but then supports situations in which true collaboration can take place. In the heat of these collaborative interactions, moments of Dionysian frenzy can occur, where any participant can comment on any aspect of any form within the collaboration. Importantly as the collaboration shifts into a production phase there is a divergence, and, by default, the outcomes are recontextualised within classical disciplinary boundaries. Of course this process can be chained sequentially many times.

This approach deliberately problematises hybrid outcomes and disciplines. Of course the structure of scientific revolutions teaches us that new paradigms are essential to fundamental shifts in our understanding of the world, but conversely most of the valuable progress we make best understood in terms of established systems.

I offer the above in the spirit of theoretical provocation.

SUZANNE ANKER:

04-12-2010 17:59:33
Dear Assimina,
It sounds like a fabulous project. Count me in. The importance of D'Arcy Thompson to many generations of visual artists, to my mind, has never been fully articulated. It is a project, particularly ripe for consideration in light of the current explosion of 3-D modeling programs and bio-applications. A few years ago, I had the pleasure of lecturing at the Pollock-Krasner Study Center in East Hampton, New York, where I was also invited to spend night. Not surprising, but equally as thrilling, as I perused the books in his library, there it was, a copy of Thompson's "On Growth and Form."

TRACY HICKS:
04-12-2010 18:34:12
I am pulling and reintroducing this slightly edited from a thread lost yesterday:

Most scientists I know are artists. They approach their work with conceptual skills and a craft honed over centuries of scientific refinement. Essentially since Linneaus named the world and created an organized structure for collection and cataloguing science became a systematic art form.

Equivalent and more obvious arguments can be made that art incorporates science. Art materials are often bi-products of science. I regularly use materials developed for scientific purposes. I have sought and found the help of scientists specializing in liquid preservation and natural history collecting and collection. But I am a blue collar visual artist who knows that I am not a scientist. I try to keep up with the latest scientific literature on the amphibian decline, but also understanding gleaning fully from scientific literature is beyond my sphere of knowledge. So the factual honesty within the structure of science without visceral interpretation also exists outside my sphere.

Visual art, Visual Culture and Science Culture overlap. We suffer from a lack of acceptance of our mutual strengths and benefit tremendously from the collaborations that accept our individual strengths.

CHRISTINA COGDELL:
04-12-2010 20:16:11
Assimina, I took am interested in the proceedings of your D'arcy Thompson symposium. I wish I could be there, but can't. Is there any way the proceedings can be recorded and posted? I'd love to hear all of the discussion, and love the interdisciplinary crossover. Mike Weinstock's work is of definite interest for my current project on architecture, and I plan to be at the AA in the fall doing research in their archives on the history of computation and evolutionary architecture. I'd love to meet you then too, if you'll be around.

NATHANIEL COMFORT

04-12-2010 21:58:16
First, D'Arcy Thompson is one of my absolute heroes. On Growth and Form was for me one of that handful of creative works that becomes a lifelong touchstone. So glad to see him getting that kind of serious treatment.

Daniel: Very interesting and challenging remarks about disciplinary boundaries. I appreciate that you are taking a somewhat polemical stand to stimulate discussion. It is evident to me that what you are really interested in is *crossing* those boundaries. And so you like to have clear boundaries to cross. Fair enough. I've done the same in my life, getting formal training in both science and history.

My question is about the last stage, the recontextualization of the hybrid content within the paradigm of one discipline or another. Maybe I've been unlucky, but in my experience in order to take this new rough asymmetrical object and reframe it in conventional disciplinary terms requires paring off all the edges that make it interesting. Those who police the boundaries of the disciplines I mostly work in are Death Eaters.

In short, disciplines are intensely conventional, and therefore their gatekeepers tend to stifle creativity. My preferred audience is generalists and the educated lay reader. People without disciplinary commitments. They seem most comfortable with work that spans disciplines.

DANIEL GLASER

04-12-2010 22:38:54
(Nathaniel, of course you're right that I'm taking a rhetorical position here so let me continue for the sake of argument :-)

The point about gatekeepers stifling creativity is fair but consider the alternative. So much sci-art collaboration has ended up with hybrid outcomes that satisfy noone ie second rate art which misses the scientific point.

The fMRI work I've done has included collaborations with choreographers as well as anatomists but in the end was submitted to neuro journals without special pleading. It had to be top flight science and was actually more stringently peer reviewed because of the aparently 'trendy' arts involvement. That's fine by me. Equally successful dance outcomes should fill Sadlers Wells and be adored by the Guardian's dance critic. That way you know you're on song.

TODD SILER
04-12-2010 23:58:21
Collaboration: That phenomenal thing that happens between and within our brains, enabling us to do what often cannot be done alone by one’s individual will and effort. Great collaborations are astonishing because you see and feel people doing so much more than merely cooperating in sharing their thoughts, ideas, knowledge, resources, and expertise. They’re willfully and enthusiastically merging the sum of their knowledge or wisdom applied toward to a common shared goal.

Google “Great collaborations” and 3,950,000 links appear in 0.90 seconds (give or take a few repeated links); and you won't find that company at the top of the list, even though they've elevated the state-of-the-art of all search engines to the stratosphere and beyond).

What makes great collaborations successful? What makes them work, as opposed to “work”? What makes them sing, instead of scream? Or inspiring, rather than deadening? When do they soar, versus crash and burn? Human history is pockmarked with plenty of examples of both: from the 19th century collaborative effort that went into constructing the Eiffel Tower in 1889 and The Chicago World's Fair in 1893 to the formation of the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony in Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, Germany in 1899; the latter example is one tragic case study in what-not-to-do or what to expect from the clash of titanic egos; that Colony imploded within two years from the time it opened its doors to the public. It was a beautiful concept, but implemented without an awareness of the chemistry of personalities.

I’ve seen my share of collaborations and have participated in enough of them to know intuitively what things feel “right” with them, and what realities make them stink from the start. (You don’t have to wait for that day-old fish to arrive rolled up in a newspaper either to know for certain, like that chilling scene from Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather!)

Whether you’re collaborating with landscape architects and city planners to construct a park (www.civitasinc.com), or collaborating to “build a knowledge-driven organization” (Buckman, 2004), or collaborating to improve the performance of organizations worldwide (Holman et al, 2007), or collaborating to change the world (Stephen et al, 2006; www.Worldchanging.com), the arts and sciences are intimately involved in countless ways. And you can count on them, too, for reasons I’ll relate shortly.

Everyday, ArtScience collaborations are happening everywhere: from our worlds largest transportation centers to our leading hospitals and medical research centers where teams of scientists wield some of the most complex medical imagining technology applied to everything: from the ER room’s ICU to the oncology lab to the fleet of paramedics.

Some of the more recent high-profile examples of this ArtScience collaborations are visible at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), high-energy particle accelerator build by CERN and the construction site for the world’s largest Tokomak nuclear fusion device (www.ITER.org) being built by an 11-nation consortium as we speak in Cadarache, France.

Equally impressive are those collaborative projects underway that involve polymath specialists from a spectrum of fields building ever-more versatile, relational data-mining tools. Software and webware designed to enable labs worldwide to collaboratively analyze, diagnose and treat millions of the most complex structures in the universe (human brains) using sheer ingenuity, imagination and an assortment of medical tools, such as PET, MEG and fMRI (Phelps et. Al, 1986; Doidge, 2007) that only a handful of centuries ago only visionaries like Leonardo could’ve foreseen.

In my next post, I want to provide some specific examples of these ArtScience collaborations—to point out what has changed today in the “new landscape,” to invoke the vision of Gyorgy Kepes, the pioneer environmental artist and founder of MIT’s Center for Advance Visual Studies.

What’s really changed is “Art.” It’s finally become what its DNA was born to do: Transform everything imaginable in our built and natural environment into new, personally meaningful and purposeful things.

ASSIMINA KANIARI
04-13-2010 06:05:58
Dear Susanne,
I am thrilled!!
Fantastic and many thanks!

Christina, that would be great! I will see what can be done with the workshop. Your work sound's fascinating and would love to hear about it. It would be perfect for the book too (think about it!).

ELLEN LEVY
04-13-2010 06:43:16
David Yaeger asks us to focus on the content of work and how art can engage a different audience. In this same thread, Roger points out the art/sci collaboration of Jane Prophet and Neil Theise with respect to investigating contentious theories of stem cell behavior through visualizations that then are scientifically analyzed. It is encouraging to see collaborations taking place on both the micro (organismal) and macro (environmental)levels, many of which (like Jane and Neil’s earlier collaboration) rely on complex systems approaches. Although not yet nearly enough, let me point your attention to the fact that increasingly, conferences assembled to discuss shared critical public concerns have been including artists, art/sci teams, and not scientists alone in these discussions. As an example, the upcoming Hiddensee workshop on Aesth/Ethics in Environmental Change will take place from May 24-28on the Hiddensee island in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It brings art and artists into the discussion, asking such questions as how can arts widen our perception of nature, how aesthetics and ethics are connected to each other in habitats, and it plans to explore the “worldviews, values, rituals, visions, belief systems and ideologies” at work within the human ecology. Significantly, an ‘Asilomar 2’conference on climate intervention technologies took place last week, focused on climate intervention and carbon remediation. This opens a nascent field and hopefully, artists will be included in the next meeting. One recalls that a criticism of the first Asilomar conference in 1975, when molecular biologists were concerned with the possible ramifications of rDNA technology and runaway bioagents, was that it largely excluded the insights of non-scientists.

My subject remains art and science collaborations, but this time, with JD’s encouragement, let me also offer some observations as an artist collaborating with neuroscientist, Michael E. Goldberg at Columbia University. His life-long work is the study of attention. Our collaborative animation and installation, Stealing Attention (2009), became, in effect, an art experiment. It deliberately engaged the viewer in a distraction that elicited a failure of awareness under conditions of selective attention. For those who are interested, see http://www.complexityart.com/Reviews/sciart.htm. The issues involved the ability of art to re- train attention and the significance of emotional and political content. We used the video, “Gorillas in our Midst,” as an initial model, but the real models are the performative works of magicians. Just as the meditative abilities of Buddhist monks have been explored by neuroscientists in recent years, the talents of magicians have also been acknowledged pertinent as evidenced by a Magic of Consciousness symposium in 2007 sponsored by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. Such symposia now provide a terrific way for magicians and neuroscientists to learn from each other (Macknik et al., 2008).

TODD SILER

04-13-2010 08:41:32
“Art” today is not only what you see shining in the spaces of art museums, exotic galleries and elegant homes. It’s also all that “dark matter” stuff we can’t see at the moment. And yet, we can sense its presence in the human universe in the same way astrophysicists and mathematical physicists sense that there’s so much more to matter than what meets our eyes and technology. I mean, we’re not building the Large Hadron Collider because we’ve already seen it all and know it all; “it” being all the particles and forces of nature that make up the phenomena of the universe.

Here’s what I think has changed today and forever about Art and everything we do with it, know about it, experience with it, and transform with it. A.r.t. now encompasses All representations of thought: from the back-of-the-envelop math notes on napkins to simulated physics events in the CMS detector of the LHC that highlights the Higgs boson; from the gestures mimes make to describe the world without words to the sounds of an orchestra makes to treat our imaginations to new worlds of music; from the silence a performance artist uses to help us hear life anew to the simplest things our robots make and are programmed to give purpose to by means of our imagination.

In A.r.t, anything goes, because imagination goes with anything. Any and all mediums can be used to create and apply A.r.t.: from the French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s artifacts composed of dust to the cosmic works of epic proportions, “The Quiet Axis” and “The Seed of the Infinite Absolute,” created by the visionary environmental artist Lowry Burgess; years ago, this multimedia artwork was launched into space traveling aboard the Space Shuttle as a nonscientific payload.

There are many contemporary visual artists who’ve produced a wealth of original A.r.t. that exemplify what I’m describing here, and that have stood out as collaborative endeavors. Case in point: Arakawa & Gins, The Mechanism of Meaning, 1971 and Constructing the Perceiver—ARAKAWA: Experimental Works, 1991. Viewing their ambitious, multi-part, experiential art installations gives a whole new meaning to purposeful mashups. Their work has contributed to another kind of “web development” that involves stimulating way more than the 1012 neurons in our brains. In many respects, Duchamp hinted at this larger weave of connection-making with his “mile of string” for the First Papers of Surrealism Exhibition in New York, October 14 to November 7, 1942.

My point is: The broader our definitions of A.r.t, the richer, deeper and more meaningful our experiences are. Many years ago, I did some basic thought experiments to test this premise: We tend to experience things by how we define them—and also, by how we categorize and compartmentalize our experiences. When we expand our definitions of art, we experience how art naturally encompasses the spectrum of human endeavors. If I immerse myself in a chemistry lab project while being guided to see how similar experimental painting is to the aesthetic experiences I’m having conducting an everyday chemistry experiment, I’m inclined to rethink what it means to “do science” and to “make art.” Suddenly, the whole world of symbolic languages looks and feels differently to us. And they can be purposed differently, too.

So there’s a “new & improved” role the arts are playing today, as artists collaborate with virtually every form of knowledge and human endeavor, and every medium for expressing and representing human knowledge. And this purposeful play of intellect and imagination can, indeed, contribute to the advancement of science, technology, engineering mathematics (STEM) projects. More importantly, they can contribute to our collective creation of a sustainable future.

The value judgments we make about “good” and “bad” A.r.t. only serve to demonstrate the limits of our consciousness and definitions, not the reality of the things we create and purpose as Art. The long History of Art and its interactions with all the other forms of knowledge shows this natural evolution in our experiences possibilities of our experiences and understanding

Of course, in our world of economies, in which everything is subject to global markets and success is measured by these “markets,” we always manage to give some arbitrary “value” to our A.r.t.ful creations. Never mind the fact that there are no limits to A.r.t. , as it conceptually, physically and experientially defies our full definitions and experiences of it.

TODD SILER

04-13-2010 12:40:52
No doubt, everyone participating in this exchange here has her and his lists of examples of A.r.t. some of which were born from “ArtScience” collaborations (meaning, art that fully integrates science in its acts of creative inquiry and representations (e.g., D’Arcy Thompson, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Barbara McClintock, Linus Pauling, Richard Feynman, etc.), while others were the products of collaborating scientists and mathematicians who followed the conventions and protocols of modern scientific enterprises.

My list of ArtScience collaborations stretches from one end of my studio to another [in its linear presentation], and it fills a giant gulch bag [in its nonlinear presentation]. Either way, there’s no chronological order to this list, or thematic order, or aesthetic order. But there is this unmistakable, unspoken “connection” between them all that I’ve traced to three fundamental facets of behavior, which they all seem to have in common. I’ll get to that point in a moment.

First, I’ll reach into the gulch bag and randomly draw a handful of these notable nontraditional collaborators who integrate [to various degrees] aspects of art-science-technology, among them: Arakawa and Madeline Gins (http://www.reversibledestiny.org/VIRTUAL1.html); Jeanne Claude and Christo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christo_and_Jeanne-Claude); (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/arts/design/20jeanne-claude.html); Otto Piene and Elizabeth Goldring (Centerbeam/MIT CAVS, 1980), Newton & Helen Mayer Harrison (http://www.greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-81.html); Andrew Jones and Christian Ginzel http://www.jonesginzel.com/); Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, co-authors of Sparks of Genius, 1999 and their blog Imagine That! for Psychology Today; Steve Jobs and his Apple makers and harvesters; Jon Hirschstick and his CAD/CAM collaborators who built SolidWorks (http://www.solidworks-apac.com/2009/02/19/solidworks-founder-jon-hirschtick-predicts-the-future-of-cad/); Shai Haran and his collaborations in pure mathematics at the Technicon-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel (The Mysteries of the Real Prime, 2001); Pam Solo and her collaborations through Civil Society Institute (http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/); Dee Ward Hock and his collaborations (One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization, 2005; Chaordic Commons. 2005-12-01), and Kofi Annan and his closest collaborators tasked with implementing the innovative initiatives of the United Nations.

Clearly, it’s a mixed bag of examples, I've randomly chosen. But any one of these examples may help crystallize this point: Reality is more than a “mixed-metaphor.” Rather, it’s a constant mashup of life experiences that require our full powers of artistic & scientific creative-critical thinking skills to help make sense of our experiences, and to understand how to use them constructively in collaboratively building on them in productive ways.

Essentially, that’s what’s at stake today: Improving human communication to the point where we can better understand and help one another. In this way, we avoid creating the ultimate breakdown from miscommunication, that proverbial “Tower of Babel” first envisioned by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Such a structure naturally forms when we don’t connect and integrate the endless piles of human knowledge that have been diligently aggregated and established independently by groups of thinkers doing their thing in intellectual isolation and with hidden agendas that worked against the process of strengthening civil society.

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1563

TODD SILER

04-13-2010 14:27:39
The legendary art historian Meyer Schapiro was a master at making connections. As one review of his life in The New York Times (March 4, 1996) related: “It was not in his nature to function as a specialist within any one particular discipline. Even less was he a satrap of the seminar with specific "turf" of his own to protect. It was, in fact, the very essence of Schapiro that he never conceived of any aspect of art, of belief or of language in isolation. He regarded all forms, schools and systems of knowledge as interrelated and interdependent. As far as he was concerned, he had been put on earth to know, and to make known, the correspondences between them all. And he addressed himself not to the insider, but to the generality of intelligent human beings.”

When people earnestly ask me these sorts of anxious questions—“How do we use the arts and sciences better to help improve the state of the world? How do we make a better future, when no one knows what 'better' really means or amounts to, and no can agree upon the characteristics of ‘betterment’?” -- I simply point to the work, life and thought process of Meyer Schapiro. And I say, “That’s how! Study his approach to innovation and collaboration. Study the way he collaboratively learned. Schapiro's approach is as generalizable as it is timeless and ageless.”

Or, I’ll point out other thought leaders in the interconnected fields of art-science-technology-engineering-mathermatics-business-education-politics, and say: “Do you see what those individuals are doing with that Wheel of Change & Communication? They’re learning about some basic ways of improving the communication process by collaboratively building and learning from their symbolic model. And then, they’re guided to reflect on their experiences in order to understand what they made, how they made it, and what their symbolisms mean to them. In effect, they’re trying their hands at this form of ‘constructive’ communication.”

After that silent moment of blank stares passes, I’ll proceed to explain how these people are making all kinds of compelling “connections” in generating and sharing new knowledge through this multi-dimensional symbolic model that they’ve collaboratively created. They made this model to show-and-tell each other what CHANGE & COMMUNICATION mean to them both personally and professionally—rather than assuming they all held the same mental models. On one side of that spinning, symbolic wheel, they placed all the things they’ve identified about human communication that they believe will never change. Like the constant speed of light, they felt that certain qualities of human interaction seem hard-wired (that is, until our neural wires are changed through informal experiential learning and neuroplasticity (Doidge, 2007). On the other side of this wheel, they’ve highlighted [with words, images, moveable objects] all the things they feel will change about the way we communicate both physically and electronically.

My point is: one of the keys to transforming the way we collaborate as artists and scientists is to utilize these sorts of arts-based learning tools in the process of creating and sharing new knowledge. This “Postmodernist” artifact of thought serves as a visual aid for storytelling; it uses any or all contents its creators choose to include in showing-and-telling their story. Basically, it’s rooted in a process of creating and communicating that’s as universal as it is many thousands of years old.

TRACY HICKS

04-13-2010 18:30:31
Todd's descriptions of good/bad art followed by the potential for art violence deserves reinforcing. The spectrum of art covers a full range of human potential which is (of course) another correlation to science as collaboration.

Todd Siler wrote, “My list of ArtScience collaborations stretches from one end of my studio to another [in its linear presentation],”

The line stretching across Todd's studio provoked the thought of a collaboration (of sorts) between the panelists and readers. A time machine. I have a line stretching the length of one wall in my studio that is my personal time machine.

Simply draw an 8 foot line scaled to one inch equaling 3 years. It will span 288 years

At one end mark off the current year then back 150 years (4 feet 2 inches) to Darwin and further back 100 years (33.3 inches0 to Linneaus.

My shoulder width is roughly my life span from birth to present.So for me Darwin is only two shoulder widths back and Linneus is suddenly closer than I would have realized

A shorter line would do but before Linneaus is an important time to see into.

My list of science collaboration projects is much shorter than Todd's. I'll follow this post with a description of an installation collaboration between the Field Museum in Chicago, the University of Kansas Biodiversity Center and my collection of frogs cast from their collections,

A few years ago then University of Kansas faculty members Marjorie Swan and John Simmons raised a grant from the Museum Loan Network for me to cast specimens of extinct and threatened amphibians both from the old world collections at the Field Museum and their new world counterparts at the University of Kansas Biodiversity and Natural History Museum.

The obvious premise that the actual specimens each being one of kind markers and far too fragile for public viewing created a format to present the collection cast and in similar surroundings as the actual vaults where the original specimens are kept in consistently monitored cool darkness.

As you can see in the images I played with the lighting adding phosphorescent pigments and UV lighting to extend the life of the frogs into the installation.I let the visual speak from here:

TODD SILER

04-13-2010 23:19:20
Adding another maleable “brick” to Tracy’s and Marcel’s inspiring wall of ideas, and building on what Assimina has wisely noted here, too: Today, there seems to be a natural integration of artistic & scientific knowledge, methods of creative inquiry, and approaches to real world problem solving that is reshaping our ways of “world-making,” to borrow the analytic philosopher Nelson Goodman’s phrase. We probably inherited this form of integrative thinking from the Italian Renaissance masters, and much earlier. But no matter where or how we inherited it, it has proven to be one of our more useful and versatile “thinking tools” for transcending centuries of compartmentalized thinking (Root-Bernstein, 1999). This particular tool of creative seeing and thinking can help us bridge in minutes ideas, concepts, and theories that need to be explored by everyone and not just the lonestar individual or group that conceived of them.

In any event, integrative thinking enables us all to discover the nature of the world and the world of human nature. It encompasses all ways and means of expressing, representing, modeling, simulating, and demonstrating our knowledge and experiences.

The upshot is: Integrative thinking can be purposed towards anything that collaborators care to apply it: (in medicine) building customized “biobricks” for more uniquely personalized gene therapies; (in neuroscience) designing more neurophyiologically precise treatments that target only the "problemmed" cell/neurons; (in engineering) using nature-inspired materials to construct more effective and efficient structures with a myriad of practical applications; (in education) enhancing the personal meaning and all-purpose usefulness of creative learning.

Will this approach help us do a better job of weighing the risks and benefits of, say, genetic engineering, recombinant DNA technology, or genetically modified/manipulated (GM) matter through gene splicing? Will it help us make good decisions about how we transform biological matter into new living things?...things that may be far more adaptive and responsive to life, but pernicious beyond imagination? I don't have the expertise to answer that, but Sheldon Krimsky did in his insightful book, Genetic Alchemy: A Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy (The MIT Press, 1979). His perspective hasn't aged a bit. For me, it's still a relevant read.

Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, author Taking The Quantum Leap, sums up concisely what I’m trying to say: “What science does best is create art, and what art does best is envision new science.”

As I percolate on that piece of wisdom, I’m thinking about its “reality” today (and not its just possibility); and I’m wondering where the applications of that reality will ultimately take humankind. Reading about the exciting work of The BioBricks Foundation (BBF) http://bbf.openwetware.org/, I know that we are and will always continue to develop technologies responsibly. At least, I hope so. But I also know human nature: eventually, some biological engineer or group of synthetic biologists will try to transmute these BioBricks,™ (just because they can in the name of innovation, and just because they’re up for the challenge) -- thus manipulating “standard DNA parts that encode basic biological functions” to the point where they’re nothing like the living organism we intended or programmed them to be. Enough said. I’ll just leave that thought dangling…

Gazing into the opaque “crystal” ball of the future, I see the arts fully intregrated in the sciences where all the arbitrary boundaries and barriers have been moved aside for those individuals and groups who desire to collaborate towards the benefit of The Common Good; thank goodness, there are many organizations that are committed to promoting some humanitarian “do-good” philosophy (http://www.ideaconnection.com/solutions/) -- a life philosophy that resonates with the inspired instincts of The Good Samaritan. That simple parable is well worth re-reading in these complex times. It splashes me with hope for the human race.

TRACY HICKS:

04-14-2010 10:19:18
Todd's deeply poetic good samaritan analogy is very appropriate when he wrote, “I see the arts fully intregrated in the sciences where all the arbitrary boundaries and barriers have been moved aside for those individuals and groups who desire to collaborate towards the benefit of The Common Good; thank goodness…”

I hope we will hear more in this wrap-up phase from the other artists on the panel. Marta I know works directly with science as medium. We were denied entrance to a restaurant in Grinnell Iowa last year. Brandon Balangee is completing a PHD and while I've seen little of his recent work, his earlier work should be inspirational in this conversation.

My work is on the periphery of science combining the collections of art and science to reassess. Todd,Marta and Brandon and other artist/scientists we have and have not yet heard from work with science as medium. Art work combining offers a world of possibilities beyond Huxley's Brave New World. Which I fear is still inhibiting.

TODD SILER:

04-14-2010 15:58:04
Thank you, Tracy. If I've strayed too far in the wilderness, please call out and I'll stop in my tracks.

Circling back to the statement I made the other day in this post which I'd wanted to complete. It concerns three fundamental facets of behavior I’ve personally experienced in great collaborations and clearly missed in weaker ones. The defining difference boils down to these common “human connections,” which are mutually shared by all: Respect. Trust. Love. Yes, Love, too and, of course, empathy. Without empathy, none of these three things would mean anything or amount to anything more than abstract rhetoric (Worringer, 1953). Allow me to elaborate, before shooting arrows at me for this flight of speculative thought.

Fortunately, there’s been some recent research on this subject, which rescues me from ambiguity. (Read the Harvard psychologist, Dr. Robert Epstein's cover story about how science can help you fall in love , Scientific American Mind January/February, 2010); http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-science-can-help-love

Picasso once said, “There’s no such thing as love. There’s only the proofs of love.” I doubt he meant ‘proofs’ in a scientific sense either; because we can’t prove our general theories about love, or any other phenomena for that matter. We can, however, continually verify them empirically.

Excellent “collaborators” share many of the same characteristics as those rare life partners who’re committed to the continual growth of their relationship; in many respects, this real relationship is not unlike a “true marriage,” in which two individuals choose to be together and work together without losing their independent thinking and individuality. In fact, the ongoing success of their relationship is predicated on these three principles. If either one of these individuals does not Respect “Trust,” or does not Trust “Love,” or does not Love “Respect,” then the collaboration is doomed to fail. At some point, someone in the team or group will, in a moment of naked truth, reveal the fact that they just don’t respect or trust or even like someone else in the group whose opinions, knowledge and authenticity they question which jeopardizes their collective success.

I think about these things when "reading between the lines" of Einstein's life and his wise comments about the relationship between imagination (creative thinking) and knowledge (critical thinking) in the process of learning. He respected his intuitions (as expressed in the form of visual analogies) and trusted his skills in critical thinking (which he applied to his thought experiments) in pursuing his love: learning. And the people he most enjoyed collaborating with also shared those same three things, even when they argued their points with one another. At least, that’s how interpreted the interactions between Einstein and his colleagues, as noted in Walter Isaacson remarkable biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007).

Now this doesn’t mean that there aren’t endless conflicts of views, or vicious objections to one another’s interpretations, that crescendo into those unforgettable, in-your-face battles of beliefs, or “War of the Roses.” That wouldn’t be true to the dramatic events of so many great collaborations.

To grasp reality behind this simple/complex metaphorm: Picture the recycle symbol that has come to represent our 21st century vision & values; specifically, our vision of value and value of vision, both of which are necessary for creating a sustainable future. If one component of those three interconnected parts of this human system (Chorover, 1982) were missing from this archetypal symbol of transformation, then chances are there’d be no real or complete recycling of anything, or commitment to recycle anything. People would just go through the motions of cooperatively doing their part, without any concern or accountability for their actions.

I won’t bend your ears any further here for fear of exhausting your sense of humor and patience. But I’d like to leave you with this basic observation that remains my gateway and guiding principle for collaborating with others. Call it a common sense perspective on good-to-great collaborations, which also resonates with Robert Epstein's insights into the creative process (“Generativity Theory, " Encyclopedia of Creativity, Volume 1, 1999; pp.759, 760).

A great collaboration, like a great marriage of minds, is like “a great work of art.” It’s timeless and infinitely inspiring! (Of course, it requires endless effort, too.) The Beatles launched the first higher awareness of this, with their classic happy tune about this topic; surely, they’d heard it before, echoing throughout the ages from civilizations that sung something similar.

Although I’m not in the least religious or theologically-minded, I still can appreciate this basic truth: Love unites our hearts-and-minds for life. It inspires us to reach to realize our potential (Maslow, 1971), instead of just knowing our passions and interests. Love makes virtually everything we do feel worthwhile, including all the things we don’t wanna do, like dealing responsibly with the chaos and unpredictable stuff life throws our way to challenge our sense of humor. Love enables us to learn how to learn (Rogers, 1970) -- to grow as individuals and grow together as couples. It forms “The Ring” of Values, which are things we believe in and act on. I mean, our values are our beliefs in action. This simplistic picture-statement [below] conveys what I mean to say at a glance. I'm sorry if it sounds like a string of platitudes, even though it isn't; at least, no more so than some of Francis Bacon's aphorisms.

As our collaborations embody the essence of this “Values” system, they’re more likely to thrive and remain strong, even as our interests change or sharply differ. According to the ancients, “Our highest value is respect.” And that doesn’t happen without these other elements.

That’s my hope for all future ArtScience collaborations: That every team member or group of collaborators master “The Fine Art of Loving-Respecting-Trusting” each other. What could be more inspiring to our world of kids than that inspired model of human communication!

4/10: Evolution and Visual Culture in Non Western Cultures

2010-04-10T03:17:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-12-2010 12:24:39

ROGER MALINA
04-10-2010 04:01:15
As an astronomer I am very aware of how our ideas about the evolution of the universe are embedded in a several thousand ( at least) year history of concepts of how the universe is structured and the forces at play.Here in the Mediterranean the flow of ideas across geography, culture and the centuries has been very complex. I recently saw a play about the egyptian mathematician Hypatia which articulated the conflict of visions of the world between the Hellenestic, Hebrew and Christian cosmologies. In reading through the posts this morning here in Marseille I was struck by the way we have focused on a particular set of interactions between ideas about evolution. Concepts about nature are deeply embedded in all philosophical systems.it would be interesting to discuss how the ideas of evolution interact with visual culture, and culture in a larger sense, in the indian subcontinent for instance.

SUZANNE ANKER
04-10-2010 11:21:34
Dear Richard,

This is quite a fascinating subject, however. However, my expertise in this area is quite limited.

These are a wonderful set of articles that Nature published in 2009 in celebration of Darwin's centennial. Another related question I have is concerned with how Darwin's Centennial was celebrated in various countries. Certainly in the UK, there were a large number of events, exhibitions, lectures, and the like. Even a contemporary play was hosted as part of a symposium at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Although there were some events in the USA, Darwin has had a much chillier reception here. Anything in France?

Global Darwin: Revolutionary road
James Pusey
Nature 462, 162-163 (11 November 2009) doi:10.1038/462162a Opinion

Global Darwin: Contempt for competition
Daniel Todes
Nature 462, 36-37 (4 November 2009) doi:10.1038/462036a Opinion

Global Darwin: Eastern enchantment
Marwa Elshakry
Nature 461, 1200-1201 (28 October 2009) doi:10.1038/4611200a Opinion

Global Darwin: Multicultural mergers
Jürgen Buchenau
Nature 462, 284-285 (18 November 2009) doi:10.1038/462284a Opinion

SUZANNE ANKER

04-11-2010 10:35:06
Dear Kevin and Roger,
I think this is a very important thread that was brought up, particularly in light of our globalized world.
What this lack of response may mean is that this set of ideas has not been thought through by our panelists. However, I am sure there are scholars out there that can open this dialogue.
Is this an "opportunity knocks" card that we can borrow from TV game shows and ask the audience?

SUZANNE ANKER
04-11-2010 13:01:34
Perhaps as a further prompt and in keeping with many of the other threads so discussed here so far, there are several ideas intrinsic to looking at evolution and visual culture in non-western cultures. The influx of technology, particularly, the use of telegraphic cables, linked diverse land masses such as Western Europet o India to China and the like. This transformation through communication (later described by Marshall McLuhan as the Gutenberg Galaxy) was also a significant force in disseminating Darwinian ideas. Through misinterpretation, mistranslation as well as culture's ability to absorb new ideas into its established thought, various configurations and reconfigurations of Darwinian thought were interpreted into concepts of change, political and otherwise. Philosophical and religious beliefs concerning natural law, the great chain of being and "survival of the fittest" were propagated in culture specific ways and in some cases remain so to this day. Several recent events underscore these considerations and differences. In October, 2009 ( a few months after several of us on this panel gave our talks at the Courtauld Institute of Art) a conference entitled "Darwin and Evolution in the Muslim World" was held at Hampshire College. Differing opinions with regards to humans' place in evolutionary theory were posed.

The theory of young-Earth creationism , was cited by Professor Salman Hameed, as being compatible with the Qur'an's concept of time, which he maintained was more ambiguous, than the Bible's six days of creation. And in Egypt, in November of 2009, "scientist's from around the world" stated Riazat Butt's piece in the Guardian, questioned whether religion was getting in the way. Of course the American discourse on evolution/creationism continues in the political arena.

ROGER MALINA
04-11-2010 14:52:36
We held an Art, Culture Darwin conference in Marseille:
http://www.imera.fr/index.php/en/rss-feed/110.html
one of the speakers was Jacques Arnould, a catholic priest who work also for the french space agency CNES
His talk was entitled from neuroaesthetics to cosmo ethics:

http://www.imera.fr/images/stories/PDF/colloque22_jarnould.pdf

(article is in french) where he unpacks the shift in view of man's relationship to the universe from greek to christian era = the conference particularly sought to address how neurobiology , Changeux in particular, is addressing the questions of the role of culture as a factor in evolutionary selection none of the papers however addressed the history of the idea of evolution in

other cultures

BARBARA LARSON
04-11-2010 15:53:18
Suzanne,

Thank you for those posts on global Darwinism. On what about France, there was a four-part exhibition in Paris's botanical gardens called Dans les pas de Charles Darwin. Here is the link

http://www.hominides.com/html/darwin-anniversaire/charles-darwin-2009-dans-les-pas-de-charles-darwin-jardin-botanique-0202.php

TODD SILER:

04-11-2010 17:28:06
Suzanne, thanks for tabling this topic. I itch thinking about how to respond to the young-Earth creationism concept. Honestly, it warps my sense of reality and spacetime, like an event horizon of a black hole. Let me try to explain what I mean by that, so I’m not misunderstood and ridiculed for this crude little simile.

“In general relativity, an event horizon is a boundary in spacetime that surrounds a black hole, beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer. [A black hole is a celestial object so dense that no matter or radiation can escape its gravitational field.] Light emitted from beyond the horizon can never reach the observer, and any object that approaches the horizon from the observer’s side appears to slow down and never quite pass through the horizon, with its image becoming more and more redshifted as time elapses. The traveling object, however, experiences no strange effects and does, in fact, pass through the horizon in a finite amount of proper time...” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon)

So who's the observer and who's the observed?

Whenever I try to converse with a devout creationist, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of an event horizon as ‘an outside observer,’ gazing into the distance at what appears to be a ‘traveling object’ [or individual] who’s on his way to his home in a black hole. This individual can no more reach me than I can reach him. At this moment, we’re just coming from different places, and one of us can never leave the place we’re coming from…

Maybe I’ve misinterpreted the astrophysics. Or maybe I’ve transmuted the facts, to avoid getting sucked into some theological debate that I can’t escape. But the implication remains the same.

Roger, I'm sure you can clarify what I’m trying to say. Or you can simply correct this misperception.

On a positive note, I’d like to add this one book to your reading list, concerning evolution and visual culture in non western cultures:

Alain Danielou’s The Gods of India: Hindu Polytheism (1985) provides a detailed and fascinating account of evolution that encompasses the structure of the cosmos in the context of consciousness, and vice versa (p.55). This Indic scholar relates how “all existence is conditioned by 'three fundamental qualities of Nature [prakrti] and orders of being.” (p.56) I also touched on these Hindu perspectives in my book, Breaking the Mind Barrier (Simon & Schuster, 1990); “Branches #2,” pp.348-351.

GUNALAN NADARAJAN

04-11-2010 20:44:07
It is noteworthy that the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted in Feb 2010 found that the theory of evolution was more widely accepted by Hindus and Buddhists (80 and 81%) as the best explanation of origin of human life compared to Muslims (45%) and evangelical Protestants (24%).

These differences in the religious acceptance of Darwinian evolution as an explanatory framework for understanding the origins and development of life on earth has, I would suggest, much more to do with the extent to which these faiths have existing explanatory frames that cohere with evolutionary explanations than with them having theories that are similar to evolution.

For example, Hindu notions of time and of life as iterative reincarnations of successive living forms of increasing complexity (albeit with less karmic attachments) is ostensibly coherent with the concept of evolution though far from being similar to it. It is also useful to consider that unlike the Genesis narrative of the Bible that is widely accepted by Christians as the most dominant one on creation, there is no single creation narrative that is consistently accepted by Hindus.

MICHAEL SAPPOL

04-12-2010 11:17:36
Another thought: the relationship between evolutionary discourse and religion is always complex and unstable. In the 18th-century, emergent evolutionary discourse was closely related to ideas of progress and perfection, which had ties to millennial and Arminian strands of Christian theology. In some ways, and in some versions, evolutionary discourse retained the deep narrative structure of some Christian eschatologies. Many early evolutionists came from Quaker or dissenting Protestant religious backgrounds. Later on, there were a variety of Christian responses to Darwinian evolution. The two major Presbyterian centers--Belfast and Princeton--split, with Belfast adopting a hard oppositional stance and Princeton attempting to reconcile Christian doctrine and Darwinian theory.

The whole issue is obviously of great importance nowadays, with Christian creationism providing a model for Islamic creationist opposition to the teaching of evolutionary theory. The teaching of evolution and belief in evolutionary theory is a kind of discursive effigy that is available for anti-globalists and anti-modernists to perform opposition to Western ways, and links the anti-evolutionary movement in Islamic countries to the insistence on the subordination of women and advocacy of Sharia law.

(However, I'm not sure how all of this relates to the visualization of evolution or evolutionary structuring of visualization.)

BARBARA LARSON
04-12-2010 12:24:39
In the west in the late nineteenth century, there was an attempt to combine evolutionism with Hinduism and Buddhism, found notably in Theosophy. Oddly, theosophy emerged in the U.S., but seemed to gain its greatest foothold in various quarters of Europe, in particular among Symbolists and early twentieth century abstract artists, including Mondrian. In terms of how does this pertain to visual culture, the attempt to combine evolutionary references with eastern religions was a significant part of visual culture within the fine arts. Eastern philosophies felt compatible with evolutionism for theosophists. I feel I have given short shrift to Symbolism, which one of my areas of study and later today will add more information about this in another strand.

4/10: How did nonscientific use of new visual tech influence its use by scientists?

2010-04-10T03:13:00.000-07:00

:Last Update: 04-10-2010 08:30:47

KEVIN FINNERAN:

04-09-2010 23:43:02

The discussion of new imaging technology is going strong, and I hope it continues. There have been several comments about how developments in visual culture have influenced science, and I would be interested in hearing examples of how scientists picked up ideas from the use of new imaging technology and introduced them into their research techniques.

ROGER MALINA
04-10-2010 03:19:04
kevin-

I have a problem with the way that you have phrased the question because I think it sets up a false dichotomy between scientists and the culture they live in. Scientists are part of culture, as they grow up exposed to all the artefacts of visual cultural (and non visual) it shapes the way that their cognition develops.
There is a nice quote from Einstein:
“The universe of ideas is just as independent of the nature of our experience as clothes are of the form of the human body”

Varela has a related quote:
"All knowledge is conditioned by the structure of the knower" .

An interesting book on the way that ideas develop across the range of intellectual cultures is Linda Henderson's book on the Fourth Dimension in Art and Science which has a number of examples of how visual representations of higher dimensional spaces framed the way that mathematicians and physicists attacked the problems in their own fields.

The visual culture that scientists grow up in as children frames the way they imagine ( Jules Verne: You can invent only what you can imagine).

DANIEL GLASER
04-10-2010 07:39:41
Certainly in imaging neuroscience we are harnessing the power of new visualisation technologies to make our stories more convincing and of course to explore our data better. We did not evolve to see 'true 3D' since most objects in the world we encounter are surfaces not full volume objects (oranges not jellyfish, technically we see best 2D manifolds embedded into 3D). But rendering techniques, animation and especially the ability to rotate and manipulate images in real time in an intuitive way have advanced the field.

KEVIN FINNERAN:
04-10-2010 08:30:47
In response to Roger's comment, I agree that scientists are part of the culture. What I was trying to get at was a tendency in discussions such as this to assume that the ideas about a broad concept such as evolution originate in science and are reflected elsewhere or that the engineers who develop a technology are the ones who best understand how it can be used. It is really to say that scientists are part of the culture and that the sources of their ideas are found not just within the work of other scientists.

TRACY HICKS

04-11-2010 13:35:36
Veering this thought process further away from the a list of technology generated by the Visual Art community toward the eugenics topic along with the Two Cultures enigma I fear a commonality of people is lost from our conversation. So on a more personal thought process:

As a visual artist who has tremendous respect for science and scientists, most scientists I know are artists. They approach their (art) work with conceptual skills and a craft honed over centuries. Essentially since Linneaus named the world and created an organized structure for collection and cataloguing science became a systematic art form.

Equivalent and more obvious arguments can be made that art incorporates science. Art materials are often bi-products of science. I regularly use materials developed for scientific purposes and have sought the help of scientists specializing in liquid preservation and natural history collecting and collection. But I am a blue collar visual artist who knows that I am not a scientist. I try to keep up with the latest scientific literature on the amphibian decline, but also understanding gleaning fully from scientific literature is beyond my sphere of knowledge.

Yes, visual art and science cultures overlap and we all suffer from a lack of acceptance of our mutual strengths as well as our separate abilities.

Back to the topic of technology stemming from the visual arts:

I once wrote a protocol for casting delicate amphibians from natural history collections. While I had hopes it was never published. Were I a scientific student PHD candidate I could have pushed the protocol through the process or understood why it was not worthy of publication. As a visual artist working in the fringe of science I would love to be published in the scientific world ---and while not literally rejected by the scientific process I find little support for incorporating the visual arts into the structure of science.

Delicate specimens cast in great detail can be seen considerably differently than the original specimen. Interpreting differences between work is a basic axiom of visual art. So I believe an opportunity exists on a personal level to explore a crossing between the processes of science and art that could be overlooked in a cultural context of exchange.

4/10: Eugenics

2010-04-10T03:05:00.000-07:00

Last Updated: 04-11-2010 13:30:05

KEVIN FINNERAN:
04-09-2010 23:37:10
References to eugenics have popped up in numerous contexts from the opening day, and this is not something I anticipated. I invite those who have mentioned it to focus on it more directly. How did this notion emerge in the larger discussion of evolution? How widely accepted was it? How do we see it expressed in visual culture?

NATHANIEL COMFORT
04-10-2010 08:42:16
Okay, to make sure we're on the same page here...

"Eugenics" was coined by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in 1883. He had actually been working on the idea for more than a decade before he published the term. Galton has an odd reputation. He gave us the biological concept of "nature vs. nurture," he invented linear regression and the basis of the correlation coefficient. He is thus one of the pioneer figures in population genetics.

But he also wrote all this stuff about improving the race through encouraging the best to have lots of kids and through eliminating "the unfit." American sterilization laws (more than 30 of them in the 1940s) and the horrific Nazi eugenic law are part of his legacy.

Galton was a passionate evolutionist and was deeply engaged with his cousin's theories. He published a disproof of Darwin's pangenesis theory, much to Darwin's chagrin.

But Galton was also more socially engaged than Darwin. The 19th century was a time of great fears of "degeneration." A lot of this apparently had to do with urbanization, migration, and the relatively sudden creation of a great number of highly visible poor, dirty, diseased people. These fears of degeneration have proved highly resilient. They were a huge motivating force for many Progressive Era reforms and they have continued to pop up since--for example, in debates over the population explosion in the '60s and since.

To begin to answer your question, then, Kevin, eugenics emerged and has persisted as a way to stem and reverse the perceived degradation of the human species. It is, in large measure, the effort to control human evolution.

(I would add that it the other part of it is an effort to reduce suffering through preventive measures, but that's off-topic here.)

Because eugenics has to do with manipulating heredity, it becomes extremely important after the turn of the 20th century, as researchers moved toward integrating Darwin with Mendel.

It's easy to think of evolution as a spectator sport--something that if you're very clever and/or lucky, you may get to observe. Eugenicists have wanted to make it participatory. It is the practical application of evolution and genetics to human beings.

I'll try to dig out some eugenics-related images later...

NATHANIEL COMFORT
04-10-2010 09:54:18
Here is the iconic "eugenics tree":

www.dnalc.org/content/c16/16330/16330_233eugenictree.jpg

Also, the visual culture of eugenics can be explored at this website set up by the folks at Cold Spring Harbor (epicenter of the American eugenics movement): http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

BARBARA LARSON:
04-10-2010 11:27:27
Though eugenics involves heredity, one root can be found in Malthus on the validity/importance of population suppression. Malthus has often been pointed to in terms of Darwin's developing ideas on survival of the fittest and his own reading of Malthus, but it should be noted that Galton and Darwin's mutual grandfather Erasmus found Malthus a fitting reference in his evolutionist poetry. In Temple of Nature, he writes: "So human progenies if unrestrained, by climate friended and food sustained, o'er seas and soils, prolific hordes would spread erlong and deluge their terraqueous bed, but war and pestilence and disease and dearth sweep the superfluous myriads from earth."

Galton brought eugenics home, creating "good pedigree charts" in the Darwin family (beginning with Erasmus) and the Wedgwood side of their family. On the Darwin charts see the Brauer essay "Framing Darwin: A Portrait of Eugenics" in The Art of Evolution.

SUZANNE ANKER
04-10-2010 12:49:30
Although Eugenics carries with it historical narratives of sterilization and extermination, particularly in the United States and Germany, a more insidious form exists today. New Reproductive technologies including PGD, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and "selective reduction" along with sonograms have had a direct impact on gender selection. Although PGD was pioneered to monitor possible birth defects associated with chromosomal abnormalities, another use of such technology is gender selection. In this scenario, the male's sperm is sorted into those that produce female offspring and those that produce male offspring. With high probability, the perspective parents can in fact, opt for the gender of their choice. In selective reduction, a euphemism for aborting fetuses which are the result of multiple IVF implant and result in twins, triplets and the like, a "selection" is made as to which fetus should be terminated. Again the health of the fetus is of prime concern, but because this diagnostic technology employs an analysis of genetic material, "selections" concerning gender can also occur. What is most troubling to date, is the practice of aborting female fetuses in China and India. The cost of a sonogram in China is $12 and because of China's restrictive reproduction policy, many families opt to have a male child. As a personal choice, one can say it is an individual's right to choose, but the facts are that over 40 million girls have gone missing. Either through abortion, abandonment, infanticide or neglect the proportion of male to female births is out of whack. This has created a group of men called "bare branches" in China who have no domestic life and are engaged in sexual crimes and even "bride trafficking." An in-depth article on these issues has recently appeared in the March issue of The Economist, referring to this phenomenon as gendercide.

CHRISTINA COGDELL
04-10-2010 13:59:36
I’m not surprised to see eugenics come through in a discussion about evolution and visual culture. Nathaniel Comfort points to a key reason, by pointing out that eugenics is the attempt to control human evolution.

Arising in the late-19th-century, at the same time that Frederick Taylor was pursuing his efficiency studies, eugenics merged ideas about evolution with those of efficiency and control (as a strategy to stem what many in power saw as a rise of “degeneracy”). “Positive eugenics” aimed to increase the birthrate of the “fit” while simultaneously “negative eugenics” tried to decrease the birthrate of the “unfit” (involuntary sterilization, euthanasia/mass murder in the Holocaust, birth control distribution under the guise of “population control”, etc.).

Comfort also mentions American Progressivism as an early outgrowth of eugenics into the social realm, including attempts to physically and morally “clean up” cities through large-scale public hygiene projects coupled to Americanization cultural education/assimilation programs. The term “race hygiene,” as eugenics was known in most European countries, points to the pursuit of presumed purity – racial purity, cleanliness, morality… in other words, applying the metaphor in multiple directions. With the application of Mendelian ideas after 1900, eugenics took a strong hereditarian turn (in contrast to the more Lamarckian “euthenics” underlying some Progressive reforms), setting the stage for the explosion of sociopolitical policies that targeted particular groups of people, rather than aiming to clean up the environment as a route to eugenic reform.

In visual culture, outside of eugenics propaganda on display at exhibitions at state and world fairs - such as the tree image already posted, -- I argue in my book Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s that streamline design, hot on the heels of Art Deco in the 1920s, functioned as a material embodiment/artistic expression of the ideology of eugenics in the US. It may have done so as well in Germany, as designers working with Hitler theorized that the straight line was not “natural” but rather the curves of streamlining were more appropriate for the aesthetic style of a state based upon bio-politics (see a 3-part article by Hans Scheerer).

There are tens of images I could post, but I’ll only put a few that show some of the main parallels between theories of streamlining and those of eugenics. Both streamlining and eugenics applied biological principles to society through new technologies to work towards “progress.” Both aimed to 1) eliminate “degeneracy” through controlled evolution; 2) increase the “smooth flow” of the “stream”; 3) increase biological efficiency; 4) increase hygiene and sterilization; and 4) achieve the “ideal type.” (A few images in this post, a few following below with explanations).

Because design, broadly speaking, expresses a directed aim toward subjectively determined “fitness” criteria, eugenics as social design and streamlining as industrial design worked towards similar ends in the 1930s, largely due to a deeply-held common faith that modernity and “civilization” were the product of evolutionary processes. Because eugenicists felt they understood the processes behind evolutionary change, they worked to direct evolutionary change in the direction they felt best. (This gets back to the issue of sociopolitical and economic power that I have already posted about). Their use of genetic metaphors carried over directly into the world of design (much like the 2010 Pearl Izumi ad I just posted in a different thread).

Eliminating "Degeneracy": Top image is Normal Bel Geddes's Diagram of Streamlining from his book Horizons (1932), showing how the streamlined teardrop removes all eddies that slow forward progress through "parasite drag." The image below is from an American Eugenics Society display at a Kansas State Fair in the 1920s, showing how eugenics casts some humans as parasites acting as a drag on the social/national body. The Nazis used this same idea and terminology.

Increasing the "Smooth Flow" of the "Stream": The left image is from designer Egmont Arens' lecture "Streamlining in Nature," comparing a white greyhound whose form is "in his blood" with the "stream lines" (like blood stream lines). The right is a mock-up medal for the winners of the Fitter Family Contests sponsored by the American Eugenics Society, showing the "stream of life" being poured into a eugenic baby by two classically-garbed parents (reference to western civilization and the Golden Age of Greece).

From Science to Design (1935): An image of a Scientific American article, found in Egmont Arens' archive, which shows "Streamlining in Nature," the title of which Arens took for his own talks about streamlining. Streamlining in fish and birds derives from survival of the fittest and environmental adaptation, the article argues; Arens took this directly from the article and applied it to justify streamlining in industrial design as a mark of evolutionary fitness.

Increasing Biological Efficiency: The Burlington Zephyr ad shows the evolution of transportation, moving from oxcart or horse-drawn covered wagon, through steam-powered locomotives, to the superior streamliner engine of the day. Arens talked about this in his talk "Streamlining in Nature," saying that "a country yokel's slow wit is good enough at 3 miles per hour"; "compare that with Malcolm Campbell going 300; he has to think 100 times as fast." (paraphrase). The increase of human intelligence - - a main aim of eugenics -- was deemed necessary to compete with the evolution of technology. The lower image is Raymond Loewy's redesign of the Greyhound Bus logo, showing his decreasing the physical bodily bulk of the animal. Medical discourse argued that bulk was for draft animals (body type determines occupation), but sleekness characterized intelligence bodies prioritizing brains over brawn.

Increasing Hygiene and Sterilization: Left, Walter Dorwin Teague, WIZ Receipt Register (c.1934), from Jeffrey Meikle, Twentieth-Century Limited, 101-2, showing the before and after design that increased hygiene in the environment (less surfaces for dust collection, easier wipedown for germ removal); Poster from US American Public Health Association exhibition "Eugenics in New Germany" that toured the US from 1934-43, "If This Man Had Been Sterilized..." (giving visual form to race hygiene practices. Chapter 5 of my book Eugenic Design discusses germ theory and hygiene in popular American culture in this period, to show the close corrollations between hygiene in design for the environment, and race hygiene through eugenics.

Create the "Ideal Type": Above are 2 anthropometric composite sculptures created by Robert Latou Dickinson (eminent gynecologist, eugenicist, founder of the American Euthanasia Society) called Norma and Normman (1942), sculpted by Abram Belski for the Cleveland Health Museum (now in Harvard's Collection, recently transfered from HealthSpace Cleveland). The show the "norm" functioning as an "ideal." Industrial designers frequently talked about changing designs of a particular product type - here, an automobile by Norman Bel Geddes from Horizons - as an evolution of design toward the "ideal type" - see the text surrounding this image. The Zephyr ad comes from an exhibition catalogue of the Henry Ford Museum, Streamlining America (1986-87), 16.

The last 2 images I'll post about streamlining and eugenics are Raymond Loewy's Evolution Charts from 1934. They show the evolution of various designs over time, including telephones, chairs, goblets, trains, houses, cars, as well as female fashion and the female figure (not all included here). If you look closely, not all lineages start at the same date nor change at the same rate of speed, but he presents them in parallel as if they are all moving towards the same end: simiplified, streamlined forms devoid of ornamentation. It is as if all things, including people, are conforming to the same natural law, when in fact, design choices are made owing to decisions by designers working in particular contexts towards particular ends. At that moment, when eugenics was hugely popular, the idea of designing humans for greater beauty, intelligence, and productivity was very much in the popular press.

Raymond Loewy, Evolution Chart (1934), private collection.

These charts raise a deep fundamental question: Are design and other human cultural productions a social construction, or something that arises owing to seemingly genetically-determined evolutionary change in the mind that makes itself manifest in cultural production? I lean strongly towards the former, but I know many others lean towards the latter. In my writing about Loewy's charts, and streamlining and eugenics, I see all of these events as an outcome of 1930s' applications of evolutionary ideas to the realm of human society, and culture, NOT as evolution itself actually at work in the realm of design, passing through the streamlined stage, say, on its way to complex "genetic architecture" today.

NATHANIEL COMFORT
04-10-2010 19:05:44
First, Suzanne, thanks for pointing out the European development of "race hygiene." You're absolutely right. The historiography on US eugenics has emphasized the agricultural associations--origins in the American Breeders' Association, Davenport's definition of eugenics as "the science of improving mankind through better breeding," etc.

In one of the chapters in my forthcoming book, The Science of Human Perfection, I will show that race hygiene was also very important here in the States. Perhaps more important than the agricultural associations. Just for a couple of quick examples: William H. Welch, the legendary Johns Hopkins physician who founded the school of Public Health and Hygiene (as well as my department, History of Medicine) and Adolph Meyer, the psychiatrist who gave us the concept of "mental hygiene," were charter members of the American Breeders' Association's Eugenics Committee.

And Christina, the material on eugenics and streamlining is *fascinating*. Your remarks help show that eugenic thinking is a much more fundamental expression of human needs and tendencies than most historians have acknowledged. Eugenics is not an aberration that we can safely cage in a couple of decades of the early 20th century. It's something we need to confront right through the second half of the 20th C. and on into the 21st.

I would actually like to get away from the language of social construction, though. It's just the social scientist's version of the nature/nurture debate, which I think is no longer productive. Let's talk instead about the ways in which certain impulses span multiple cultural moments, finding different expression in each. Eugenics may be one of those impulses. Design certainly is.

BARBARA CREED

04-10-2010 19:51:04
I find Christina’s discussion of eugenics and streamlining very interesting and the images fascinating. It is relevant to work I have been doing on Busy Berkeley musicals of the early 1930s such as Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street, and Dames. Berkeley’s musicals were noted for their beautiful geometric designs, assembly-line precision and kaleidoscopic patterns. He was famous for using large groups of chorines or showgirls whose performances on stage appeared to follow a predetermined set of laws derived from geometric patterning. These highly streamlined acts contained scenes that referred directly to reproduction, often accompanied by the famous Busby Berkeley through-the-legs crotch shot (of female and sometimes male performers) that almost always led to a kaleidoscopic sequence, filmed from above, of women’s bodies arranged to resemble scenes from nature such as the opening of a flower and its fertilisation. (I’ll see if I can post some images). In my book, Darwin’s Screens, I argue that the musical could be seen primarily in relation to Darwin’s theory of sexual display and sexual selection. A close reading of Darwin’s text, in relation to a detailed analysis of the musical (the elaborate scenes of display, dancing, singing, costume, tapping feet, the stage/bower, selection, courtship etc) offers many parallels. Carmen Miranda’s famous camp ‘Tutti Frutti Hat’ number from the 1943-colour film, The Gang’s All Here, in which Carmen Miranda wears an enormous banana headpiece, transforms her into a female counterpart of Darwin’s performing male birds with their elaborate topknots and wattles. In the musical, visual emphasis is on display, dance, and fertility rituals. In this context, Berkeley’s designs clearly harmonised with Christina’s concept of eugenic design and streamlining of the thirties. In 42nd Street, the hero serenades one of the dancers with the number: ‘I’m young and healthy’ which includes the line ‘I’m full of vitamin A’. Billy is helpfully putting his genetic endowment on display as another reason for mating. Critics have tended to interpret Busby Berkeley’s modern designs in term the influence of Fordism and the popularity of machine art without relating this to sexual selection and evolutionary processes. The musical has not been discussed before in relation to Darwinian theory, but it seems clear that there has been a strong influence, particularly given the popularity of evolutionary concepts in the 1930s. I think my answer to the question that Christina raises at the end is that in the case of the musical (but not all things) both factor are key - social construction and genetically determined factors that relate to sexual selection. In nature, many bird dances are also smooth, flowing, repetitive displays of great beauty. I look forward to reading Christina’s book.

The images below from Busby Berkeley’s musicals all suggest sexual display and sexual selection in various exotic settings.

42nd Street poster (1933) – an illustration of the famous crotch shot.

Footlight Parade (1933) - sexual display with the chorines spread out in a pyramid formation on a rotating wheel.

The Gang’s All Here (1943 – the chorines forming changing geometric patterns while holding fruit above their heads. This is followed by a scene of symbolic fertilisation.

Dames (1933) - the dancer’s bodies forming a long tunnel, not unlike a fallopian tube, which the viewer travels through to the end where the male is waiting.

Gold Diggers of 1933 - a group of chorines, with neon violins, in which each forms the petal of a flower. This is followed by a clear suggestion of fertilisation.

The Gang’s All Here (1943) - Carmen Miranda, with her enormous top-knot, looking like a Neolithic fruit goddess. Prior to this the chorines perform a fertility dance with bananas.

CHRISTINA COGDELL

04-11-2010 11:23:00
Barbara, I love the Busby Berkeley images and your analysis of the evolutionary themes of his work. I heard your talk in London at The Art of Evolution conference and really enjoyed it. Thanks for posting some images here - I actually wanted to have some for teaching this past year after I heard your talk, so this is great.

Nathaniel, Assimina, and anyone else, I would love to have more discussion about the limitations of the social construction approach to understanding how scientific ideas function in the cultural/humanities realm. I emailed Kevin and asked if we can have a thread in this last portion about "theory" to flesh out the general move away from social construction toward materialist philosophy. Along those lines, I feel that there are also limitations to materialist philosophy with regards to addressing issues of power/inequality, so: Is there a middle ground between these two? Which authors in history and philosophy of science, or literary/visual theory, etc. negotiate these two domains well? This seems a great opportunity for our different disciplinary backgrounds to come together to point out useful theoretical models for research on the topics of this symposium.

Nathaniel, can you expand on what you mean by "social construction is just the nature/nurture debate from the social scientists' position"?

Perhaps discussion can continue in the new thread Kevin said he'd post today under the April 11-14 section.

ASSIMINA KANIARI

04-11-2010 13:30:05
I think the turn to art and science as an 'art historical' discourse from the late 30s and Herbert Read's writings that certainly involved design and D'Arcy Thompson are perceived as a turn to materialist philosophy in the languages of art historical description. This is evident from the reception of Read's work and it is my point in discussing the post-war re-conceptualization of perspective and kinds of symmetry that emerge out of practices and visibilities attuned also to new kinds of matter and scales of observation with regard to the intellectual context that Martin Kemp's work might also be placed. (See my paper Perspective as art historical form after Panofsky in Acts of Seeing. Artists, scientists and the history of the visual, co-edited my me (Zidane press, 2009). In my paper in this collection of essays I isolate Martin Kemp's approach to form as 'symbolic yet not arbitrary' as indicative of his 'new take on art historical materialism'.

Social construction, yes I agree with Nathaniel, has strong social science resonances and STS resonances perhaps which have often been placed with relativism. It's not a black and while story however. Much of the new attention to techniques and practices and the visual in the history of science after Shapin, Schaffer and Rudwick have taken to some extent in mind some aspects of Bloor's strong programme and the idea that solutions to problems of knowledge contain solutions to questions of social order. Even though Rudwick in his very influential early paper on visual languages of geology references, if only in a footnote Ivins's Prints and Visual Communication.

I think the turn to practices, objects and the material culture of science in the history of science and the study of its covergences with art history opened up significantly the kinds of evidence that historians examine as opposed to claims and rhetoric only and even if one wishes to move away from terms associated with particular discourses like the social construction of facts, the turn to instruments and ethnographic vs textually based approaches to evidence have a 'common ancestor'! in earlier anthropology and ethnomethodology.

Materialist philosophy sound's good!

4/9: What were the relationships between science/art/visual culture and the thinking about evolution?

2010-04-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-11-2010 16:48:02

DAVID YAGER
04-08-2010 10:29:50
Are there any formal relationships we are aware of? Meetings, conversations etc.?

BARBARA LARSON
04-08-2010 19:12:34
Certainly we see a direct correspondence between Haeckel's turn-of-the-century imagery (an artist as well as a biologist) such as in his Art Forms in Nature (1899-1904) and art nouveau forms directly based on his drawings. This is even found on the architectural level, as in Binet's radiolaria-based Entry Gate to Paris's 1900 universal exposition.

JANE MUNRO
04-09-2010 05:41:13
Here is a pre- 'two cultures' meeting/conversation A Science and Art Conversazione by Richard Doyle. http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/doyle/29.html

SUZANNE ANKER
04-09-2010 16:38:49
Dear Michael and Barbara
I would like to visit the relationship of science/art and visual culture in terms of the scientific hoax. The "Fejee Mermaid," a specimen displayed at Barnum's early museum was introduced to the public, initially through woodcuts in the newspapers and other printed matter in 1853. Taking the form as a cross between a fish and a woman, this object brought the public into the museum in huge numbers., in effect, employing the museum as a sideshow. As stated in the Hoax Archive hosted at http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive:
"The Feejee Mermaid was an example of a traditional art form perfected by fishermen in Japan and the East Indies who constructed faux mermaids by stitching the upper bodies of apes onto the bodies of fish. They often created these mermaids for use in religious ceremonies. The Feejee Mermaid herself is believed to have been created around 1810 by a Japanese fisherman."

The other hoaxes I mentioned in an earlier post were Haekel's diagrams of embryonic development and
Nilsson's 1965 photographs of dead fetuses. Many people are not aware of either of these manipulated
scientific facts. The question remains as to why these scientific images still circulate as such. What are your thoughts on this matter?

MICHAEL SAPPOL
04-09-2010 17:14:22
Unlike the Piltdown Man hoax, the Feejee Mermaid didn't come bundled with any persuasive evolutionary claims. But it did mimic the type of scientific specimens that were often mobilized on behalf of evolutionary arguments.

Haeckel's embryological series was an important piece of visual rhetoric in support of his dictum, "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." It may have been deceiving, and "bad science", but I don't think that it was a deliberate hoax in the same sense as the two hoaxes mentioned above. Attached here is a page from Haeckel's embryos which were lithographic reproductions. We've mentioned motion pictures and photography and wood and copper engraving, but lithography and especially the half-tone were major components of a technological revolution that utterly changed the look of books, magazines and newspapers, and contributed mightily to the proliferation of evolutionary images in the 20th century.

Ernst Haeckel, The history of creation... A popular exposition of the doctrine of evolution in general, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in particular . . . (1876), pl 2-3

Another form of visual rhetoric that was very precious to early and mid-20th-century eugenicists was the kinship chart.

C.B. Davenport (1866–1944), Eugenics, the science of human improvement by better breeding (New York, 1910).

MICHAEL SAPPOL
04-09-2010 18:02:11
Following Suzanne's thread about hoaxes, we can ask "how does visual rhetoric persuade?" What makes a particular production, or type of production, convincing? Barnum famously did not care: he knew he could sell tickets if people were hooked on the controversy over authenticity. It didn't matter whether the "suckers" scoffed or marveled.

Why was the eugenicist kinship diagram so very persuasive? (For one thing it distracted one from closely examining the often questionable data upon which it is based.)

Why were so many people--scientists and lay people--convinced by Haeckel's embryological series?

Obviously no image or even genre of images can be taken in isolation. Attached is a photo of evolutionary sculptural series made for the American Museum of Natural History. The photograph, however, is taken from a book, God or Gorilla?, which presented it to bolster an anti-evolutionary argument. No image is so persuasive that it can stand by itself; images always come bundled, and even then are often multi-valent, available for different and even contradictory agendas.

Alfred Watterson McCann, God–or gorilla; how the monkey theory of evolution exposes its own methods, refutes its own principles, denies its own inferences, disproves its own case (1922)

SUZANNE ANKER:
04-09-2010 21:58:32
Dear Michael,

Thank you for your insight in this matter, but I am not convinced of Haeckel's intentions after reading Nick Hopwood's article.

Pictures of Evolution and Charges of Fraud
Ernst Haeckel’s Embryological Illustrations
By Nick Hopwood*
ABSTRACT
Comparative illustrations of vertebrate embryos by the leading nineteenth-century Darwinist Ernst Haeckel have been both highly contested and canonical. Though the target of repeated fraud charges since 1868, the pictures were widely reproduced in textbooks through the twentieth century. Concentrating on their first ten years, this essay uses the accusations to shed light on the novelty of Haeckel’s visual argumentation and to explore how images come to count as proper representations or illegitimate schematics as they cross between the esoteric and exoteric circles of science. It exploits previously unused manuscripts to reconstruct the drawing, printing, and publishing of the illustrations that attracted the first and most influential attack, compares these procedures to standard practice, and highlights their originality. It then explains why, though Haeckel was soon accused, controversy ignited only seven years later, after he aligned a disciplinary struggle over embryology with a major confrontation between liberal nationalism and Catholicism —and why the contested pictures nevertheless survived.

* Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, United Kingdom. Research for this essay was supported by the Wellcome Trust and partly carried out in the departments of Lorraine Daston and Hans-Jo ̈ rg Rheinberger at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. My greatest debt is to the archivists of the Ernst-Haeckel-Haus, Jena: the late Erika Krauße gave generous help and invaluable advice over many years, and Thomas Bach, her successor as Kustos, provided much assistance with this project. I also thank the staff of the other institutions credited in the notes and figure legends as holding materials. The editors of the Darwin Correspondence Project kindly granted access to unpublished material, and the Syndics of Cambridge University Library gave permission to quote from the Darwin Papers. Early versions were given as talks between March 2003 and November 2004 in Canterbury, Berlin, Cambridge, Madison, Chicago, and the ISHPSSB meeting in Vienna. For insightful comments on drafts and other invaluable advice I am very grateful to Soraya de Chadarevian, Lorraine Daston, Silvia De Renzi, Tim Horder, Uwe Hoßfeld, Nick Jardine, Ron Numbers, Simon Schaffer, Anne Secord, and James Secord, as well as the editor and two anonymous referees of this journal. Adrian Newman expertly prepared the figures. All emphasis is in the originals and all translations are my own, though I have followed the contemporary English versions of Haeckel’s books as far as they are faithful.

Isis, 2006, 97:260–301 2006 by The History of Science Society.

BARBARA LARSON:
04-10-2010 12:39:07
On another front, there was a lot of flow between scientific illustrators, science, and art. Sometimes they were all one in the same as in the case of Haeckel, a scientist, an illustrator, and a landscape painter. Fremiet was an anatomical illustrator at natural history and medical institutions, but also created the ultimate proto-king kong sculpture, Gorilla Carrying Off a Woman (1859/1887) and many other imaginative works. Duval led a double life as an anthropology professor and an anatomy teacher at the offical Paris art school in 1880, where he put an evolutionary spin on Camper's 1775 illstrations of similiarities bewteen apes and humans. Darwin employed the animal artist Joseph Wolf to illustrate a macaque. It was fairly common for scientists to also illustrate their own work, at least for private use. It may be for that reason--an inability to do so--that Darwin relied so strongly on descriptive detail (to return to an earlier point by Michael.)

BARBARA CREED:
04-10-2010 22:29:53
In reply to Suzanne’s question as to why do imaginary images such as The Feejee Mermaid still circulate – a fantastic image that I had not seen before. I think, as The Endless Forms exhibition revealed, Darwin’s theory of evolution excites the fantastic side of our imaginations. Although as Gillian Beer points out (Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction), Darwin never wrote about the future. ‘Nowhere does Darwin give a glimpse of future forms: and rightly so, since it is fundamental to his argument that they are unforeseeable, produced out of too many variable to be plotted in advance’. For this reason, as Robert Scholes argues, Darwin’s theory is central to the genre of science fiction. This is true for both literature and film. At least 70 futuristic works were published in England between 1870 and 1900, which also draw upon the metaphor of evolution. Many of these, such as H. G Well’s, The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau, were made into films. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon (1901) inspired George Melies who made the very first science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon in 1902. Central to much science fiction film (Island of Lost Souls, 1932; The Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954; The Fly 1986; Alien 1979; Species 1995) are images of the body as different, often monstrously alien. Darwin opened up the possibility of the human form both evolving and devolving over time into unforeseeable forms. His theory as lends itself to imaging what a post-Darwinian body might look like as explored by contemporary artists such as Patricia Piccinini and Julie Rrap.

SUZANNE ANKER

04-11-2010 09:45:53
Dear Barbara and Michael,

Yes, I would like to continue the "science fiction" thread here as it pertains to regenerative medicine. The science of tissue culturing, with its roots in Alex Carrel;s groundbreaking work in the early part of the twentieth century, continues to find currency in today's laboratories as well as visual art practices. Carrel's innovative work in vascular surgery, suturing blood vessels, cultivating tumor tissue in vitro and, in the mod-1930's, his work with aviator Charles Lindburgh on a 'profusion pump' (cited previously in this discussion,)

allowing organs to live outside the body during surgery, led to the development of organ transplant surgery as we know it today. Carrel was awarded a Nobel Prize in physiology for his work in 1912. Part mystic and part die-hard eugenicist, Carrel's revolutionary work (and theatrical personality) brought to public view a promising new technology for repairing injury and curing disease (Friedman, 2008).

Julian Huxley's short story, "Tissue Culture King." published in 1927, makes reference to Alexis Carrel's work and it is another example of the interchange between science and its fictions. In this tale, a narrator retells his encounters in Africa as a stranded Englishman who becomes a cohort of Hascombe, an English scientist captured by the same African tribe 15 years earlier. For the tribal king, blood was revered as a mythic substance. Convincing the tribal leader that white men too revere blood, Hascombe enthrals him with visions obtainable via his microscope, eventually becoming part of their local community and supported by the tribe to continue his scientific research. In hearing that Hascombe named his tribal laboratory the Institute of Religious Tissue-Culture, the narrator recalls the day:

"my mind went back to a day in 1918 when I had been taken by a biological friend in New York to see the famous Rockefeller Institute; and at the word tissue-culture I saw again before me Dr. Alexis Carrel and troops of white-garbed American girls making cultures, sterilizing, microscoping, incubating and the rest of it. " ( Huxley, 1927)

Eventually, Hascombe was able to convince the tribal chief that if he tissue-cultured the life within him, the growth of these extended king essences would "actually be an increase in the quantity of the divine principle."

More recently, tissue-culture has entered the practice of art. For a fuller discussion of "Artists in the Lab" see pages 91-137 from the last online symposium, "Visual Culture and Bioscience" published as Issues in Cultural Theory 12.

BARBARA LARSON:

04-11-2010 16:48:02
The time period you are discussing, the early to mid-twentieth century was one in which regeneration theory was offering an antidote to degeneration theory (which as we know, inspired Third Reich philosophy, but dates back to the eighteenth century). Degeneration theory became tied up in evolutionism and misunderstandings about heredity--atavism also emerged from evolutionary debates.

Though I know regeneration theory through neo-Lamarckian theories of inheritance of improved constitutions (through physical fitness regimes and so on) or the notion of improvements through eugenism operating now--and all of this, degeneration and regeneration enters science fiction--I didn't know about "tissue culture" and science fiction. Thanks for bringing that up.

4/9: The impact of new imaging technology on visual culture and science

2010-04-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-12-2010 09:02:56

KEVIN FINNERAN:
04-08-2010 23:31:13
New imaging technology such as photography and film were becoming available to artists, scientists, and the general public in late 19th and early 20th century. What developments were most significant, and how did they change the way that we see and convey meaning visually?

JD TALASEK
04-09-2010 03:32:33
In the keynote interview with Eduardo Kac for this symposium, Kac mentions that one often hears about what science has given to the artist but seldom the other way around. He sites as an example the invention of photography and the fact that Daguerre was an artist (He was also a chemist). Kac says this contribution from an artist is seldom mentioned but I’m not sure that is entirely fair. In fact, I can think of two science institutions that embraced and acknowledged the contributions of Daguerre before the art community did. The science community acknowledged the invention’s significance when the French Academy of Sciences announced the process of the Daguerreotype on January 7, 1839. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the art community accepted photography as a legitimate art medium although certainly photography impacted culture and ideas in other ways - through journalism and mass production of images for example. This has already been pointed out in other posts and I’m sure will be expanded upon further today. I see yet another acknowledgement by a science institution of the contributions of photography every time that I walk through the National Academy of Sciences building’s Great Hall on my way to my office. In the south arch of the Great Hall, the emblem below of a camera and bellows was painted to commemorate Daguerre’s contribution and his announcement at the Academy in France. It was painted in 1924 by Hildreth Meière under the direction of the NAS building committee and architect Bertram Goodhue.

Hildreth Meière, 1924, detail of the NAS Great Hall, Washington DC

ASSIMINA KANIARI

04-09-2010 06:07:37
Martin Kemp notes two of the early and most powerful elements in the rhetoric that accompanied the reception of the new medium of photography in England and France in 1839 as a “tool in scientific recording”: “the objective eye of the photographic camera” and the “impersonal traces of light on a photographic emulsion.” This rhetoric of photography as a scientific medium, as the correspondence between William Henry Fox Talbot and Sir John Herschel of the same year shows, was implicated in scientists own hopes and dreams for a new and indeed perfect to their uses medium. Talbot wrote for example that he had “great hopes” for photographs taken with his “Solar microscope…as for instance in copying the minute forms of crystallization which are so complicated as almost to defy the pencil.”

Photography by 1878 had captured movement too rapid for human sight to apprehend as Eadweard Mybridge’s revelations of a horses gait had made clear but it was much later that the medium of photography fulfilled the promise of ‘recording’ that Talbot hoped for in 1839. Capturing movement and witnessing phenomena in stills across scales, previously inaccessible to physiological vision and ordinary sight, seemed to be no problem in the example of Worthington and Edgerton 1908 splashes, or Berenice Abbott’s Wave Interference Pattern of the 1950s. Such vistas of an uncanny behaviour of matter, popular images as they became, informed the work, acts of seeing and thinking about form of a series of artists as well as art historians who from the 50s onwards increasingly engaged with modern theories of vision; Hebert Read, Ernst Gombrich and Rudolph Arnheim among a few.

In 1859 however photography was not the medium to reproduce scientific detail either in book form or in the communications that became published in the Journals of the learned bodies concerned with ‘natural histories’ broadly defined. This was not so much about photography’s inability to record but the inability at the technical level to reproduce photographic image on a mass scale in a way that kept and indeed emphasized the elements most precious to scientific description: pronounced form. Pattern and the delineation of abstracted form as pattern is in place in the visual culture of mid-19th century science however, without photography, as Gray’s almost physiological rendering of form in his Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical of 1858 shows. The resistance of this “dry style”, as Martin Kemp has called it, to both anatomical photography and later X-rays, is perhaps evidence for the success of this particular style of seeing against ways of recording that while allow new technology do not become subservient to it.

To return to Darwin however and photography one should perhaps look more on the ‘modern’ appropriations of physiognomics which as Christina Cogdell has noted in the example of Galton attempted to fix norms about what is natural, normal and pathological, in the context of 19th century research on ‘psychology’. It is interesting though to note that Darwin in the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) that included a number of images describing registers of expression as psychologically captured detail and evidence of social behaviour relied also on actors. To attempt to frame a moment in transition from a pre-Darwinian, pre-photographic apparatus of recording emotions as physiognomically embedded signs and socially contingent properties we could look at Honore Daumier’s comic prints from the Physiognomic Gallery, 1836-7, like the Lover of Oysters kept in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, where the depiction of the sitter takes up the characteristics pronounced in the taxonomic type of fish, and compare it to the Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne’s, Activation of Facial Muscles with Electrodes from the Bodlean Library, University of Oxford, reproduced in his Mechanisms of Human Physiognomy of 1862. Darwin requested permission to reproduce images from Duchenne’s book and while Darwin’s Expression of the Emotions is a discourse very visually and photographically captured and conveyed in the book, emotions constituted by photographic images of expression attest to a theme dear both to Darwin and evolutionary thinking: instincts.

And some primarily evidence (in rather raw form, apologies) in relation to JD's point about scientists' uses of art and artists, in the example of Darwin's Expression of Emotions.

Darwin’s credits to art and artists in the Expression of Emotions

“I have already expressed my obligations to Dr. Duchenne for generously permitting me to have some of his large photographs copied and reduced. All these photographs have been printed by the Heliotype process, and the accuracy of the copy is thus guaranteed. These plates are referred to by Roman numerals.” (Darwin, 1872, p. 25).

“I am also greatly indebted to Mr. T. W. Wood for the extreme pains which he has taken in drawing from life the expressions of various animals. A distinguished artist, Mr. Riviere, has had the kindness to give me two drawings of dogs—one in a hostile and the other in a humble and caressing frame of mind. Mr. A. May has also given me two similar sketches of dogs. Mr. Cooper has taken much care in cutting the blocks. Some of the photographs and drawings, namely, those by Mr. May, and those by Mr. Wolf of the Cynopithecus, were first reproduced by Mr. Cooper on wood by means of photography, and then engraved: by this means almost complete fidelity is ensured.” (Darwin, 1872, p. 25-26.)

On Darwin’s uses of art as a separate branch of evidence and inquiry in compiling the book:

“The study of Expression is difficult, owing to the movements being often extremely slight, and of a fleeting nature. A difference may be clearly perceived, and yet it may be impossible, at least I have found it so, to state in what the difference consists. When we witness any deep emotion, our sympathy is so strongly excited, that close observation is forgotten or rendered almost impossible; of which fact I have had many curious proofs. Our imagination is another and still more serious source of error; for if from the nature of the circumstances we expect to see any expression, we readily imagine its presence. Notwithstanding Dr. Duchenne's great experience, he for a long time fancied, as he states, that several muscles contracted under certain emotions, whereas he ultimately convinced himself that the movement was confined to a single muscle.

In order to acquire as good a foundation as possible, and to ascertain, independently of common opinion, how far particular movements of the features and gestures are really expressive of certain states of the mind, I have found the following means the most serviceable. In the first place, to observe infants; for they exhibit many emotions, as Sir C. Bell remarks, "with extraordinary force;"…In the second place, it occurred to me that the insane ought to be studied, as they are liable to the strongest passions, and give uncontrolled vent to them. I had, myself, no opportunity of doing this, so I applied to Dr. Maudsley, and received from him an introduction to Dr. J. Crichton Browne, who has charge of an immense asylum near Wakefield, and who, as I found, had already attended to the subject…Thirdly, Dr. Duchenne galvanized, as we have already seen, certain muscles in the face of an old man, whose skin was little sensitive, and thus produced various expressions which were photographed on a large scale. It fortunately occurred to me to show several of the best plates, without a word of explanation, to above twenty educated persons of various ages and both sexes, asking them, in each case, by what emotion or feeling the old man was supposed to be agitated; and I recorded their answers in the words which they used. Several of the expressions were instantly recognised by almost everyone, though described in not exactly the same terms; and these may, I think, be relied on as truthful, and will hereafter be specified. On the other hand, the most widely different judgments were pronounced in regard to some of them. This exhibition was of use in another way, by convincing me how easily we may be misguided by our imagination; for when I first looked through Dr. Duchenne's photographs, reading at the same time the text, and thus learning what was intended, I was struck with admiration at the truthfulness of all, with only a few exceptions. Nevertheless, if I had examined them without any explanation, no doubt I should have been as much perplexed, in some cases, as other persons have been.Fourthly, I had hoped to derive much aid from the great masters in painting and sculpture, who are such close observers. Accordingly, I have looked at photographs and engravings of many well-known works; but, with a few exceptions, have not thus profited. The reason no doubt is, that in works of art, beauty is the chief object; and strongly contracted facial muscles destroy beauty.19 The story of the composition is generally told with wonderful force and truth by skilfully given accessories.

Fifthly, it seemed to me highly important to ascertain whether the same expressions and gestures prevail, as has often been asserted without much evidence, with all the races of mankind, especially with those who have associated but little with Europeans. Whenever the same movements of the features or body express the same emotions in several distinct races of man, we may infer with much probability, that such expressions are true ones,—that is, are innate or instinctive.” ((Darwin, 1872, pp. 13-15)

19 See remarks to this effect in Lessing's 'Laocoon,' translated by W. Ross, 1836, p. 19.

“N.B.—Several of the figures in these seven Heliotype Plates have been reproduced from photographs, instead of from the original negatives; and they are in consequence somewhat indistinct. Nevertheless they are faithful copies, and are much superior for my purpose to any drawing, however carefully executed.”

ELLEN LEVY
04-09-2010 08:03:33
Kevin’s topic of course brings up photography and film, as well relayed by Assimina. And, as John pointed out, the development of photography did not fully get recognized by the art community until the 1960s although the Daguerreotype process was conceived in the 19th century. I would similarly like to point out that, in the early 20th century, another form of imaging altogether was conceived by Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin. In effect, it marks a new lineage of imaging that was side-lined until recent technology could build on it and artists found it of value. Fleming’s germ paintings” were playfully made during the early 1930s. He made them by streaking various bacteria on the agar in his Petri dishes, a practice that, of course, did not involve genetic manipulation. This was arguably the first occurrence of ‘living’ art, a tradition that, as we know, continues today in contemporary art. The branches of this lineage now include the work of synthetic biologist, Chris Voigt, who made a ‘living camera’ in 2005 by genetically-engineering E. coli bacteria to create an image. The fact is that Voigt’s innovative imaging technology has now, in turn, succeeded in several different ways to reflect on biological and cultural evolution and on Darwin. It’s no accident that one of Voigt’s bacterial ‘photographs’ included a flying spaghetti monster. He chose it for its symbolic value – the image was originally created as political activism against the teaching of creationism.

On the left is the result of Alexander Fleming's bacterial imaging (early 1930's) and on the right is an image formed by bacteria, genetically-engineered by Chris Voigt’s team to develop photographs

JD TALASEK
04-09-2010 12:11:29
This is a slight tangent from the meaty thread that has begun on technology but still it is something that interests me in terms of how ideas are communicated through changing technology – how we teach and how we learn. During this symposium I am revisiting the wonderfully executed podcasts that Jane Munro’s team created to accompany the Endless Forms exhibition. I’m reminded of something that many of us who have had to put together a slide show or PowerPoint presentation often take for granted. One of the podcasts reminded me of how contemporaries of Darwin would often use their drawings or the illustrations of others as visuals displayed around the class room. The idea of not having the technology to communicate visually through projection would stump many of us in this group, I dare say.

The progression from the presentation of drawings, to slide projections, to photography and eventually to PowerPoint is significant yet almost unnoticeable in the transferring of knowledge. Today these educational tools are augmented by the use of podcasts, email, and videos and other media. I would even include our present experiment in this online discussion as an example of the range of options available to us through changing technology. It is important to hold in mind that our way of sharing information is mediated through technology whether it is in a classroom or museum environment. The question arises at what point does the technology facilitate communication and learning and at what point does it get in the way?

BARBARA CREED
04-09-2010 12:45:54
Kevin has suggested that I might post a statement on the basic timeline for new imaging technologies and how they were initially used. As my area of specialisation is the cinema, I will focus on this. Many advances in the history of imaging technologies occurred during the nineteenth century, possibly one of the most important in 1832 with the invention of the Phenakisticope. In 1828 Joseph Plateau published his findings concerning ‘the persistence of vision’ (now contested) in which he offered an explanation as to why the eye has the ability to perceive a series of still images as a continuous moving picture. In 1829, Plateau invented a device called the Phenakisticope, which conveyed the impression of still images combining to form a moving picture. In the same year, Simon Stampfer invented a similar device, which he called a Stroboscope. Both inventions were central to the prehistory of cinematography and the emergence of the first motion pictures. Other key inventions in the history of new imaging technologies were the Kaleidoscope (David Brewster, 1816), the Diorama (Dageurre, 1822), and the Praxinoscope (Reynaud, 1877). It is hard to imagine that Darwin was not aware of the inventions of the Phenakisticope and the Stroboscope. If anyone has any knowledge of Darwin’s possible interest in these inventions, I would love to hear more.

It is possible Darwin may have heard of the pioneering work of Eadweard Muybridge who, in 1877, commenced a photographic study of motion. Muybridge set out to capture images of the gait of horses. He wanted to see if a horse, when galloping, ever had all four feet off the ground at the same time. He set up twenty-four cameras side by side along a racetrack. He then stretched twenty-four threads across the track so that the galloping horse would break each thread and trip the shutters of the cameras. What Muybridge did with his sequential images was create a scientific study of movement. By 1880 he was able to project photographic sequences of various animals in motion with his Zoopraxiscope. In 1882 Etienne-Jules Marey developed a photographic gun, the first portable motion picture camera, which enabled him to take twelve photographs per second.

Phillip Prodger makes an interesting observation in relation to Darwin and the work of these two men. In his essay on Darwin’s illustrations in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (edited by Paul Ekman, HarperCollins, 1998), Prodger states that Darwin’s book ‘played a major role in bringing photographic evidence into the scientific world’. This was one of the first attempts to use photographs ‘to freeze motion for analysis and study, predating the pioneering motion studies’ of Muybridge and Marey. He concludes: ‘Darwin’s photographs have proved inspirational to generations of artists, and may even have fuelled the invention of motion pictures’ (401). Darwin’s photographs also freeze emotions, creating another link to the silent cinema, which was seen at the time as a new language of the emotions conveyed, not through words, but through the power of facial expressions.

Following on from Muybridge and Marey, Edison by 1888 had developed the first cinema camera, which was able to produce short filmstrips. In 1891, Edison took out patents on his Kinetograph and the Kinetoscope, which was at the time the most advanced cinematographic apparatus for viewing. It was in the form of a peep show in which individual viewers could watch short lengths of film. It was the Lumiere Brothers, however, who are credited with exhibiting the first films, using their own machines, to a paying public in 1895 at the Grand Café, Paris. Within a few weeks they were screening their films to over two thousand people a day.

A study of these first films, many of which ran for under 60 seconds, reveals that audiences were interested in almost anything: magical films that used special effects, such as those by Georges Melies, realistic films of everyday events, comic events, a couple kissing, workers, children, animals, sex, scientific images, the body. Travel films, which depicted people from around the globe, their daily lives and customs, were extremely popular. One of the most unexpected developments was that pioneers of the silent cinema such as the director, D.W. Griffith, came to see film as a ‘universal language’, an ‘Esperanto of the Eye’, a new language that spoke to all peoples regardless of race or religion.

The influence of Darwinian ideas on early films was also evident. More than twenty films from the silent period examine ideas related to evolutionary theory. These include an early Danish film (The Human Ape or Darwin's Triumph, 1909), short comedies (Joe, the Educated Orangoutang, Undressing, 1898), a cartoon (Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914) and a number of longer silent films such as the first Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde (1912) and Tarzan of the Apes (1918). With its special effects, subjective camera, ability to travel through time, and its power to collapse distinctions between human and animal, the cinema has proven well suited to an exploration of Darwinian ideas.

JD Talasek
04-09-2010 14:39:32
In thinking about how technology has impacted art, the work of two art historians come to mind – Linda Henderson (mentioned by Kac in the keynote interview) and Anne Goodyear. Individually, both historians have revealed through extensive research the impact that ideas generated by science and changing technologies through out the 20th century have had on artists’ work.

Henderson’s exhibition Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York was a reinvestigation of a group of artists whose work was directly impacted by ideas of time and space and visualizing the fourth dimension. Their work was not in step with the more heavily mentioned members of the New York School of artists and they have all but been left out of most historical accounts (Wilson, in his keynote interview, called for cultural critics to improve their analytical skills by becoming better educated in science). This exhibition exemplifies the possibility that there could have been more artists influenced by ideas of science but they simply may not be within the well known canon.

As the assistant curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Goodyear has focused her attention on a number of technology/art related themes that include the connection between technology and identity revealed in contemporary art practices. As an example, she cites the work of Marc Quinn specifically mentioning his portrait of John Sulston, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2002 for sequencing the human genome. The portrait consists of Sulston’s DNA suspended in agar jelly and then framed. In a way this is more of a “true” portrait of Sulston than a representational rendering raising the question of how our changing understanding of genetics impact our self-identity.

The consensus, it seems, among scientists is that bioscience will have the same impact on this century as advancements in physics did during the turn of the last century. If this is true, then the research of these two historians parallels this shift in interest reflecting its presence in art practices

David Novros, 4.24, 1965, Collection of Blanton Museum of Art

Marc Quinn, Portrait of Sir John Edward Sulston, 2001, National Portrait Gallery London

ASSIMINA KANIARI

04-09-2010 14:47:31

Bio-art and the poetics of growth (conceptualized even in reverse as decomposition, like in the example of the work by Marta De Menezes DECON) certainly may be seen to comprise genealogies that could stretch back to examples like Ellen’s fascinating bacteria-cinema. Already from the 50s British avant-garde artists, including Nigel Henderson, experimented with the idea of scaling and modern imagining techniques to produce, at times quite conventionally looking, images of another order. Richard Hamilton’s Microcosmos: plant cycle 1950 is one such example.

Hamilton was fascinated by D’Arcy Thompson’s book On growth and Form and in fact curated the exhibition On Growth and Form 1951 at the ICA that read as a compilation of images referencing this new type of visibility allowed by modern imaging techniques, mixing often, examples of microphotography drawn from scientific contexts to ‘works of art’.

CHRISTINA COGDELL

04-09-2010 14:50:54

I’d like to suggest in the construction of the primary narratives and even the discipline of art history (including architecture and design history), the idea of evolution has played a very fundamental role. Until recently, art history survey textbooks hardly covered nonwestern art, despite the greater surface area of the earth being populated by nonwestern peoples. Not only did the idea of style arise as a taxonomic practice (often conceived as birth, maturity, demise, as if styles were living entities), but its conception was tied to theories of psychology: that the mind (and its indexical expressions in artistic creations) of individual artists and of cultures as a whole aptly expresses the evolutionary advancement of the creators themselves (as positioned in popular evolutionary hierarchies). In other ways, despite a gradual broadening to give some space and weight (but not equal weight by any means) to Asian, African, and Latin American art in survey texts today, evolutionary assumptions continue to drive the art historical narrative with regards to two other main ideas: cultivated aesthetics and new technologies as two driving forces of the avant-garde.

New technologies are not just new “imaging” technologies, but also new building and production technologies, as well as new military technologies. This moves us beyond art history proper into visual culture broadly speaking: steel I-beams, electricity, bridges, skyscrapers, those things that made modern cities such thrilling places to be in the early 20th century.

My three chosen images for this aspect of evolutionary narratives of progress in the arts, via technology, are a few panels from a ceramic mural in an apartment building in Philadelphia designed by Paul Cret. The main artist – Nicolas Marsicano – created other similar murals at the San Francisco and New York World’s Fairs in the late 1930s, fairs which were rife with evolutionary themes. Like the main narrative of Art History, and based upon the assumption that the art of nonwestern cultures is arrested in times past (thereby seemingly showing westerners what early human culture was like), Marsicano’s narrative moves viewers from “Early Man” through scenes of Africa and Native America, into the rise of western civilization in Egypt, through the Greeks, Romans, Renaissance, and modern America.

Today’s technological edge is multi-faceted of course, but in 3D CAD-CAM (computer-aided drawing/computer-aided manufacturing), the sciences and the arts/architecture are once again finding a tool of use to both. Architects and designers, as well as artists, are now using 3D printing to create models of buildings with complex curvatures (example: photo from MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind featuring 3D production designs, 2007), and these models functions as 3D images of potential structures but also as an example of the technological means whereby such structure are made feasible. Owing to manufacturing techniques through CNC (computer-numerically-controlled) milling via robotics and laser-cutting as well, complex curvatures in large-scale built forms are now materializing in the built environment, changing the visual culture in their surrounds. (Frank Gehry image attached, with detail from Experience Music Seattle, by Frank Gehry Associates with LMN Architects, 2000) Architects using these technologies are positioned as the current technological avant-garde of the field, the cutting edge of evolutionary progress, as the traditional narratives so goes. Scientists and doctors, too, are using 3D printers to aid them in their studies and preparation for medical interventions. The last image here is one I took in Spring 2008 at Drexel University in Dr. Wei Sun’s tissue engineering laboratory, showing small-scale models of patient’s brains, created through 3D reconstruction of data from 2D MRI slices, for the neurosurgeon to study before surgery.

Nicolas Marsicano, Evolution Mural, Scene Showing the Modern City of Philadelphia Built with New Technologies, Scene 12 of 12, 2601 Pennsylvania Avenue, Philadelphia, 1939

Nicolas Marsicano, Evolution Mural, Scene of Africa, Panel 3 of 12, 2601 Pennsylvania Avenue, Philadelphia, 1939

Nicolas Marsicano, Evolution Mural, Scene Showing the Construction of 2601 Parkway, Panel 10 of 12, 2601 Pennsylvania Avenue, Philadelphia, 1939

Frank Gehry Associates, Experience Music Seattle, Seattle, Washington, 2000. Photo from Artstor image database through UC Davis access.

Photo I took in Dr. Wei Sun's Tissue Engineering Laboratory, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Spring 2008. These are 3D models made prior to neurosurgery.

Photo I took at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind, Spring 2007. This is the section of the exhibition featuring 3D printed/produced designs.

PAOLA ANTONELLI
04-09-2010 16:06:12
As a tail to Christina's post, whose position I wholeheartedly share, I would like to point you towards Neri Oxman's work. She was also part of Design and the Elastic Mind (thanks for the mention, Christina). Her website is a bit out of date (http://www.materialecology.com/) but her work consists in carrying the generative power of digital technology even further. By using 3D technology and computational design, she is trying to build a library of "material behaviors" extracted from nature. In the future, her reconstructed samples might be the basis for designers' and architects' research at different scales, from façade treatments to the design of cities.

Computers have brought designers and architects much closer to the Holy Grail of their profession, learning to build the way nature does, with economy, elegance, appropriateness, and even flamboyance, in some cases--I do not have to explain this to you of all people. There have been moments of revolt against nature in design's history, granted, but also those can be considered part of its natural evolution. Many designers and architect are now dreaming of building not top-down, but rather bottom-up, giving objects a "scaffold" and setting up basic structural and behavioral laws to see them then grow by themselves into naturally perfect responses to the situation at hand.

NATHANIEL COMFORT

04-09-2010 19:45:04
Amazing. Thank you, Paola.

I was especially struck by the "Cartesian wax" section of the material ecology site. Quoting from the site:

"The work is inspired by the Cartesian Wax thesis, as elucidated by Descartes in the 1640's. The thesis relates to the construction of self knowledge and the way in which it is informed by and reports about an individual's experience of the physical world. According to Descartes, the knowledge of the wax is whatever survives the various changes in the wax's physical form. That is, the form of the wax embodies the processes that have generated its final features. Replace the notion of knowledge with that of performance and the wax's physical form represents the force fields that grant its birth."

It is a design principle founded on a layered metaphor: first the wax itself, and then substitution of knowledge for performance.

A good metaphor is timeless--1640, last week, 450 BC...doesn't matter a whit. This is in marked contrast to the usual way of doing science: linearly, logically, as a steady accretion of knowledge. Hence the stale joke among scientists that anything more than five years old is "ancient history." But here are brand new architectonic principles being drawn from a 350-year-old literature!

Imaging technology, then, shifts science and engineering from a linear, temporal epistemology to an atemporal, metaphoric one. It seems to me the potential for innovation when you combine two such different ways of knowing are limitless.

TODD SILER

04-10-2010 00:32:31
Really enjoying the inspiring reads here.

Nathaniel, I strongly resonate with your statement about the timelessness of a good metaphor. To add further credence to that observation, we need only look to the physical analogies and metaphors Darwin used to describe the evolution of the Tree of Life, and then, peel away the bark on that tangible metaphor to see the reality behind the picture-statements and visuals he used to define that Tree.

I’ve found that many artists and scientists alike simply stop at the doorstep of a good metaphor and don’t know how to open this door and walk into its boundless room. In reality, an absorbing metaphor is a “portal” to new possibilities of thought and discovery that await our creative inquiry. All you need to do is step through its entryway to discover everything that’s just waiting there on the other side.

Raold Hoffmann, the Nobel laureate chemist, authored a book of beautiful poems, titled The Metamict State (1987). If you get a chance to read some of his published science papers, you'll see how essential metaphors are to his approach to doing chemistry. Hoffmann writes: “The images that scientists have as they do science are metaphorical…The imaginative faculty are set in motion by mental metaphor. Metaphor shifts the discourse, not gradually, but with a vengeance. You see what no one had seen before.”

I’d imagine that’s what Dr. Phelps and his colleagues felt when they first flipped on the switch of their novel, noninvasive medical imaging tool, the positron computed tomography (PET) scanning device -- beginning the process of mapping the human brain’s cerebral blood flow (Phelps, Mazziotta, and Huang, 1983). He and his team of neuroscientists peered through the windows of the brain into the biological mechanisms that underlie the source of our creative process.

I'm sure we could trace the evolution of that PET medical marvel all the way back to its roots in early Photography, which begins with the camera obscura that Leonardo da Vinci envisioned in 1515. To get to the level of image sophistication that the field of medicine has arrived at today—with its functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) machines and related devices—required them to “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

From my experiences working with a spectrum of specialists in the physical sciences, I’ve come to realize that the more open-minded and inquisitive ones are adventurous enough to think in nonlinear, intuitive, spontaneous ways that transcend the disciplines they excel in. Overall, they share many of the same outstanding characteristics as inspired artists who exude creative freedom. I mean, they know how to have fun glimpsing the bigger picture of a problem or challenge, and they’re willing to momentarily experience the world as “expert novices” (suspending what they know to discover what they don’t know). I've got lots of examples...:)

Maybe the greatest shift of all that's happening today as a result of the advancements in tech-enabling visualization tools is the shift in our understanding and perception of the power of metaphors and other connection-making tools. Ultimately, those virtual tools enable us to envision real tools that, in turn, help us see far beyond what we know or believe to be true—in seeing the world anew. Metaphors are the chickens laying the eggs of technology and progress.

Metaphorm it! This diagram of the Scientific Method is a symbolic, virtual tool that enables us to continually discover and innovate new tools and theories. (Source: Scientific Method/Wiki)

ROGER MALINA:
04-10-2010 03:41:18
JD
I would like to pick up on your comment:

"The progression from the presentation of drawings, to slide projections, to photography and eventually to PowerPoint is significant yet almost unnoticeable in the transferring of knowledge."

To emphasise that the way we present science is not only a matter of transferring knowledge. There is a large literature ( McLuhan, but more recently his colleague Derrick de Kerchove) on how media shapes thought, more recently people like Lev Manovich ( Language of New Media). The format of the book structured the way that science was carried out. Any way, a huge literature out there.

Alan Kay, one of the seminal technology developers has written extensively of how software design has shaped the way certain problems are tractable. Paul Fishwick a computer scientist also has written extensively about Aesthetic Computing ( see his book at MIT Press), or the way ideas and techniques from art and design can be introduced into the design of software ( for instance a program written as a stage play).

The web art world at the moment is abuzz about "mash up culture" the sequence drawings, to slide projections, to photography and eventually to PowerPoint to mash up actually shapes the way we make scientific arguments

see review
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html

SUZANNE ANKER

04-10-2010 04:14:22
Christina and Paola,
New imagining technology has also entered the art school. I have been working with "new media" since 2003 to create sculpture. What amazes me most about this technology is twofold: firstly the ability to produce sculptural form without touching the material and secondly the ways in which apparently random forms such as blobs or blots can be constructed by mathematical coordinates. Creating objects through code allows for the fabrication of forms to be "printed" that employ movable parts, nested structures and even deep irregular undercuts. I have recently built a state-of-the art facility at the School of Visual Arts, under the auspices of the Fine Arts Department, that focuses on computer driven sculpture for the emergent artist. Rapid prototyping, plasma and laser cutting and other devices are techniques of object making that are offered in conjunction with welding, woodworking and the like. Although this kind of technology can be found in engineering, architecture and design departments on the university level, it is unique to find these technologies in Fine Arts. Even first year students are awarded the opportunity to work in this way creating sculptural works that can incorporate architectural and design motifs. Thinking this way allows the student to engage in a richer vocabulary of forms and understanding of space. Our sculpture studio is a kind of laboratory in collaboration as well. We have a digital engineer and other technical staff members who engage in researching current software programs, operating 3-D scanners and aiding the Fine Arts student to realize his or her project. These experiences are already altering the ways in which this generation thinks about form.

SUZANNE ANKER:
04-10-2010 04:26:42
Dear Nathaniel,

Can you expand on your statement about atemporality? Atemporality is also something that Bruce Sterling, the novelist refers to:
"Imaging technology, then, shifts science and engineering from a linear, temporal epistemology to an atemporal, metaphoric one."

ASSIMINA KANIARI
04-10-2010 05:01:19
I wonder if tied to Roger’s point about the impact of current technology on art and science one could isolate, in the example of photography and video art, conceptual categories which we could then use to re-group post 60s art in a new light. While media and the impact of media is part of the rhetoric that much technology-assisted post 60s work uses, and the rhetoric employed to re-present its legacies in and as ‘new media arts’, there is an undeniable preoccupation with surface and the manipulation of the image and its properties as the visible effect of one's uses of technology, whether in a more coherent sense, say the use of photo-shop, or equally 'craft-based' forms of experimentation, like for example the scratching of surface on film in avant-garde film.

Technology, its visibility and the transparency of its effect on the image, how well we can read its impact on the image in other words, mediates also our contemporary understadning of what constitutes an aesthetically meaningful art form, or practice.

A very interesting exhibition on photography and the idea of surface as the result of manipulation (and not immutability, to reference our earlier discussion on 19th century scientific illutration and the point shared with Ellen Levy) is Surface Tensions at the MET (Phototransformation by Lukas Samaras being an interesting example among the work exhibited but accessible also on line http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/listview.aspx?dd1=54) while the video work of Giorgos Harvalias (http://harvalias.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post.html) inspired but also mediated by current imaging techniques as well as effects drawn from preceding technologies like early filming is equally full of references, used in the construction of the image in the work but also its re-presentation, to technology and the genealogies of imaging techniques employed in the visual arts concerned with the idea of manipulation and surface as an intentionally non illusionistic field.

DANIEL GLASER

04-10-2010 07:29:05
This post does not consider directly the evolutionary aspects much but is about visual cuture.

As an imaging neuroscientist who engages the public with science for a living I am very happy to exploit the undoubted appeal of new imaging technologies, but I also have some worries. There is no question but that the inclusion of a 'brain map' in a narrative lends it considerable credence in the non-specialist imagination. It is even possible that bona fide neuroscientists are themselves seduced by the beautiful images. Certainly the deep antipathy which many old school neuroscientists evinced towards imaging in general and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in particular towards the end of the 20th century could speak to a supressed sense of threat from the power of such apparent revelations.

To interrogate the truth value of these images requires two completely different kinds of sophistication: statistical and visual. On the former, almost all of the images displayed are some kind of statistical map where colour represents some kind of statistic (usually a p value) distributed across the brain. It only makes sense to speak of a bright red blob as an activation ("this is the area of the brain which is activated when you see picture of the one you love") within a statistical rhetorical framework. But the bright colours and smoothed blobs speak directly of centres for this or areas for that (rather as the phrenologists might have). It takes a careful scientist (and there are of course still many of these) to eschew the power of a pretty picture and ground their narrative in the p-values and the underlying statistical assumptions.

On visual sophistication, Jane Prophet ( http://www.janeprophet.com/ ) and I have argued that without visual sophistication (whatever that means) scientists, whether writers or readers, are at the mercy of their unconscious feelings about their work in the following sense among others. Most scientific images are pseudo-coloured in that the colours on the final image are projected onto the data in an essentially arbitrary form. An activation in the brain could be green, purple or blue, but making it red as is almost always the case makes it look 'hot'. Without education in and reflection on visual culture it is impossible for a scientific narrative to be in control of its visual rhetoric.

Hope that's unpolished enough ;-)

ASSIMINA KANIARI

04-10-2010 09:20:24
Dear Daniel,

Trying to understand 'the impact of new imaging technology on visual culture and science', which is the topic in question as opposed to evolution and science or evolution and visual culture addressed already in other forums, by terms and discourses intrinsic to the problem you are examining, in your case, science (with science), or popular science, at the level of method certainly poses some challenges.

But knowing first hand what a fantastically eloquent speaker you are and your thoughts on scientists must be doing science and artists art (no space for historians or theorists from the humanities end) I understand your rigorous, not unpolished cry for up to scratch scientific relevance in all treatments or indeed selections of images discussed in this forum.

TODD SILER
04-10-2010 09:25:36
Roger, you're points about the "mash up" work and its influences are right on. I want to respond to your thoughts in-depth once I add these few visual thoughts and notes that are pertinent to the previous two posts. They might interest you. And, they're not unrelated to the metaphorical and symbolic aspects of Mash Up, too.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
BASICS
Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally

By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: February 1, 2010

A version of this article appeared in print on February 2, 2010, on page D2 of the New York edition.

“Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people were asked to engage in a bit of mental time travel, and to recall past events or imagine future ones, participants’ bodies subliminally acted out the metaphors embedded in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time.

As they thought about years gone by, participants leaned slightly backward, while in fantasizing about the future, they listed to the fore. The deviations were not exactly Tower of Pisa leanings, amounting to some two or three millimeters’ shift one way or the other. Nevertheless, the directionality was clear and consistent.

“When we talk about time, we often use spatial metaphors like ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you’ or ‘I’m reflecting back on the past,’ ” said Lynden K. Miles, who conducted the study with his colleagues Louise K. Nind and C. Neil Macrae. “It was pleasing to us that we could take an abstract concept such as time and show that it was manifested in body movements.”

The new study, published in January in the journal Psychological Science, is part of the immensely popular field called embodied cognition, the idea that the brain is not the only part of us with a mind of its own.

“How we process information is related not just to our brains but to our entire body,” said Nils B. Jostmann of the University of Amsterdam. “We use every system available to us to come to a conclusion and make sense of what’s going on.”

Research in embodied cognition has revealed that the body takes language to heart and can be awfully literal-minded.”

More of Natalie Angier’s article can be read in full at this address:
(SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html)

On a related note: If you try to connect the three pictures posted here in a linear way (either from left-to-right or right-to-left or top-to-bottom), you’ll notice how differently your body and mind respond to them according to their order. Each grouping tells a different story about these three elements of thought: the Nuclear Age (symbolized by Ernest Rutherford’s model, or the “planetary model,” of the atom), humankind holding the weight of the world on our collective shoulders (as symbolized by Lee Lowrie and Rene Chambellan’s 1937 public sculpture, “Atlas,” at Rockefeller Plaza), and the future (as envisaged by the Futurist sculpture by Umberto Bocionni, titled “Unique Forms of Continuuity in Space,” 1913). Each story tells us something about the past that has strongly influenced our present-future, just as all the other countless elements of evolution have. Even though they’re not in chronological order here, their influences are nevertheless distributed in such a way that they feel equally weighted to us. Or, at least they do for me. In fact, when I gaze at Bocionni’s 1913 sculpture, in particular, I see our speedy, technology savvy, hyperdynamic, almost AD/HD Civilization today. It somehow mirrors the blur of our world now and onward…

Umberto Boccioni, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” (1913); Museum of Modern Art, New York

“Atlas” by Lee Lowrie and Rene Chambellan (1937), Rockefeller Plaza, NYC

Ernest Rutherford’s model, or the “planetary model,” of the atom

SUZANNE ANKER

04-10-2010 10:49:44
Dear Roger Malina,
Thanks for posting Michiko Kakutani's book review "Texts Without Context." The growing dimension of digital access is something that requires serious analysis in broad political and social terms. I like to keep in mind, that digital information and social networking so rampart in the First World is not ubiquitous in the Third World. Although the First World may be ensconced in high tech apparatus, the Third World is still engaging its battle with illiteracy. The "mash up" that you talk about is also referred to the "Frankenstein mash-up"and brings to the fore questions concerning intellectual property, originality, simulacra, authenticity and collective intelligence. On the one hand, linear thinking may not be appropriate for temporal network culture, we also need to question what yield of unintended consequences are in store for us in a "cut and paste" culture. We have already seen the chemical industries morphing into global agri-businesses and jumping genes crossing species barriers heralding in disease. Novel terms such as "cybrid" and "neo-mort" have entered our language, while body parts are being sold to the highest bidder.

German philosopher Jurgen Habermas in his text The Future of Human Nature, calls for a "species ethics." His dialogue is centered around self-instrumentalization in a world where technology reigns supreme.

CHRISTINA COGDELL
04-10-2010 11:33:16
Paola, thanks for posting the link to Neri Oxman’s work. In my last post, it was a toss up between a picture of the 3D printing section of Design and the Elastic Mind or Neri Oxman’s stunning Materialecology monocoque on display there. Congratulations on putting together an exhibition that continues to trouble me over two years later, as I am still pondering these technological changes, their sociopolitical and economic contexts, and the incredibly persistent rhetoric that somehow these developments in art, science and technology demonstrate “evolutionary progress.”

While I agree that both you and I are fascinated by much of the same material, it seems you believe in both the bottom-up potential of these technologies, as well as in the utopian dream that computers and genetic engineering, along with nanotechnology, etc., may finally permit artists’ and scientists’ attainment of the holy grail of “building the way nature does.”

In constrast, I fully question it and am troubled by the presentation of this pursuit, precisely because I don’t equate having economic and political power with being more “evolved.” (We could have a lengthy discussion on this, I’m sure, that would bring in current genetic determinism, evolutionary psychology, neurobiology, as well as the successes and failures of western science and technology to control evolution – through antibiotics, say, or through eugenics, or now, through genetic engineering).

Nor do I like the strategy of naturalizing economic and political inequalities (as well as the disfranchisement of nonwesterners by the art world and in the narratives of art history) through evolutionary rhetoric, spoken from the position of those with power, which presents inequality as if it is just the outcome of natural laws of hierarchy and survival of the fittest at work in human culture. For those with power and money and access to technology to act like they are organizing from the “bottom-up,” without seeing that these tools and technologies don’t even exist in the domain of those at the “bottom,” seems to demonstrate a blindness to ways in which the west (or now, the North or “developed” countries) continue to exploit the labor and resources of those in nonwestern countries (now, the South or “developing” countries). Even in the lingo of “developed” and “developing,” we see the overlap between biological, evolutionary, and economic discourses.

There is a circular process at work here: Darwin and Spencer borrowed from capitalist economic theory in their formulations of evolutionary process, which, because of its explanatory power for diverse visual phenomena (from the fossil record to species diversification, etc.), in turn lent credence to capitalist practices. Similarly, Benoit Mandelbrot’s theory of fractals in the natural world led him to study similar patterns in economic trends, to the extent that systems theory is now being used by those at the Santa Fe Institute (and others) as a tool for both understanding and predicting economic jumps.

Despite the theoretical and synthetic beauty of these theories, as well as their pragmatic applications for those with access to the tools and the money to use them, the bottom-line issue for me as a humanities scholar (especially one with an acute awareness of the history of the use of evolutionary theories to justify oppression) is to work against power and inequality to bring about socioeconomic justice.

Because justifications of human culture as determined by genes or evolution are consistently spoken by those with power, I remain dubious of their credibility – especially because of the historical legacy of these ideas. The strength of deterministic, evolutionary rhetoric in today’s popular science, art and design discourse is matched in recent history only by that of eugenicists and designers of the 1930s, albeit with different technologies at their fingertips. So, on to another post (owing to the length of this one) about eugenics and streamline design. I leave you with one image from a Pearl Izumi DNA advertisement in a current cycling publication.

Pearl Izumi ads for cycling gear, currently running in Velonews magazine, advertising their "genetically engineered fit." This is one among many examples of companies using the idea of DNA to market product superiority.

BARBARA LARSON
04-10-2010 12:17:19
On new imaging technology and visual culture, I would like to point out problems initiated with Semir Zeki's work on historical art and neuroaesthetics. In his ground-breaking book Inner Vision, he makes much of Mondrian and shows images of the brain responding to solely to color and vertical/horizontal linear orientation, namely areas V1 and V4. By Mondrian he uses both the actual paintings (or at least reproductions of them, which brings up yet another wrinkle) and "Land Mondrians," a scientific, visual chart interchangeably, without distinguishing one from the other. The Land Mondrians are made up of a variety of colors, olive green, purple, etc., which Mondrian would never have used since he stuck entirely to primaries and neutrals. The rectangles of color in a Land Mondrian are entirely different (and non-artistic in their arrangement). Zeki celebrates how Mondrian is very nearly a "neurologist" who seeks essentials. Mondrian's careful and exact selection of a very limited number of colors and careful arrangement of forms came from spiritual, philosophical ideas about the nature of the universe and on a more immediate level was influenced by visuals in western culture--just one of which comes from the saturated colors of stained glass (the artists he was closest too at this time like Theo van Doesburg were working with stained glass and rectangular form). In Mondrian's own circle of friends and perhaps far more widely than this in the early twentieth century, many other areas of the brain would come in to play as well in responding to those works. Despite these deeply embedded problems, Zeki has received near god-like status among historians of visual culture (Onians). You get my general drift on the problems of intentionality, history, imaging techonologies, meaning, and scientific knowledge. ...

ASSIMINA KANIARI
04-10-2010 13:30:00
I would like to share some of the concerns outlined by Christina Codgell connected to a reading of technology that sometimes assumes or projects a neutral role on it. From the perspective of history and sociologically inclined history, the kind many historians of art and science have been practicing in recent years, ‘technology’ is understood as a socially constructed fact, rather than a neutral tool. The dominance of one technology over another across time and social context is seen in this light as a phenomenon contingent on the creation of assent in the given community of scientists, artists and the wider society, that is the cultural context examined, and not as the unavoidable effect of the argument itself, or the ‘success’ of the technology itself secured by its ‘truth’ element. To cite a definition, not from sociology of science, even though the work of Latour, Lynch and Woolgar should be mentioned here, but from the work of historians of science informed by sociology of knowledge, I would like to throw in the discussion, a key question which perhaps should have been addressed from the beginning, concerned with how we understand technology and the way it connects, not to science but culture instead and the visual cultures of art and science we are examining here.

Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer in their seminal Leviathan and the Air-pump considering the beginnings of experimental practice as a reliable tool for the production of new knowledge give a definition of technology that might be useful to bear in mind. “Our use of the term technology in reference to the ‘software’ of literary practices and social relations may appear jarring,” they write, adding that, “but it is both important and etymologically justified, as Carl Mitcham nicely shows: ‘Philosophy and the History of Technology,’ esp. pp. 172-175. Mitcham demonstrates that Plato distinguished between two types of techne: one that consisted mainly of physical work and another which was closely associated with speech. By using technology to refer to literary and social practices, as well as to machines, we wish to stress that all three are knowledge-producing tools.” (Shapin and Schaffer, Princeton 1985, p. 25)

Hence the rhetoric of evolution is a social practice and a technology that produces new knowledge, socially and politically situated. It’s difficult to disentangle the claims to knowledge that any technology makes from the social hierarchies it conceals. Christina did this successfully in the above example and many of the parallel forums may be seen in this context, as a tribute to the solutions to social, political and visual order that ‘evolutionary’ solutions to problems of knowledge also contained. To avoid misunderstandings this is a point about methodology and historiography applied with regard to the notion of technology and the notion of cultural impact.

TODD SILER

04-10-2010 19:15:23
Roger, if I understand the reality of mashups correctly, they’re not just metaphors for the process of merging flowing streams of data, information, and knowledge from many diverse sources into one new source? Meaning, they’re more than “metaphors we live by” and work by today, to borrow George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s expression.

I realize this term mashups is used in the context of web design and development for Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 But it seems to encompass a vast range of creative actions in fields outside the realm of Application Programming Interface (API) work, which, I know, focuses on continually improving the interface experience users have with various software. I gather it refers to all the “unexpected” stuff (new products, services, functionality, etc.) that grows out of these merging streams of information.

I’d imagine it’d be tough to tell in advance what kinds of products are most likely to come out of this informational mergence, or what we should expect to see. For instance, when mashups are used to “remix digital data,” you never know what novel sounds will emerge from this controlled, experimental integration of data. And, even if you did know, would the sound always be the same, and could you re-create it in a consistent and reliable way?

Here’s my main question: What will Web 10.0 look and feel like, given this increased capacity to merge larger and more complex streams of diverse data? Also, how will we manage this increased complexity, using the mashup process to that end? Will it resemble anything like Leonardo da Vinci’s “Studies of water Formations” (c. 1507-09)? Or will it appear more like Leonardo’s “Deluge” (1513)? I’m leaning towards that scenario, in which we’re further swamped by an absolutely uncontrollable and unpredictable haelstrom of data, and where we’re left on our own to organize it, innovate it, and purpose it to our individual needs?

I get the comparison that’s frequently used between Portals and Mashups, and can see their differences, However, I don’t understand yet how the two current styles of aggregating data (vis-à-vis the "Melting Pot" or the "Salad bar" style) are going to be developed and scaled so that they can actually [realistically] manage the flood of data-information-knowledge that’ll spring from this integration. When we figure that out and can engineer a viable solution, most people will be able to easily grasp how this process of merging data via mashups could be immensely valuable for integrating any and all data for any purpose.

Leonardo da Vinci, “Studies of water Formations,” c. 1507-09, pen and ink, 20 x 20.2 cm. Windsor Castle, Royal Library 12660v. © 1993 Her Majesty The Queen. (From Maria Costantino, LEONARDO. Artist, Inventor and Science. (1993), p.120.

Leonardo da Vinci, “Deluge,” c. 1513, black chalk, 16.3 x 21 cm. Windsor Castle, Royal Library 12378. © 1993 Her Majesty The Queen (From Maria Costantino, LEONARDO. Artist, Inventor and Scientist. (1993), p. 121.
ELLEN LEVY:
04-11-2010 04:20:03
Assimina’s mention of D’Arcy Thompson is particularly of interest not only in the context of our topic (imaging technology’s effect on visual culture and science) but also of evolution, itself. Thompson’s early 20th century work offers, as Martin Kemp and Brian Goodwin have clearly pointed out, resistance to traditional scientific approaches in Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian form, as developed by R. A. Fisher, Sewall Wright, and Haldane. This was accomplished partly by Thompson exploring non-adaptive examples in nature (e.g., not only forms exemplifying principles of natural selection). Thompson's coordinate transformation suggested a way to test whether comparative anatomy could establish a sequence of evolution. The method has limitations. Among other things it leaves chemistry out of the equation and could not, for example, explain the evolution of the cortex. Nevertheless, his work in topological analysis continues to inspire potent algorithmic approaches to generating growth in both art and science, and I have uploaded just one artistic example.

A sculpture of an anamorphic skull by Robert Lazzarini generated with rapid prototyping

ASSIMINA KANIARI
04-11-2010 05:37:11
Thank you Ellen. And I should cite one of Martin's early works on Thompson in the special edition you have co-edited for Art Journal:

'Doing What Comes Naturally: Morphogenesis and the Limits of the Genetic Code', Art Journal, ed. B. Sichel and E. Levy, Spring 1996, pp. 27–32.

As well as a more recent paper in Seen-Unseen (OUP, 2006) that considers precisely Thompson's 'geometries of growth' in the context of 20th century art and science from the perspective which you have outlined so clearly (ch. 7 Growth and Form). A huge amount of work on the reception of Thompson's work in science and art but also art history as well as its undeniable impact on 20th century topological thinking evident in the work of 20th century architects and mapped out by historians of architecture.

TODD SILER

04-11-2010 12:05:06
To add a few more responses to Kevin’s focal question: There are a number of developments in the fields of brain science and psychology that were engaging artists, scientists and the general public in the late 19th and early 20th century, and that are important to highlight here.

Emerging medical imaging technology and new techniques in clinical neurology enabled scientists and physicians to glean deeper and bigger pictures of the inner workings of the functional architecture of the human brain. As this work progressed, another fundamental search was underway that contributed to the evolution of our understanding of the body/mind relationship.

Up until the 20th century, philosophers, scientists, mathematicians and other inquisitive individuals had been actively pursuing insights into the hidden relationship between the brain and mind/body and spirit; or, matter and mind. One of many breakthroughs in the brain sciences that helped bridge the mind-body divide grew out of the empirical work of Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1857–1952); he was one of the first to describe the dynamics of synapse and synaptic transmission, the mechanism by which our billions of cell/neurons communicate and collaborate with one another 24/7/360 over our lifetime.

The History of Thought shows how artists and scientists have been obsessively searching the thought process itself—a search, perhaps, inspired by the ancient Greek directive, “Know thyself.” We certainly see this interest expressed in the exploratory drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, most notably his early medical studies of brain and the mechanics of vision. Leonardo’s drawings, which were known to many artists and mind explorers, were a serious source of inspiration for probing both the tangible and intangible actions of human body and mind.

In fact, there’s a fascinating body of literature on this subject that draws from all the disciplines that attempts to describe, conceptualize, theorize and visualize the nature of the human brain-mind-creative spirit. By the time William James brilliantly organized, synthesized, and advanced the key knowledge of the human brain/mind with his ground-breaking, two volume books, The Principles of Psychology (1890), there were already ten major contrasting views that divided “monists” [the brain and mind are one-and-the-same thing] from “dualists” [the brain is a separate phenomena than the mind] since ancient times (M. Bunge, The Mind-Body Problem, 1980). Clearly, our scientific knowledge of the brain is entangled in the philosophical doctrines of monism and dualism (C.S. Sherrington, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, 1906; W. Penfield, The Mystery of the Mind, 1975; J.C. Eccles and K.R. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, 1977; J.C. Eccles’ The Human Mystery, 1979).

On a personal note: Over the past three decades, I've explored many of these issues concerning the brain/mind relationship, drawing inspiration from the medical imaging technology and brain research. One example is this interpretive artwork, titled “Thought Assemblies” (1979-82), which was the visual component of my dissertation, Architectonics of Thought: A Symbolic Model of Neuropsychological Processes (1986). This artwork probes the biological basis of creative and critical thinking. It interrelates eons of evolutionary thought on the nature of the human mind into one, dynamic creation on synthetic paper that is 9ft. high x 127ft. long and contains over 515 pictures of mental representations (https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/17200). This artwork is often configured with a nonlinear design, and is accompanied by this mixed media painting on synthetic canvas, “Brain Theater of Mental Imagery,” which measures 12ft. x 100ft.

In the next post, I’d like to briefly comment on some noninvasive medical imaging technology (PET and fMRI) that continue to advance the evolution of visual culture by inspiring a wide range of artists who share this mutual passion for pushing the possibilities of these medical arts.

Leonardo da Vinci, “Section of a Man’s Head Showing the Anatomy of the Eye,” 1489. Windsor Castle, Royal Library. © 1993 Her Majesty The Queen. (From Maria Costantino, LEONARDO. Artist, Inventor and Scientist. (1993), p. 115.

“Brain Theater of Mental Imagery” was first shown at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, 1984 and the Boston Center for the Arts, 1990.

“Thought Assemblies” was first exhibited at Musee D’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France,1982 and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC, 1984.

BARBARA LARSON
04-11-2010 16:32:26
In terms of the late nineteenth century and the mind/brain problem, I have an essay "Mapping the Body and the Brain: Neurology and Localization Theory in the Work of Rodin" on new technologies/findings about the brain and the neurological system that intersect with evolution. This is in this issue of Revue d'art canadienne. Among other things this investigates the evolutionist Broca on locating the area of speech and its fallout, the use of electricity on exposed monkey brains, the study of brain lesions and popularized awareness of assymetry studies and brain maps. Rodin was also interested in the hysteria studies of Charcot, not only the photographs, but the illustrations of Paul Richer as well. The brain was not only understood as a map over the cortex with variuos centers of activity, but with the authority of evolution as deeply layered.

In terms of other technologies in the late nineteenth century that contribute to visual culture and science. developments in the telescope and new technologies like new powerful telescopes and spectral analysis (1859) that made use of the wave theory of light allowed for a dynamic vision of the universe. This, along with developments to the microscope (resulting in germ. helping to uphold notions of evolutionism despite the fact that the process itself could not be observed.

TODD SILER

04-12-2010 04:00:54
Barbara, thanks for pointing out your essay on Rodin’s work. The neurological studies on hemispheric specialization and localization started slowly mushrooming from the time Paul Broca discovered the patterns of expressive aphasia (Brodmann area 44 & 45) and Karl Wernicke identified a set of disruptive patterns that affect the semantic aspects of speech. I find it interesting how this work was connected to Korbinian Brodmann’s maps of the cortical cytoarchitecture of humans, monkeys and other vertebrates. Given that the Broadmann maps were published in 1909, I’ve always wondered which visual artists had heard about or seen them. I’d imagine they would’ve been as absorbed by these artful maps as the brain scientists were – especially, considering that they were created by using a rather colorful stain technique, the Nissl method, which highlights the cell body with dyes; the dyes consist of either aniline, thionine, or cresyl violet. I’d also imagine that the painters and printmakers, at that time, would’ve taken an interest in the work of the German neuropathologist Franz Nissl who had come up with this new technique thus contributing to the emerging field of Histology.

One brief relevant aside: I was sure interested in this Nissl method. While I was taking a course on “The Human Nervous System” during graduate school, one of the professors teaching this course, Dr. Walle Nauta, who was a great neuroanatomist (and terrific artist, too!), showed me a collection of Nissl-stained cells, these were like an innovation catalyst: they inspired me to further refine some new printing technology I’d invented (which MIT patented with me). This technology enabled me to make massive, one-of-a-kind monoprints with micro-reliefs (e.g., “The Brain Theater of Mental Imagery”). In effect, the substrate resembles neural tissue, greatly enlarged. Picture a sliver of brain tissue mounted on a conventional glass slide to be inspected under a microscope. Now picture that slide the size of a basketball court with symbolic drawings, paintings and sculptural objects that, interpret all kinds of brain/mind-related research that arc back to antiquity, mounted on this synthetic neural tissue.

Which brings me full circle to this point: The brain scientists in the early 20th century, such as the pioneer neuroanatomist, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, had to rely on their own advanced skills rendering-by-hand their observations and vision. They could only dream of a time when they’d be able to use various imaging tools and techniques to see below the surfaces of the substrates they desired to know in-depth. They’d have to wait another sixty years before they’d be able to use such sophisticated tools as positron-emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

But they dreamed, nevertheless, together with the artists whose work and aspirations inspired them, too. Today, countless thought leaders in the field challenge themselves to grasp something as complex as “the dynamic neural correlates of cognitive processes in normal humans,” to quote two outstanding contemporary neuroscientists, Thomas Gravowski and Antonio Damasio. Essentially, they're living the dreams of their predecessors…

…“Improving functional imaging techniques: The dream of a single image for a single mental event,” by T.J. Gravowski and A.R. Damasio (1996)

SUZANNE ANKER:
04-12-2010 09:02:56
Dear Todd,
Can you talk more about your last posted image, the image that employs the perimeter of the brain in architectural terms. Very fascinating!

TODD SILER

04-12-2010 14:22:22
Suzanne, thank you for asking! It's so hard for me to "curb my enthusiasm" and passion for the neurosciences. This field has absorbed my imagination since I was 15-years-old (just 15 minutes ago, right!)...Anyway, that sketch was intended as a first-glance at an ArtScience installation I was planning. I always dreamed of building an experiential structure, or framework, for engaging this artwork, because I wanted viewers to participate in the personal process of understanding the roots and layers of concepts and basic questions nested in these sensual materials. I wanted the art to kindle people’s curiosity the instant they entered the “Thought Assemblies” to physically and conceptually get up-close-and-personal with it. When I experimented with its presentation at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in NYC, a gallery I've happily worked with for the past thirty years, I had wanted to configure this artwork very differently but didn't have the financial means to construct it as I'd envisioned.

Ultimately, this artwork exists to serve only one timeless purpose: To engage people in the joy of discovery. The American author James Baldwin, said this way better: “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers.” That’s what “Thought Assemblies” aims to do: Invite everyone to examine one’s own creative-critical thought process. In effect, it’s a “mirror” of sorts for looking at us in-depth. It’s a means of seeing our similarities as human beings, as well as discovering our understanding our differences, too, in the way we think-create-learn-discover-innovate-communicate-collaborate…

As you may have noted, I modeled the organizing principle for this artwork after one view, in particular; I think of it as a “room with a view” to the Limbic system, that large arc in the center of this Brodmann map, which shows a mid-Sagittal section of the brain. There’s an inspiring story about how I came to focus on that area of the brain and how it lead me to explore the heart of the human brain. In 1979, while I was a graduate student at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), I was head-deep in developing some Aha moments and hypotheses I’d had about the structure and organic order, or unity, of the creative process. Thanks to the brilliant director of CAVS at that time, Otto Piene, and another stellar professor of Brain sciences and Psychology, Dr. Stephan L. Chorover, I was encouraged to pursue my studies in a unique interdisciplinary doctoral program I put together. In fact, this exploratory work would never have come to be without the guidance of an extraordinary group of professors and researchers who served as the Ad hoc committee, which included: Professor Stanford Anderson, Chairman of the Department of Architecture, Dr. Eric Schwartz of the Brain Research Laboratory at New York University Medical Center, and Professor James Ackerman of the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University.

These individuals gave me the creative latitude and longitude to pursue my lifetime passion to understand the nature of creativity at the deepest level I could, using my ArtScience approach to discovery. That adventure entailed creating some pretty ambitious visualizations that probably would’ve made Cajal smile, too. In any event, I owe an eternal debt of gratitude to a small community of thought leaders in the overlapping realms of art, architecture, brain and cognitive sciences, and physics who enabled me to reach for my ideals. Without them, this journey would’ve been quite unbearable. You might enjoy reading Breaking the Mind Barrier, as it presents a distillation of some of the ideas behind these visualizations.

4/8: Early 20th century change that influenced general discourse on evolution

2010-04-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

Last Update: 04-09-2010 06:17:23

MARCEL CHOTKOWSKI LAFOLLETTE
04-08-2010 15:45:04
Frederick Lewis Allen once described the intellectual community of the 1920s as composed of men and women who had “heard of James Joyce, Proust, Cézanne, Jung, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, Petronius, Eugene O’Neill, and Eddington” but who “doubted the divinity of Henry Ford.” They embraced modern science yet were suspicious of technology. They were especially dismissive when technology enabled mass diffusion of ideas (what Jonathan Smith earlier referred to as the “visual traffic between elite and popular science”). Meanwhile, the rest of society—that great aspiring class lampooned by Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt—cherished their Model T’s and flocked to the movies. Spectacle, sports, and stunts drew larger crowds than scientists’ lectures; the distraction of new technologies made it hard to capture mass attention with lofty complexity. Yet those same devices brought intellectual and scientific debate within every individual’s reach. The people who tuned in live broadcasts from the 1925 Scopes Trial, who poured over grainy newspaper photographs of William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, were also racing to buy books about evolution and listening to five-minute radio talks about relativity and astronomy. Science’s intellectual insights were being incorporated, adapted, and accepted by those who loved the movies as well as by those who said they read Proust.

Science’s deft authoritativeness, the exotic nature of its topics and language, enhanced its power to capture popular imagination through illustration in mass-circulation magazines and books. The word “evolution” set artistic minds in motion, spawning images of progressive change, of creatures moving upward on social and economic ladders, out of the muck, into the clouds, rejecting status quo with a dangerous proximity to (r)evolution. Nevertheless, “evolution” could never shake the taint of its origins, and monkeys persisted in cartoons and comedy. When George S. Kaufman’s “The Cocoanuts” opened on Broadway at the end of 1925, dancers whirled to the “Monkey Doodle-Doo” and no one needed to explain the reference.

The power of experts—whether professional intellectuals or professional photographers—was beginning its long slow erosion into our current web-based era, where each individual can scissor or grangerize her message and images ad infinitum. In the first decades of the twentieth century, an explosion of amateur photography, for example, transformed the visual record. Professionally produced and technologically enhanced mass media—especially the newspapers—offered an array of created, selected, cropped, altered, designed images of Darwin, evolution, monkeys, and scientists. By 1925, ordinary people were also routinely memorializing events with their own cameras. Eastman Kodak suggested “Take a Kodak with you!” And people did.

Amateur photographs of the Scopes trial (such as those viewable on the Smithsonian Institution sets in Flickr Commons) show another side to evolution’s visual culture in the early twentieth century. At the trial’s seminal event, when Darrow confronted Bryan, science reporter Watson Davis framed the scene as if it were a play, with spectators in the distance as “audience,” while local college student William Silverman peered over the shoulders of the crowd and celebrated democratic participation. Here are ordinary women and men enthralled by a complex debate. The grand discussion about evolution thus becomes just another part of life, another part of Roger Malina’s synergistic, human-created “collection of visual artifacts.” Able to be either ignored or accepted, rejected or enfolded. Opened to debate.

Photograph by Watson Davis. Image number SIA2007-0124. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Photograph by William Silverman. Image number 2009-21077. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution Archives.

MICHAEL SAPPOL
04-08-2010 16:30:34
Marcel points to the transformation of the techno-visual environment in the early decades of the 20th-century, a time when people were experiencing an acceleration and proliferation of views and visual cultural productions. (See Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space; and Werner Gumbrecht, 1926.) In this period there was a widely held sense that humanity had entered a new era of "mass" life in industrial technology, a feeling that through science humanity was now channelling the dynamic forces of nature and that dynamic forces were taking hold of humanity. And that this was an irresistible evolutionary current. This structure of feeling, a kind of industrial dynamism, might be aestheticized, as in futurism, and in another way in industrial design, as Christine Cogdell has shown. It could also be seen in representations of evolution itself, as in these vernacular, non-theorized illustrations published in Fritz Kahn's popular science series Das Leben des Menschen (1922-31).

Fritz Kahn, Das Leben des Menschen, vol. 5 (1931). Artist: Grundner

Fritz Kahn, Das Leben des Menschen, vol. 5 (1931). Artist: Roman Rechn

In the above illustrations there is a convergence between evolutionary development and industrial design. The sea creatures are glossy (in German, Glanz), streamlined, have an internal industrial technology. (And are radiant, in a peculiarly modernist idiom.) Industrial technology in turn explains them. And they in turn are a model for modern industrial design. So compare, now, Raymond Loewy's 1930-something evolutionary chart of object and clothing design.

KEVIN FINNERAN

04-08-2010 22:34:04
Marcel has anticipated the next question I was going to pose about how technology was producing new tools for visual culture and making existing tools more widely available. I'm going to launch this discussion with a new topic on Friday morning, so please pick up the thread there.

The chart by Raymond Loewy that Michael introduced is a wonderful illustration of the evolution of visual imagery and of how a visual theme can be manifested in a wide variety of objects. I wonder if he saw his own design for the Avanti as a straightforward evolutionary step or a brilliant mutation.

And the Fritz Kahn pieces suggest lots of possibility for cross-breeding between the organic and mechanical realms.

More on technology in tomorrow's topic.

RICK WELCH
04-09-2010 06:17:23
I should like to comment on the significance of the Scopes (“Monkey”) Trial of 1925, which Marcel so vividly introduced. This is a subject of deep interest to me, not only as a biologist and historian, but also because my hometown is just 30 miles from Dayton, Tennessee, the site of the trial. My father was born and raised in Dayton and (as a teenager) actually attended one of those outdoor sessions at the trial – as seen in the photographs displayed in Marcel’s posting.

As indicated by Marcel and others in this forum, in the post-Darwin age, the idea of “evolution” was introduced (rather portrayed and distorted) to the public, not by scientists, but by journalists, cartoonists, satirists, social commentators, populist politicians, and religious zealots. By the early 20th century, the theory of evolution (by then, personified in Darwin himself) was seen as the epitome of secular humanism – the “scientific revolution” gone rampant in its assault on revealed religion and the sacrosanct role of humankind in the natural order of things. Science vs. secular humanism came to a grandiose head in Dayton, putting in place a mise-en-scène with an ensuing mise-en-train that continues at play today – with an “evolution” of its own!

Most folks don’t know that the Scopes Trial was a “staged” event from its very inception. Immediately after the Tennessee legislature passed the “anti-evolution” law for public school teaching, the American Civil Liberties Union went in search of a city that would “stage” a challenge to the law. None of the big cities would risk it. Business leaders of the sleepy (but endearing) little town of Dayton, Tennessee, approached the ACLU and agreed to take-up the cause. The motive of these townspeople was to boost the economy of Dayton. (It didn’t work.) John T. Scopes was persuaded to be the straw dog. For me, the symbolism of the Scopes Trial is summed-up in a retort that William Jennings Bryan issued to Clarence Darrow, during their closing duel before the enraptured local populace. When challenged by Darrow on the validity of Biblical scripture vs. science, Bryan hailed that, “I don’t care about the ages of rocks, I only care about the Rock of Ages.”

The Dayton Courthouse is there today, much as it was in 1925. The basement is now a museum, where one finds lots of memorabilia – including a wealth of photographs, popular illustrations, and news items of the kind displayed in Marcel’s posting. For those interested, Edward J. Larson’s prize-winning book, Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, is a masterpiece. (See also http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4723956)

ELLEN LEVY
04-10-2010 05:42:18

The photograph that Michael posted of Raymond Loewy is a great example of the convergence of industry and evolution. Let me provide another (see the attached jpg), which points to the legacy of Taylorism. When Darwin surveyed the natural world he observed that “all true classification is genealogical.” Todd’s passionate comments about Tesla (in section Art and visual culture leading up to and into the 20th century) showed how, as Todd put it, " each innovation was a hallmark of evolution, in so far as it showed how Tesla adapted his knowledge." It points attention as well to how cultures have evolved systems of innovation. Like the participants here who have noted many similarities between biological and cultural evolution, historian Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles and I, as an artist, pooled our common interest in evolution and art by perusing almost 300 years of images of inventions, identifying a new cultural corollary in the realm of patent drawings. Diagrammatic images, like those of Tesla, reflected the societies they hoped to enhance, displaying the way machines and the styles of drawing them, evolved. Some of the styles showed the evolution of artistic conventions, and many reflected the changes in technologies available to artists after the introduction of photography and photogravure, inventions that, because of their ability to make copies profoundly impacted the US Patent Office – and the evolution of technology.

This chart of the Evolution of paper clips was made by Conrad Morton and is in the collection of Henry Petroski

CONSTANCE CLARK:

04-11-2010 06:12:53
I like Marcel's comments a lot, especially her suggestion that here are the beginnings of our contemporary cut-and-paste pastiche-y culture, and the reminder that Scopes was a much-photographed event. I think we tend to forget how new a thing this still was in 1925: that the availability of small cameras that amateurs could use was in some ways as revolutionary as the introduction of photography itself had been.