Response to “The Art of Science“
This brief overview of scientific images that venture far into the visual art realm raises some strikes questions and provides many points of departure for further study. Of chief interest to me was the image “c. instagram”. It is quite exciting to see that life’s daily, normal activities, in this case the basic clumping of worms and their response to food, can create something of such compositional profundity. Adding to the excitement of the image for me is the fact that the researcher saw the appeal of applying a quick filter to the image. In my mind, this begins to develop a practical way in which an image created for a purely scientific purpose could be brought into the sector of the arts with such a slight change. Although her choice to do so was likely rushed and haphazard, it serves as a departure point to consider the idea that perhaps only the presentation of an image, and not its actual content or encoded meaning, is the dividing line between which images strike us as primarily scientific or artistic. On a still deeper level, I was inspired by the image to quickly read about these worms. I learned that they are often used to perform experiments in the molecular biology lab, and that they undergo a blue florescence when nearing death, a phenomena I think is almost as visually striking as the aforementioned image.
Image from Science Daily
I also found that these worms, and some related species, are currently being used as models to study genetics at the University of Oregon Phillips Lab
Another particularly interesting image was “Light Eddies” wherein neural systems were modeled with lasers. Though the science behind a neural network may be complex, I find the image to contain a sublimity that can speak to connectivity and emergent pattern on an artistic level, creating a deeply feeling in the viewer that could perhaps move them ever so slightly towards an understanding of the actual science of connectivity behind it, or at the very least spur someone’s interest in the particular scientific discipline.
The final question that lingers in my mind stems from the idea broached in the article-that unknown results can come from controlled experiments. If one of the primary reasons of pursuing visual art is the stirring of emotion in the viewer, is it possible that these controlled experiments with unknowable results stir an equal feeling of excitement and wonderment? If so, the traditional idea of art, specifically of performance art, could even be extended to the very set-up or implementation of scientific inquiry.