Collaborating with a scientist on an art-science experiment to show concepts of evolution, I predicted our drawings would evolve in unexpected ways. What I didn’t expect was the accidental emergence of hieroglyphics.

Many years ago, working in Nicole Gerardo’s lab at Emory University, I had an idea for an art project that might elucidate some of the main concepts of evolutionary biology. At a lab meeting, I drew an organic shape on a paper and passed it to the person sitting next to me, asking them to copy it. Then I asked that person to pass their version to their neighbor and have them copy the copy, and so forth. About a dozen of us passed this visual game of “telephone” around the table. By the time it came back around, the original image had evolved quite a bit.

I thought there was potential in that idea for conveying how “errors in copying” (i.e. mutations) can over many generations lead to larger changes, until the original shape is unrecognizable. I knew that if I wanted to show radical transformations, such as have happened to species over evolutionary history, I would need a very large group of participants to make many generations of drawings. So now we have an opportunity; Nicole Gerardo and her evolutionary biology class have been engaging the public in a similar exercise of much larger proportions. Next weekend, the Atlanta Science Festival Expo will display our Evolution Project: An Art-science Experiment, and public participants can keep the lineages of drawings growing.

Nicole and her class have shaped the project. The most important change was prompted by a reminder that evolution acts on populations, not individuals. So instead of starting with just one organic shape, this project starts out with a population of shapes. We also added some copying rules that represent evolutionary forces like selection, drift, migration, and bottleneck events. Some of the lineages branch off and create new lineages of drawings, similar to the process of speciation. If you’re interested in learning more about these evolutionary concepts, this is a great place to start.

Collaborating with the students has been a joy. They gave a lot of input into the design of the project and have been wandering around campus and its environs soliciting participation to generate more copies of drawings. When I was stuck with solving some problems with the display, the students eagerly jumped in and worked to figure it out. They sorted themselves into think-and-do teams, worked with the materials at hand, and voila, now we have a ready-to-assemble display for the Expo.

I’ve been very curious to see how the drawing lineages change. I was apprehensive they might just decay into over-simplified shapes and get stuck, like maybe a collection of stars that get copied again and again. In some lineages, the drawings did evolve at some point into hearts, chili peppers, or odd little critters, but they keep changing in interesting ways. My favorite lineage is one in which the shapes became a kind of hieroglyph. It appears that one of the copiers got lazy and abbreviated a shape, resulting in something like an ideogram. Through selection and a bottleneck event, that lineage of drawings has now evolved to a population of ideograms. When I was in art school in Chicago, I was obsessed for a time with Japanese kanji, Egyptian hieroglyphs and the origins of written languages, so it was fun for me to revisit that curiosity, and to observe this tendency for visual abbreviation emerging in our experiment.

Thanks to Emory students, Atlanta Science Tavern volunteers, and all our drawing participants! If you want to see where our art-science project goes next, or put your pen to paper and participate in creating these lineages, join us at the Atlanta Science Festival Expo, Saturday, March 28 from 11am til 4pm, at Centennial Olympic Park. Look for the booth with the symbASA logo, and look for folks with the turquoise T-shirts that say: Evolution Project: An Art-Science Experiment.

Hope to see you there!

What science can do for art.

Artists have been using science for a long time. One of my favorite examples of this came from developmental biologist Scott Gilbert, on a visit to Spelman College ten years ago. Standing in the hall, looking at a painting of Gustav Klimt’s Danaë, he pointed out to me that the images in the fabric in the bottom right are developing embryos. (The story of Danaë is that Zeus impregnated her in the form of a golden rain that streamed through the ceiling and into her womb… Mary’s not the only one.) Klimt was hanging around in salons in the very art-science-y Vienna at the fin de siècle, and this painting is just one example of that culturally integrated time.

Gustav Klimt, “Danaë,” 1907.

Science is advancing at such a rapid pace that it provides a bottomless well of weird new narratives for artists to play with. Raw data also bring interesting new subjects to the artists’ studio. Nathalie Miebach uses meteorological and oceanographic data as patterns for musical scores and woven sculptures, and I just can’t stop thinking about them.

Nathalie Miebach, “Boston Tides.” Reed, wood, data.

Materials and tools of science when repurposed for art yield fascinating results. Michael Oliveri’s Nano landscapes, using scanning electron microscopes (SEM) to look at the intricate surfaces of metals, are a perfect example. Oliveri was inspired by images that the scientists were tossing out as irrelevant visual noise, artifacts of the SEM process but devoid of any of the desired data. One man’s artifact is another man’s art.

Michael Oliveri, Nano Landscape

What art can do for science.

As part of a growing trend to engage a broader public in science, art can communicate science in new ways. This role of art-science, along with myriad science cafes, science festivals, radio shows and podcasts like RadioLab, Science Friday, and Story Collider, is part of a movement to make science hipper, warmer, and funnier. These friendlier versions of science were recently explored by the MIT-sponsored Culture Kettle, in a report called the Evolving Culture of Science Engagement. With these art-sci for sci-comm collaborations, it’s important to make sure that the artist’s voice doesn’t get lost in this role, or get reduced to being just an interesting mouthpiece for the science. Making the artist’s integrity a priority in art-science was underlined in this joint report by a 2011 NEA-NSF joint conference called SymBIOtic ART and Science.

An inspiring new example of using art to model science comes from artist Matthew Shlian (pronounced “Shline”). Working with folded paper, he calls himself a “paper engineer.” Shlian says, “I don’t know what I’m doing a lot of the time. The work I make is the way I can start to understand.” Einstein said the same thing, basically: “If we knew what we were doing, they wouldn’t call it research.”

Shlian has sought to interact with scientists. Presenting his work to scientists and engineers at the University of Michigan, this happened: “They understood my work in a very different way than I ever had, as a tool to represent scientific principles. I was showing them a book form, a pleated structure that sort of rotated around on itself, and this guy stood up and said, ‘That’s it!’ He had been working on something called an autophagosome, which has a double cell membrane and rotates around on itself during cellular division.” (Here’s a simple illustration of autophagosome formation and function – it’s like a temporary garbage truck that delivers cell waste to a lysosome, so that waste can be broken down.) “He’d been trying for years to to visually depict how it moves. He could see it in his head, but couldn’t get it as a flat image to show his students. My book form moved the way forward.” *  You can see more of Shlian’s images and a short video on this page, and he is featured in the February/March issue of American Craft magazine.

“That’s it!” Matthew Shlian’s book form moves like an autophagosome.

Similarly, the work of Carl Flink and Black Label Movement has helped cellular biologist David Odde model the somewhat violent activities that happen inside a cell. They use a technique called bodystorming, where the dancers and scientists work together to physicalize the intercellular processes. Their Moving Cell Project conducted a delightful residency at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, performing works in progress around town and getting feedback from the bustling community of scientists and students there.

Here’s the thing. Art makes you a better scientist.

Beyond science communication and modeling, perhaps the most universally appealing aspect of art-for-science is that art-making activity gives scientists (and any entrepreneurial innovators) more creativity. Robert and Michelle Root-Bernstein have published decades of scholarly work showing that arts immersion builds more innovative minds, in science and all kinds of other entrepreneurial pursuits. In their book, Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People, the Root-Bernsteins outline tools of creativity which are employed in both lab and studio.

Playing the violin brought joy to Einstein and helped him think.

Recently, the Root-Bernsteins published convincing evidence that among the arts, it is crafts that are most useful in developing a creative brain. Examining the lives of Nobel-prize-winning scientists, the real paradigm-shifters who advance their field forward, the Root-Bernsteins noticed a pattern. Immersion in crafts gives scientists the creativity to make truly innovative advances in science. Using tools such as observation, visual thinking, pattern recognition/ pattern creation, and manipulative ability gives crafts-making scientists (and all of us, really) a cutting edge. Makes sense. We are hard-wired to use our hands and minds to fashion things, and using our hands and minds to do things they were meant to do brings a certain kind of joy. There’s a great word for this: Funktionslust -pleasure taken in what one does best. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, humans gotta make. To learn more about the relevance of crafts, try a cyber-visit (or if you’re near Asheville, a physical visit) to the Center for Crafts, Creativity and Design.

Whatever the reason for bridging art and science, it’s important to recognize that the art-science divide is a recent one, and false. Imagine Leonardo’s face, looking at Facebook: “Are you a left-brain person or a right-brain person? Take this test and find out!” Leonardo had both sides of his brain, and so do we. In an organ built entirely of networks, one of the most important parts of our human brain is the corpus callosum, a section in the middle that connects the two sides. The more time we spend using that bridge, the more creative we’ll be, whether we do our work in a lab or a studio.

“Only connect!” – E.M. Forster

*From “Visual Tactile & Intuitive: Matt Shlian’s folded paper creations are an artful take on geometry,” by Joyce Lovelace, American Craft, February/March 2015, pp. 58-67.

The winter solstice was an auspicious time for me to stumble upon the work of Tracy Hicks, a fellow artist-scientist who is has become an inspiration for me and for symbASA. While building a new house and moving into a new phase of life, Tracy has been working a lot lately with tracking the light by moving art objects around to mark the sun’s path. There’s more going on there that the artist can share with us, and more will emerge as he works, but for now I’m inspired by the ephemeral nature of his miniature installations, these ever-shifting sun markers made of art fragments. Stonehenge is public and grand; these installations are small, private, moving and shifting daily.

Tracy Hicks works with light.

I met Tracy while exploring a very promising locale for establishing a symbASA Art-Science Center in the NC mountains, near Penland School of Crafts (more on that in a later post).  I was walking to the top of a mountain on that property, and as I breathlessly reached the peak, I came upon this:

I don’t yet know the name of this mountain, but I’m calling it Frogs On Top.

Tracy has invited those of us in his community to participate in the work as well. The opportunity to witness, and participate in, another artist’s creative process, to both verbalize and physically experience the work in progress, is an invaluable experience. This is true of the scientific process, too. We should all experience the open-ended explorations of art and of science early and often in our lives, so that we understand that the wonderful Made Things in the world (including ideas) don’t just arise gracefully and fully-formed to the Lucky Talented Few.  The making of art and of science is a fascinating series of meanders, sometimes rushing fast through the middle of a stream, but sometimes traveling through a thicket, leading to the edge of a cliff, or into a dark cave.

Boards of Directors and of Advisors are necessary and wise, but symbASA also needs a Board of Muses. We want to be inspired by those who are out there traveling fiercely and courageously through their thickets and caves, and be there to celebrate when they occasionally come out splashing into a roaring stream. What is a muse? Someone who is Working.

Collaboration is Together-Working. Co-labor is an even more powerful kind of muse, where artists or scientists working in a similar vein but not too closely aligned move in and out of familiarity and foreign territories. When I watch my son play jazz, I witness great “riffs” in real time that catch and play with the ideas introduced by someone else’s themes. In playing jazz, improvising in real time, Playing in public (not just playing music, but Play in the higher sense of the word, like Work), the jazz musicians are baring their process to the listeners. It doesn’t happen alone, it’s a conversation. I like this conversation that Tracy and I are starting to have about art-science, and specifically about art-science in that place. I don’t know where it will go, but I do know through those Co-Labor-ations, symbASA will grow in ways that neither of us expect. The sum of Co-Workers, Co-Players, is greater than its parts.

Here’s to Co-Work,  Co-Play, aMUSEment, and following the lights and darks where they will lead us.

Hi fellow artistes and scientistes — here is an opportunity for you at AESS:

Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences

We are sad to report that the wonderful Institute for Figuring has tragically been devastated by fire recently, and much of their work was damaged or lost. These are the clever hands and minds who are responsible for the Crochet Coral Reef. This brainy, math-y crowd-sourced yarn bombing project depicts myriad forms of marine life using yarn as a sculptural medium.  More than 7,000 folks have contributed to the project, which has exhibited all over the world.

Thanks to roanokecollege, where 200 contributors worked on this crochet coral reef.

It turns out that crochet is an ideal technology for modeling  hyperbolic geometry such as is found in corals and of sea slugs and other things with undulating form. Flat surfaces that increase as they widen, such as when adding stitches for every new row, create wavy edges. It reminds me of what my high school biology teacher, Mary Eyles, told us: if you are asked the reason for the form of a structure in biology and you don’t know the answer, nine times out of ten the reason is “increased surface area.”  (She also took us to her house where she had collections of all kinds of animals in jars, told us stories of her orangutan in Malaysia, Wa Wa, and served us brains and eggs. But that’s for another post.)

The IFF is a project of twin sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim. Margaret has a wonderful TED talk about the project, well worth a watch. The fire is a huge loss and we certainly wish the good folks at IFF all the best.  Help them out and order their book from Kickstarter – it makes a nice holiday gift.

In response to a question on the LinkedIn group STEM education, a member asked if the arts “soften” STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education.  I post my response here because I have heard this skepticism a lot lately, and because I am passionate that the arts can actually strengthen STEM education, if arts educators and art-science collaborators are careful to be accurate, to find the simple core of science narrative that they wish to convey, and if they are thoughtful about choosing the right metaphors that illuminate rather than confuse the STEM concepts.

“What They are Wearing” my Species Icon, demonstrating mimicry — displayed at the “Origins” exhibit at Emory Library Schatten Gallery, an exhibit celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of the Species.

The arts don’t necessarily “soften” STEM for anyone, but rather provide creative alternatives to our two dominant forms of communication, namely little symbols that stand for sounds and numbers. The science of education has shown that when doing the work of decoding those symbols into language and math, the brain is busy and thus cannot attend as well to the content itself. Communicating STEM concepts directly, through visual media, dance, sculpture, video, and other art media helps illuminate STEM concepts, especially for learners who do better with visual, kinesthetic, musical and emotional learning styles.

What’s more, every STEM researcher and educator I know came to STEM originally because of some spark, usually early in life – experience in the outdoors, experience with building things, a fascination for something beautiful, full of wonder and awe. If we want to communicate STEM, we can’t ignore the importance of that emotional connection. Wonder and awe and a fascination for STEM is the engine that drives us, let’s share that wonder with others. The arts can convey that spark, that emotional connection.

The mission of symbASA is bridging art and science to inspire curiosity, creativity, courage, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication.

Below are some of the projects we are engaged in, and some that are just getting started:

A national meeting. The emerging art-science arena has undergone an explosion of activity in the last few years. The STEM to STEAM movement, arts events and residencies at science organizations like museums and field stations, scientists reaching out to engage artists in collaborations, creative workers who defy either the “artist” or “scientist” label and simply follow their inquisitive minds, all of these are great examples of art-science and they are happening at an accelerating rate. There have been a few NSF-NEA sponsored symposia to examine some of the larger questions of this emerging field, to define art-science, evaluate its quality, examine its outcomes, and set out best practices. But there has yet to be a large, comprehensive, inclusive national meeting, with thought leaders, practitioners, educators, and those who are new to this growing field or just curious about it. We think it’s time for such a meeting, and we’re working to organize one, for summer of 2015.

An inclusive network. Establishing a network of like-minded individuals, even when there are differences among factions, is an essential part of any growing field. We are working to establish a network of art-science workers all over the country and internationally, to serve the needs of this growing field. As we have been working with artists, scientists, and art-science creative workers, we have heard a lot of debate about what art-science is, and what art-science is not. This is characteristic of any growing movement, the desire of different factions to have a say in the identity of the movement and its values. Some are more interested in using the tools, techniques and concepts of science to make art, such as this series entitled Codex: Genome by Suzanne Anker. Others work in the long tradition of art illustrating science, like  Carol Abraczinskas‘ work in paleontology. Sometimes art-science emerges as both art and science, like these works of Eshel Ben-Jacob, or the Silk Pavilion at MIT. But the high-art camp is sometimes disdainful of the art-in-the-service-of-science camp, and there is a kind of clamoring for the right to define art-science. And where does STEM to STEAM fit in? Does art-science in the service of education deserve the same respect as Most High Art? Our position on this debate? It’s all good.  Let’s all get together, zoom out and remember that what we are all trying to do is to inspire the six C’s, and although we are going about it in different ways and come from different cultures, our ultimate goal is to create a populace that is capable of steering our very difficult future.  We’ll need all those C’s we can get.

A Guide to Art-Science Collaboration. One practical tool that we are developing is a Guide to Art and Science Collaborations, to help artists and scientists better understand each other, translate the languages and values across disciplinary boundaries, and to encourage egalitarian and respectful partnerships. Scientists want to ensure that artists get the story right; artists may place a greater value on creative expression. Scientists often communicate Too Much Information, in a data-heavy barrage that has the unfortunate effect of inducing eyelid-heavy audiences. Artists who pare down to the kernel of an interesting science story or a compelling image may miss subtle but important details and thus skew or obscure the very meaning of the science they hope to convey. Because I have worked in both fields and across these boundaries, I am poised to work as a translator and diplomat for these collaborations. This guide will build respect, balance and understanding across disciplines, and give courage to those who are reluctant to try collaborating.

In future posts, we will elaborate on more art-science activities that symbASA is engaged in  — catalyzing art around neuroscience for the BRAIN Inititative, infusing the arts into biological field stations, developing an artists-scientist matching service, adapting art-science for K-12 STEM education (especially aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards), and other great stuff.

If you are in the Atlanta area, come visit us at the art|DBF where symbASA.org will have a table to disseminate information. The Decatur Book Festival is the largest independent book festival in the country.  We are grateful to have a place at the table and hope to see you there!

On Labor Day weekend, symbASA.org will be going public. We have been invited to join the art | DBF tables – the section at the Decatur Book Festival devoted to arts organizations. It will be a great opportunity to get the word out about art-science to the larger public, and promote what we are doing at symbASA. Just in time, we created a new logo, business cards, and brochures. We will be stamping our logo on paper parasols and paper fans so our friends can stay cool (stopping by the symbASA table means you are already cool, but we want our friends to be SUPER cool). You will also notice that we have given our website a fresh new look.

The Decatur Book Festival will be a great event for readers of all ages, If you’re in the Atlanta area, please plan to spend some time at this growing celebration of reading and come to the art | DBF tables and say hi to us at the symbASA.org table.  See you there!

This guest post from fine artist Megan Marlatt, faculty in the Fine Arts Department at University of Virginia, nicely sums up symbASA’s vision! Megan has been spearheading an effort to bring arts into Mountain Lake Biological Field Station. nl

Ana Golici’s studio at MLBS, summer 2013

The field station could be an artist colony.  Both contain and nurture a group of creative individuals inquiring into the workings of the universe; asking “why?” or perhaps, “why not?”  Like the artist retreat, the field station is alive with a communal synergy of working professionals driven by a purpose.  The artists, like the scientists, confer with one another.  They network and discover new friendships and associations with others in their fields.

The scientist’s lab is like the artist’s studio as the artist’s lab is like the scientist’s studio.  Perhaps they share a common ancestry with the early medieval alchemist, who in James Elkins book “What Paint Is” compares the alchemist fascination with his lab with that of the artist’s studio practice; fixated on the mixtures of his concoctions and the process of observing materials or matter in transformation.

Furthermore, both the Arts and the Sciences ask questions that demand the application of a process of discovery to find answers.  Often no process towards this goal has ever been forged, so a new methodology has to be invented.  A new tool has to be made for measuring the growth of a species or a new dance step has to be employed in order to make the awkward leap desired.  The process of moving towards the answer can last for years and may never be resolved, therefore the best artists and scientists know that often the questions are more important than the answers themselves.

Both scientists and artists must be creative, however in Rollo May’s book “The Courage to Create,” he states that before there is an act of creation, there must first be an act of destruction.  A scientist must tear down a previous theory, finding or presumption in order to discover new ideas.  So the artists must mark her clean white canvas while innovating new ways of seeing.

The process towards discovery most shared alike by the artists and scientists is that of observation.  They stop and take the time to look at things carefully.  They note the color of the sky, the shape of a leaf or the stripes along the back of an insect.

Both work their processes of discovery with no guarantee of a preconceived reward at the end of their labor.  In fact, they both know that such anticipations of guaranteed outcomes can be dangerous to the purity of their science and craft, so they keep their eye out for the unexpected.  Furthermore, they work despite the fact that no one may ever buy their paintings, nor will anyone ever pay them to sit in a field all day just to count bees.  It is for this reason that grant writing becomes an important skill for both of them to master.

“The Wilbur Muse, ” by Megan Marlatt, 2013, gouache on paper, 8′ x 12″

Statements by Scientists @ MLBS

Artists often speak of “asking questions” of a subject with their work, while scientists usually imagine they are generating answers. In truth, the processes underlying both disciplines are more similar than practitioners realize – both are creating new methods of investigation to explore natural phenomena.

The 2013 ArtLab collective brought tangible permanent impacts to MLBS in the form of permanent installations and exhibits and lasting human impacts. After the departure of artists from the grounds, there are outdoor installations along the path to the laboratory, and works displayed in the dining hall that continue to stimulate the curiosity developed during the artists’ residencies. Scientists who look at literally thousands of beetles in a summer now see them differently after one artist explored and modeled the folding of insect wings. During our annual Open House for the local community, ArtLab exhibitions were one of the most popular stops and are still talked about by the scientists in-house.

– Edmund “Butch” Brodie, UVa Professor of Biology and Director MLBS

Ana Golici work in progress, wings

This summer there were a number of artists at Mountain Lake Biological Station. As a resident scientist, I thought it was wonderful having the artists around because it made me look at familiar things in new ways.

Scientists and artists both study the world around them. Scientists look for patterns. Artists look for patterns. But we don’t see the same patterns. We are trained to look for different patterns and what you see is in good part a product of your training. This summer we learned from seeing each others’ patterns, learned to get beyond the way we are trained to see things.

Artists and scientists are similar in that both are creative fields. Artists figure out how they want to look at things and to represent them while scientists figure out what questions they want to ask and how to design experiments to answer them. In each case careful study of the situation is needed before jumping in. Over the summer we shared the excitement of each other’s creativity and in some cases the fun of asking different questions about the same subjects.”

– Laura Galloway, UVa Professor of Biology and Department Chair

Ana Golici working on wings

Biologists have traditionally used drawing to improve observation and to communicate their discoveries. The boundary between biological illustration and art has never been a hard line as illustrated by the work of John James Audubon and other artist-naturalists.

At Mountain Lake Biological Station artists have enriched the fieldwork of biologists by helping us see nature in a richer way than we see when showing things to each other. I hope we led artists to a broader appreciation of their subjects by teaching them about their evolutionary history, their adaptations fitting form and function into complex adaptations, and their roles in natural communities. We had fun together because we shared an appreciation of the beauty and inspiration of nature.

– Henry Wilbur, UVa Professor Emeritus of Biology and Former Director MLBS

We welcome guest bloggers who are writing about bridging art and science to inspire curiosity, creativity, courage, critical thinking and collaboration.  Write sciencecandance (at) gmail (dot) com if you want to share your art-science topic.