The Art of Exoplanets

"...Hurt and Pyle, who render vibrant visualizations based on data from Spitzer and other missions, are hybrids of sorts, blending expertise in both science and art. From squiggles on charts and columns of numbers, they conjure red, blue and green worlds, with half-frozen oceans or bubbling lava...Visualizations based on data can also inform science, leading to genuine scientific insights...For Hurt, the real goal of scientific illustration is to excite the public, engage them in the science, and provide a snapshot of scientific knowledge."

"We kind of cover each other's blind spots a bit"

"...art is as much a historical record of our changing understanding of the universe as the textbooks we write." -- Robert Hurt, IPAC Center

Read article here.

Science Needs Story

A recent article in Medium has some good advice:

"Scientists need to tell their stories — stories about why they became scientists and what science has done and is doing for humanity. Remember, science is an abstract, intellectual process for most people. It is very hard for people to gain an emotional connection to science. That’s what narrative is for."

"Top GOP messaging strategist Frank Luntz gave this advice in his infamous 2002 memo to conservatives and team Bush about how to pretend you care about the climate while opposing serious action: 'A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.' ...scientists have been trained to depersonalize their speeches, to speak literally, not figuratively. As a result, it has been easy for the Luntz-Trump crowd to create stories in which scientists are the villains."

The article recommends this book for advice on crafting stories: Houston, We Have A Narrative: Why Science Needs Story, by marine biologist turned filmmaker, Randy Olson:

"Olson first diagnoses the problem: When scientists tell us about their work, they pile one moment and one detail atop another moment and another detail—a stultifying procession of “and, and, and.” What we need instead is an understanding of the basic elements of story, the narrative structures that our brains are all but hardwired to look for—which Olson boils down, brilliantly, to “And, But, Therefore,” or ABT. At a stroke, the ABT approach introduces momentum (“And”), conflict (“But”), and resolution (“Therefore”)—the fundamental building blocks of story."

The Trouble with Scientism: Why history and the humanities are also a form of knowledge

"While replicable fact is the domain of science, human perception and value are the domains of art and the humanities."

This New Republic article from 2012 is an excellent rebuttal to the "scientism," of those who argue that the arts and humanities are somehow less reliable and useful than science:

If Marx and Freud are favorite whipping boys for those worried about the [validity of the humanities], the compliment is readily returned...nineteenth-century physics and chemistry [were infested] with the proliferation of “ether theories.” No less a figure than Maxwell even characterized the ether as “the best confirmed entity in [science].

Rigorous mathematical studies of gene-cultural coevolution reveal that when natural selection combines with cultural transmission, the outcomes reached may differ from those that would have been produced by natural selection acting alone, and that the cultural processes involved can be sustained under natural selection...culture appears to be at some level autonomous and in some sense irreducible, and this is what scientism cannot grasp.

But there is still a deeper reason for the enduring importance of the humanities. Many scientists and commentators on science have been led to view the sciences as a value-free zone...Yet on a broader view, which explores the purposes and their origins, it becomes clear that judgments of the significance of particular questions profoundly affect the work done and the environments in which it is done. Behind the complex and often strikingly successful practices of contemporary science stands a history of selecting specific aspects of the world for investigation.

What we discover depends on the questions taken to be significant, and the selection of those questions, as well as the decision of which factors to set aside in seeking answers to them, presupposes judgments about what is valuable. Those are not only, or mainly, scientific judgments. In their turn, new discoveries modify the landscape in which further investigations will take place, and because what we learn affects how evidence is assessed, discovery shapes the evolution of our standards of evidence. Judgments of value thus pervade the environment in which scientific work is done. If they are made, as they should be, in light of the broadest and deepest reflections on human life and its possibilities, then good science depends on contributions from the humanities and the arts. Perhaps there is even a place for philosophy.

Healthy relationships between the sciences and the humanities should aspire to the condition of the best marriages—to a partnership in which different strengths and styles are acknowledged and appreciated, in which a fruitful division of labor constantly evolves, in which constructive criticism is given and received, in which neither party can ever make a plausible claim to absolute authority, and in which the ultimate goal is nothing less than the furtherance of the human good. 

 Read the complete article here.

On Sustainability and Art: artist Hannalie Coetzee

Fire-created artwork.

ART AFRICA looks at the practice of artist Hannelie Coetzee. "Hannelie Coetzee’s artwork draws attention to our warped relationship with nature through pragmatic, solution oriented interventions."

The article also includes highlights of a fascinating discussion between the artist's associates and collaborators.

Some interesting quotes from the article:

The more intuitive approach of artists can provide a window into the complex models, calculations and simulations of the scientific world… Natural world issues require more than just a technical fix. They require systems of thinking and creativity to imagine and illustrate the best possible solutions. -- Prof. Caroline Digby from the Wits Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry

Sustainability is not primarily a scientific problem; rather, it requires us as citizens, communities and societies to rethink the way in which we live our personal lives… This requires engaging the hearts, minds and imaginations of a wide set of people across many different spheres of society. Artists have a particularly important role to play in this regard – not only in creating a space that can help bridge and connect between different actors, but in contributing and opening our minds to completely new ways of seeing the world and our place in it. -- Dr. Reinette Biggs of the Stockholm Resilience Institute and the University of Stellenbosch

How can art and science integrate into a discipline or collaboration that aids transformative understanding?

Art is the expression of creative ideas that are likely informed by prior knowledge but not restricted by natural, economic or social rules. Science is a knowledge that we have built through methodical enquiry over many generations into how nature, economics and society work. When art is introduced into science, it gives permission to seek different ways of addressing the same problem. It enables one to leapfrog or do a U-turn. As stated in New Roles for Art Are Clarified (Carney 2010), Tim Collins declares that, “while replicable fact is the domain of science, human perception and value are the domains of art and the humanities. – Philipp Kirsch, University of Queensland

How do such partnerships reach wider audiences?

I have been astounded by how much easier it is to interest people in the science when it is encompassed in an artwork. Before, I was only talking to the small community of people who were already thinking about these issues. People like the art – and they like the idea that the art has some scientifc substance behind it. Some, not all of them, want to know more details about our science questions and I am challenged to maintain their interest and expand it. – Sally Archibald, WITS

How can partnerships between artists and scientists contribute to resilient systems and change?

The data on climate change is indisputable, but how does one develop an emotional appreciation of the potential consequences? I think this must come through experience and art is a fantastic mechanism to develop emotional experiences and consider possibilities. – Caroline Lehmann, Biogeography, University of Edinburgh

How has an artist’s work influenced your work and vice versa?

Hannelie sometimes brings aspects that I think of as ‘outside’ the system, into the discussion. At its simplest, ecology is the study of the interactions between organisms and their environment and it is refreshing to have a different take on the shape and form of these interactions. – Sally Archibald

I started to write a conference paper about the potential to re-imagine mining overburden as a building material. To change the way that the industry framed everything as waste rock, waste dumps, waste piles etc. In researching this, I uncovered the genre of Land Art. These artists have given considerable thought to moving earth to make art. I strongly believe in the potential for artists to create not just new mine closure landscapes, but to also drive improved community relations when working side-by-side with the engineers and financial managers in mine planning and operations. – Phillip Kirsch

Read complete article here.

Field Notes of a Terranaut

Artist Alan MacDonald was inspired by the notebooks of DaVinci and Michelangelo to create his recent work, Field Notes of a Terranaut. MacDonald has some lucid ideas about the creative process:

"Our senses filter out vast amounts of information unessential for survival of the body-organism. Yet still, a trickle of information enters the mind experienced as intuition, a creative spark. Aha moments. Truly creative artists are in a sense mystics, 'receiving' non local information in order to co-create local objects that inspire and extend consciousness."

I would argue that this statement applies to truly creative scientists, as well: they notice things that the rest of us filter out. Perhaps we lack a term for the truly creative perception that distinguishes transformative art and science from the merely pedestrian?

Codex Gunnison

Codex Gunnison is an art project that explores a poorly studied natural phenomenon in the Gunnison arm of the Great Salt Lake, UT. This bay is the saltiest water body on earth, yet it still manages to host life: a peculiar, salt-loving microbe that colors the bay's water pink and creates rock-like forms on the ground.

"Codex Gunnison is a mediative engagement with a unique and understudied ecological condition. It is also an effort to reimagine artistic practice as a speculative and vibrantly humanistic material science capable of interacting with and enriching conventional modes of objective inquiry. It does so by reframing representation as a process of critical engagement with the methodological frameworks employed by scientists with the artist manipulating the scope, aims, and outcomes of formal research."

Isn't this just a perhaps overly post-structural way of describing Natural History?

If so, it's nice to get back to that effort, which combined passion and close observation to gain understanding of natural phenomena before there was a structured practice of science to do that. Natural History combined artistic and analytical thinking and skills in a powerful way that has to some extent been lost in the process of science becoming more technical and fragmented.

These Nine Artists Will Help You Understand the Future of the Planet

Smithsonian curator Joanna Marsh highlights 9 contemporary artists whose practices are conscious-raising and problem-solving. Here are some quotes from the full article:

"Part of the reason that there is a lot of public inaction around climate change and environmental issues more broadly is because the science isn't communicated in an accessible way that triggers emotional responses and curiosity on the part of the public." -- Joanna Marsh

"I frankly believe we’re at a moment where we have some really big problems and we need as many minds that can come together from as many different perspectives as possible to address these issues because we’re not going to resolve them just within one field of study." -- Krista Caballero

"One of the challenges of our time is that people feel disconnected from – perhaps even insensitive to – the world’s great problems. We do not see ourselves as agents in a global society. Climate change, poverty, war, and illness are all challenges that vie for our attention. The overwhelming avalanche of information in society today, coupled with the PR efforts aimed directly at us, as individuals, have resulted in many of us accepting that something has to be done. Yet there is a huge gap between what we know and what we feel. How can we translate knowledge into action, and really change our behavior? Of course, it is necessary to present the facts and data supporting climate change science, but this is not where action begins. Only by embodying knowledge can we gain a sense of responsibility and commitment." -- Olafur Eliasson

Request for Journal Submissions

Dear Community:

Mapping Meaning is pleased to announce that submissions are being accepted for the first issue of Mapping Meaning, the Journal. 

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Submission Deadline: August 31, 2017
Notification Date: January 1, 2018
Publication: May, 2018
Website: http://www.mappingmeaning.org/journal
E-mail: editors@mappingmeaning.org

ISSUE SCOPE

How might interdisciplinary practices promote a reconsideration of the role that humanity plays in a more-than-human world?

In a deeply fragmented and disciplined-based world, Mapping Meaning creates a space to encounter divergent approaches toward “surveying” landscapes in the face of radical global change and ecological and social crises.

Inspired by a photograph from 1918 depicting an all-female survey crew, Mapping Meaning supports the creative work and scholarship of all those working at the margins and ecotones.

In its inaugural issue, Mapping Meaning, the Journal, seeks submissions that cross and/or challenge traditional boundaries between social, psychological and environmental ecologies with the greatest potential to revitalize dialogue and foster alternative narratives. We solicit work from scientists, humanists, and artists from within or outside the academy and are especially interested in field-based research and learning. Work will be reviewed by issue editors and the editorial board (please see website for details).

AREAS OF PARTICULAR INTEREST:

• Experimental Knowledge Practices that utilize divergent approaches to address issues of ecological complexity in our physical, social, and spiritual worlds.
• Collaborative Methodologies showing examples across discipline, distance, and generation.
• (Re)Surveying Scholarship and Creative Work that uncovers unrecognized histories.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION INCLUDING SUBMISSION GUIDELINES,
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE.
www.mappingmeaning.org/journal

SciArt Center Microgrant: "Nature as Muse"

"Nature as Muse" Microgrants

Deadline to apply: June 16th, 2017
Grant award: $200

Grant theme:
The theme of this grant is "Nature as Muse" and is intended for artists, scientists, or transdisciplinary practitioners who draw inspiration from nature in her varied forms, contexts, and scales. This grant aims to help the grantee bring an existing project to completion. 

What we're looking for:
Are you almost done with a large-scale painting related to nature that you need some extra funds to purchase paint for? Are you $200 away from collecting your final specimens for analysis? Is there a piece of equipment that would bring your project or research to the next level? We're looking for applicants that have existing projects that are close to completion but need some help to get there. Preference will be given to trans-, cross-, and multi-disciplinary projects. Such projects include art works that engage science and nature, science research that engages nature and aesthetics, and the like.

More info here.

The Bridge: Experiments in Science and Art, CFP

Are you a performance artist interested in collaborating with a geologist? Are you a programmer looking to interact with an art historian? Are you a poet who wants to work with an expert in the birth of the universe? Are you a microbiologist seeking to visualize your findings with the help of a sculptor?

"The Bridge: Experiments in Science & Art" is now open for applications. This virtual collaborative residency program creates pairs of cross-disciplinary professionals who embark on a fourth month long collaboration of their own devising. In this open call format, we find the best three pairs based on fitness, to help you meet the collaborator of your professional dreams. Each pair - which often span geographies - collaborates to inform each other's work, as well as create something new. With an emphasis on exploring the natural process of collaboration, "The Bridge" residents are not bound by rules or expectations, and are limited only by each collaboration's imagination.

Deadline to apply: July 5, 2017
Residency period: September 1 - December 31, 2017

More info here.

Open Science: Singularity and Irruption on the Frontiers of Artistic Practice

"'Open Science: Singularity and Irruption on the Frontiers of Artistic Practice' is research that deals with the work done by artists who [are trained in and] use scientific methodologies for their work production."

The publication proposes that when artists undertake science, their questions, methodologies and results are different than those of non-artistic scientists, and based in their very different "premises, ethics, prior knowledge, liberties, problematizations and aesthetics."

"The publication works with the hypothesis that art can produce knowledge, reviewing the relationship between art and science, based on interviews with five artists residing in different countries: Dmitry Bulatov (Russian Federation), Susana Soares (Portugal), Rachel Mayeri (USA), Gilberto Esparza (Mexico) and Perdita Phillips (Australia)."

Perception Is Not Static

It turns out that people with different personalities actually see different things. Artists and scientists, with their highly divergent training and experience, also see differently. Putting them to work on the same problems offers the potential for greater discovery, since we generally see what we expect to see, not what is really there.

Research support for art/sci intersections

The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) is dedicated to
fostering and supporting integrative scholarship addressing ultimate
questions at the intersection of the arts, engineering, the
humanities, law, and the formal, natural, and social sciences,
especially those that transcend disciplinary boundaries.
http://ndias.nd.edu/fellowships/residential/

Research Support
The NDIAS offers residential fellowships for periods ranging from
three weeks to a full academic year (fall and spring semesters, August
through May). Fellowships range up to a maximum of $60,000 (gross
amount) per academic year (up to a maximum of $30,000 [gross amount]
per semester) or pro-rated amounts for shorter periods. In addition,
fellows who do not reside in the greater Michiana area are provided
with subsidized visiting faculty housing located adjacent to the
University during their fellowship. Applicants who require additional
support beyond the fellowship stipend should seek supplementary
funding in the form of external grants or sabbatical and other
contributions from their home institutions. When preferable due to
reasons such as faculty retirement contributions, ongoing employment,
or the tracking of external funding, the NDIAS will pay a fellowship
stipend directly to a Fellow’s home institution.

Application Instructions
https://ndias.nd.edu/fellowships/residential/application-instructions/

Mechanisms of discovery

Discovery is the creation of new knowledge. Both art and science are ways of combining previously unrelated elements to create this new knowledge.

"In designing this project, I have been looking for the right proportions and contrasts that set associations in motion, that invite the sort of very human experience of engaging through curiosity and being rewarded with discoveries...I think it’s an important skill to be able to read things in multiple and often contradictory ways." -- Todd Gilens

But what are the mechanisms involved in this discovery process? The philosopher David Hume argued convincingly that the human mind does not invent: it combines previously unrelated elements to create something new:

"What never was seen, nor heard of, may yet be conceived; nor is anything beyond the power of thought, except what implies an absolute contradiction...But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience. When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted." 

"If all we had to go on were impressions and ideas, we could not do much more than have perceptions and notice past experiences. Hume, however, develops a powerful account of the mind by identifying the ways in which ideas may be related to one another. We can mentally link ideas together in three ways:

1. Resemblance: A and B share similar features;
2. Contiguity: A and B occur together in space and/or time;
3. Cause and Effect: A brings B about.

...Hume argues that all human beliefs [and mental processes] result from applications of these simple associations. From our simple ideas and associations we build very complex systems of thought and belief. Yet, no matter how complex an idea or belief system, it is always possible in principle to analyze it into its simpler component parts: ideas and relations between them.

This theory of mind and method of analysis provided the tools that Hume used to arrive at remarkable conclusions about knowledge, understanding, metaphysics, the self, morality, justice, religious belief, and a host of other key philosophical topics." Much of Hume's work has been confirmed by later science. Read more here.

* * *

So, how does someone actually effect this productive recombination? Artists and inventors have a particular need for novelty; here are a few of the tools they have used to explore new hybrid ideas:

Surrealism is an art movement creating artworks that feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur. The result was achieved by by combining conscious and unconscious awareness, with the goal of effecting social change.

• Inventor Thomas Edison also famously accessed the power of his unconscious mind by power-napping at his desk with a handful of ball bearings. When he drifted off to sleep his hand would relax, dropping the heavy metal balls to the floor. The noise woke him to record his unconscious answer to whatever question his conscious mind had been pondering.
• Artist Salvador Dali used the same technique with a spoon and metal plate. Dali was intrigued with the images which "occur at the boundary between sleeping and waking that occur when people are falling asleep, or when they are starting to wake up. These images tend to be extremely vivid, colorful and bizarre".
• Though it slightly predated the Surrealists, Freud's work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious, mirrored and inspired their goals. Despite significant errors, Freudian analysis led to a revolution in psychology, ultimately transforming it from essentially voodoo into a more scientific discipline.

Humor uses startling juxtaposition of apparently unrelated elements to convey new concepts, and to build new coping mechanisms and emotional connection to the ideas and the people expressing them:

"Humor also bestows social, psychological, and physical benefits. It attracts attention and admiration, softens criticism, delineates social boundaries, and alleviates conflict between people with different worldviews (Gervais & Wilson, 2005; Keltner, Capps, Kring, Young, & Heerey, 2001; Martin, 2007). Humor even helps people cope with anxiety, embarrassment, grief, and physical pain." (Gervais & Wilson, 2005; Keltner & Bonanno, 1997; Martin, 2007)

"...comedy goes far beyond the business of making us laugh: it has long been a powerful tool for social change and a means of undermining authority. What we find funny can also be cruel, establishing symbolic boundaries that divide people, setting those with power against those without and vice-versa." -- Artdaily.com

"Stand-up comedy is among the most popular forms of entertainment in America today. It is also one of the few places in mainstream society where people speak candidly about the topics of race and racism. This is no coincidence." -- Colleen Frances Manwell

Perhaps because of its transformative power, humor itself has often been seen as subversive: in Confucian China, in the medieval Islamic world (where comedy was dissociated from Greek drama and re-associated with Arabic poetic forms), and in more modern culture, where jokes can unite, or at the expense of national, religious or social identities can work to enforce tribalism, misogyny and racism.

However, for its transformative capacity humor is often seen as the enemy of fanaticism. In fact, "the topic of whether Christ ever laughed was hotly debated by theologians over many centuries. So, if Christ never laughed, and priests should be models of Christ, then humor and laughter were counter to true religion" (which is conservative and rejects re-interpretation).

The roots of humor include:

• Being reflective of, or imitative of reality 
• Surprise/misdirection
• Contradiction/paradox
• Ambiguity

The comedian Rowan Atkinson goes so far as to state that a person or object can become funny in one of only three ways: by being in an unusual place, by behaving in an unusual way, or by being the wrong size (Laughing Matters, 1992).

Atkinson also notes the strangely close relationship between comedy, fear, surrealism, and magic, as well as the surprising recurrence of classic themes in all of these. The physical comedian, like the ground-breaking artist, "breaks all the rules of decorum and convention".

Magic upends expectation, exploiting object behavior that obviously must be following the laws of physics, yet appears to break them. Artist and inventor John Edmark says,

"Clearly the works are sculptures of sorts, but in a sense that's just a coincidence; they're just the medium that I'm using to ask and answer questions that I'm interested in...I think my work is most successful when it evokes a sense of wonder, when it sort of seems to be magical."

Explanation of the strobe effect seen in Edmark's dynamic sculptures:



Source: Removable Thumb Magic Trick by ViralHog on Rumble

EDWARD TUFTE  ALL POSSIBLE PHOTONS
THE CONCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE ART OF FEYNMAN DIAGRAMS

Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium: A Forgotten Treasure at the Intersection of Science and Poetry

 "In an era when the scientific establishment barred and bolted its gates to women, botany allowed Victorian women to enter science through the permissible backdoor of art, most famously in Beatrix Potter’s scientific drawings of mushrooms and Margaret Gatty’s stunning illustrated classification of seaweed. Across the Atlantic, this art-science adventure in botany found an improbable yet impassioned practitioner in one of humanity’s most beloved and influential poets: Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830–May 15, 1886). 

Long before she began writing poems, Dickinson undertook a rather different yet unexpectedly parallel art of contemplation and composition — the gathering, growing, classification, and pressing of flowers, which she saw as manifestations of the Muse not that dissimilar to poems."

• The Morgan Library's Emily Dickinson exhibition.
• The Gardens of Emily Dickinson, Judith Farr, et al.
• Harvard's complete digitized Dickinson herbarium

Read entire article here.