Nature of Neptune

Abstracting Nature, Literally

In one of the first posts to this blog I looked at the winning photographs in the 2007 Olympus BioScapes competition, a photography contest for biologists, and pondered whether they could be considered "art".  It is an interesting question, and looking through the 2008 winners from the same competition, I couldn't help but notice how much some of the photographs reminded me of images and sculpture from contemporary visual art. 

Great science photography has always fascinated the mind and the eye, whether through the exquisitely detailed frozen moments of Harold Edgerton, the spellbinding symmetry and patterning of Felice Frankel, or the sweeping, vibrant, glowing space-scapes from the Hubble Space Telescope.  Part of the fascination with these images is believing in their objectivity; they show something real about the world, something nobody can disagree with.  Yet take these connotations away from the images, and you'll find that they don't quite stand up on their own as artwork.  Or to put it another way, if an artist had made them, we just wouldn't like them as much.

What strikes me about some of these BioScapes images is that they almost look like they were made by artists, not rigorously objective photographic recordings made by scientists.  The image to the left, by Michael Franklin, bubbles with layers of structure, ordered almost haphazardly and shining as though made of jeweler's wire, yet calling to mind a plant cell, or a tiny tree rings.  The fascinating patterning, large scale structure with small scale complexity, stunning focus and contrast, and subtle but very effective coloring all distract from the fact that this really is the cross section image of a tiny plant stem.  Below are two other images from the BioScapes competition: Volvox cell colonies by Gerd Gunther on the left, and a wild cucumber by Victor Sykora to the right.

 

We see some very similar aesthetic trends being explored in contemporary visual art.  Anna Hepler's fragile but tension-filled wire sculptures and drawings (seen to the left) explore non-repeating geometries in ways very reminiscent of biological structures or the moments right after an explosion.  Roland Flexner's drawings (example on the right) with ink bubbles tackle similar ideas by literally recording tiny explosions on paper.  Frances Richardson's delicate graphite drawings (below, with detail) create organic, subtle forms from a dizzying complexity of meticulous marks.

The work of each of these contemporary visual artists refers strongly to images from science (Flexner certainly owes much to Edgerton, for example), and quite possibly also refer to, or are inspired by, current research trends in nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, and emergent behavior that attempt to tease some sense out of chaotic structures and behavior.

Artists can use scientific concepts to add further dimension to their work, which is arguably the real key to making good artwork.  When a painting or sculpture not only captures the eye but also suggests that the forms abstractly relate to natural systems, the viewing experience is deepened.  In fact, the crux here may be how "abstractly" this connotation is formed.  A literal explanation of a scientific concept can be interesting and quite dazzling, but a Hubble photograph of a galaxy is not the same as the artwork above, no matter how glowing, swirling, or colorful it is.  Some of these BioScapes images are much closer to artwork because they are so abstracted.  They almost become something other than the actual objects that have been photographed, by only loosely suggesting a connection.  This is precisely where we find exciting combinations of science and art: in works that strike a nimble balance between the literal and the abstract.

Anna Hepler's image "Spheres" comes from her website, and Roland Flexner's "#1" and Frances Richardson's "060307" come from their respective websites.

Understanding Technology: Andrew Neumann's Use of New Media

When defining the purpose of this blog I aimed to "explore ways that objective truths can have meaning and relevance in our actual lives."  These "objective truths" being, specifically, the verified discoveries of modern science.  If you stop to think about that statement, you may wonder why it's a topic worth exploring at all.  Discoveries from science that have relevance in our lives... isn't that called "technology"?  Don't all the devices and machines we see and interact with everyday show exactly how ideas from science have come to influence our lives?

Yet, you may notice that the majority of the posts thus far on Nature of Neptune have focused on artist's use of scientific concepts in their artwork, not on their use of technology.  It is absolutely true that technology brings science to our lives, but the question is how?  When we look at an iPod, do we understand how it works, or how it has come to be in 2008 that this device is able to be manufactured?  Do we know the rules of the natural world that have been discovered that allow this device to work the way it does?

These are the sort of questions that inspired this blog, and are part of the reason that successful examples of making concepts from science relevant to our lives is so difficult and rare.  The art world has certainly not ignored technology however, as the field of New Media has exploded in recent years.  New media artists use modern technology, often computers or digitization, as their artistic medium.  There is some excellent new media artwork out there, but much of it falls victim to novelty for novelty's sake, creating new forms of "art" that, while certainly new, are conceptually empty.  New Media is just another tool for art making; simply using technology does not mean you are helping us understand technology.

One artist whose work does help us understand technology is Andrew Neumann, a Boston-based new media artist.  Neumann's fascinating wall pieces offer a unique glimpse inside electronic and computing devices, baring their insides while also showing real time interaction between system components.  One piece, titled Quartet (photo to the left, video here), consists of four small lcd screens with their electronics exposed sliding back and forth on two metal tracks.  Two cameras on either side of the tracks are pointed at different components of the moving system; one is focused on the motor driving the screens back and forth, while the other points at a switch mechanism that causes the screens to change direction when they reach the end of the track.  Two other cameras are mounted on the moving lcd screens, pointing down the track back towards the switch and the motor, respectively.  Each of the four camera views are projected on one of the screens, and the entire system is mounted on a wooden plank.

The cameras projecting four different views of the same slowly moving system suggests security cameras inside a computer.  While Neumann's cameras are not for protection, like security cameras they give a coordinated view of multiple aspects of the same system as they change in real time.  Each part of the system is related to each other part, as power and function are transferred from one to another.  Neumann doesn't try to wow the viewer with cutting edge technology, but rather offers a unique and meditative view on the concepts and structure behind modern electronic devices.  This allows the viewer to experience the concepts behind technology, offering understanding rather than function.  His work does not do any physical or even virtual work, but opens a portal to the concepts behind technology.  Neumann's artwork demonstrates that new media art can be startlingly successful when attempting to understand the technology that comprises it.

The first photo is from the Bitforms Gallery website, and the second photo (of Neumann's piece titled Screw) is from the artist's own website.

Metamorphic Metaphors: Brian Knep's Aging Series

Another Boston-based artist taking advantage of the area's rich and extensive scientific community (see Daniel Kohn) is Brian Knep, and ongoing Artist in Residence at the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.  Knep, a new media artist whose work is often interactive, has used his residency to develop a series of images and video installations exploring the life cycles of frogs.

To create the video pieces for Aging, Knep took thousands of photos of tadpoles at different stages of development and created a computer program to blend the images together (see an article from the Weekly Dig).  The result (shown in the second half of the video above) is an animal that morphs between tadpole and frog as it attempts to swim across the screen.  Gray lines moving from right to left add a sense of imperative as the frog appears to struggle against an unseen current.  As soon as the amphibian makes it all the way forward, it slips back again, struggling to stay on the screen.

Knep uses the striking changes frogs experience in their development to create a metaphor for human life.  The frog appears to struggle to make forward progress, but the progress never lasts and seems almost fruitless as the frog slips backward to start the struggle forward all over again.  The struggle is the same for all stages of the frog's life, as it constantly morphs back and forth into frog, tadpole, and breathing tadpole, each kick forward echoing through each stage of development.  What could be a frustratingly obvious existential metaphor questioning the meaning to life is elevated to a subtle display of interconnectedness, transformation, and beauty.  Forward progress may not be the right way to gauge our lives; perhaps beauty and satisfaction can be found in the cycles of our species and our lives.

While Daniel Kohn has attempted to develop useful visualization tools to help scientists as well as find an abstract visual language for "genomic space" inside cell nuclei, Knep has gone another route by relating ideas from science to our own lives.  Moments in his work yield a special kind of relevancy that isn't often seen in the art world: cold hard facts of science transformed into metaphors for the human struggle.  In fact, Knep could benefit greatly by including even more scientific concepts in his work that further nuanced his metaphor for human life.  Incorporating the frog's metamorphic changes with incredibly rigorous and precise observation is very compelling, but suggests further questions: Why does the frog go through such a life cycle?  What causes these changes to occur?  How do these changes occur within the frog's body?  While Knep's work would benefit from the inclusion of even more ideas from science, the way he ties scientific concepts and observation to human emotion has made his Aging series a true success.

Read more about Knep's work at Harvard Medical School in an interview at ArtSake and an article from the Boston Globe.  The photo is from Knep's website.

Sculpted by Larvae: The Experiments of Hubert Duprat

As the effects of human industry threaten our planet with pollution, climate change, and existential crises, both the science and art worlds have begun looking to nature for more efficient and environmentally friendly ways to create technology, as well as ways to rediscover the beauty in natural systems.  A growing number of scientists and engineers study natural processes to guide their design, while a corresponding number of artists and architects such as Andy Goldsworthy and Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch create work that brings direct attention to the beauty and complexity of natural systems.

French artist Herbert Duprat turns this idea of using natural processes in engineering and art on its head in his work with caddisfly larvae (Trichoptera).  Duprat took several caddisflies from their natural habitat and placed them in tanks filled with gold flakes and precious stones.  Caddisflies, who are often found in stream beds, are known for the protective cases they form around their bodies from pebbles, twigs, or sand.  When placed in a tank with flakes of gold and gemstones, the caddis flies simply created their protective sheaths from these materials instead.

The resulting structures are strikingly gorgeous, but confounding to see surrounding a hairy water bug.  Who, in fact, is the artist?  Is it Duprat, or is it the fly?  Is this even art?  Duprat brilliantly exploits a natural process, showing both the complexity of nature as well as questioning how we judge beauty.  And this is exactly why Duprat's work is art, because it challenges our ideas about the man made and the natural not through a chain of reasoning, but by our personal reaction to his images.

Both images are from Cabinet Magazine, where you can read more about Duprat's work with caddisflies.  Also see Genetologic Research and Leonardo On-Line for an interview with Duprat and more information on Trichoptera.

Anne Lilly's Purity of Motion

In the history of science, images and words have dominated the way concepts are conveyed to colleagues, students, and the public.  Books, prints, photographs, graphs, and diagrams have been the easiest way to portray profound ideas in scientific disciplines for centuries. 

What can often fall by the wayside in science education is how things move.  In science we see dazzling images of swirling galaxies, intricate cells, and dashing animals, but it is very hard to get a sense of the real motion of these objects.  What causes different types of motion?  Why do objects move the way they do?  Why do some movements seem graceful while others appear clunky?  And most importantly, rather than conceptualizing the motion of an object, how does the motion relate to our own bodies?

Artist Anne Lilly builds exquisite stainless steel sculptures that directly explore these issues of motion.  The pieces created by the Boston-based artist (and friend of Arthur Ganson) are propelled by the viewer's hand, giving a direct cause and effect experience for each viewer.  Once set in motion, Lilly's sculptures demonstrate how beautiful and simple motion can arise from simple rules of physics and mechanics.  While Newton's laws describe how objects move, Lilly's sculptures describe how these motions can appear to a human observer.  In her piece Parietals (see a video here), Lilly uses conservation of angular momentum to beautifully transform steel rods into both a science demonstration as well as a mesmerizing display of pure, graceful motion.  By presenting a graceful motion in such a simple way, the artist allows the viewer to contemplate each moment of cause and effect that causes the motion.

Because the motion in Lilly's sculptures is so simple and so pure, it is not hard to relate it to motion found in nature.  In her recent series of spinning steel rod pieces, specifically "There's a Certain Slant of Light", "Polaris", and "Parting" (click each to see a video), the motion of emergent flocking is suggested, such as the mesmerizing movement of starling flocks (also see Richard Barnes' photographs of the same subject).  The long, thin rods in Lilly's sculptures appear to move independently one moment, and then form a coherent motion the next.  They expand and contract, cohere and dissolve, much like many forms of natural flocking.

On another level, the same series of sculptures call to mind electrons swirling around an atomic nucleus.  Lilly's pieces are specifically geared so that none of the rods will ever touch another, which strongly parallels the Pauli exclusion principle forbidding any two electrons from simultaneously occupying the same quantum state.  In quantum theory, the enormous empty space surrounding an atomic nucleus is filled by a cloud of electrons that never "touch".  While the exact paths of the electrons can never be known (see the Heisenberg uncertaintly principle), the regions that they are most likely to be found can form very interesting geometric shapes.  Lilly's sculptures seem to provide an impossible view of how electrons would move through their probability regions if we could actually follow their individual motions.  Always surrounding an invisible nucleus, they never touch, sometimes appear random, but nonetheless form coherent patterns from simple underlying principles.  Form is created not by objects or images, but by pure motion itself.

All images and videos are from Anne Lilly's personal website, and the Arden Gallery website.

Vigorous Simplicity: Conrad Shawcross's Spinning Machines

Though they approach the question differently, both scientists and artists have long been concerned with the relationship between the simple and the complex.  Scientists strive to find simple, elegant mechanisms and equations that describe the complexity seen on our planet and the universe beyond, while many artists explore the ways that simple forms can create complex emotions, or how complex patterns and designs can cohere into unified visions.

English sculptor Conrad Shawcross addresses this age-old concern with a series of intriguing light-based kinetic sculptures.  One set of pieces, called Loop System Quintet, consists of five large wooden contraptions that rotate around their base, and each hold an arm with a bright light attached that spins independently of the base.  The effect is a long row of complex and intimidating wooden machines that trace elegant patterns of light in the air at an unnervingly fast speed.  Shawcross has determined the motion of these machines using specially chosen gear ratios, resulting in movements that continue to repeat themselves.

The jarring speed of these complex contraptions convey the vigor of some unfathomable industrial machinery, while also clearly showing the rigor of a carefully planned, and ultimately simple, repeating process.  The work brings to mind several topics from contemporary science.  As the artist himself admits, the sculptures reference string theory by the way they repeat their motions in "harmonic" patterns, creating three dimensional light traces from a one dimensional point of light (string theory proposes that all physical particles in the universe are actually created by strings that vibrate at different resonant frequencies - like the specific notes created by plucking a guitar string).  Shawcross' use of harmonics is intriguing in the way his machines seem complex but continue to follow very elegant lines of motion.  However, the beautiful long exposure photographs of the three dimensional light traces (shown above) are not actually visible when viewing the sculpture.

What can be seen watching the sculptures is how the path of the light changes from moment to moment.  The simplicity of this motion contrasted with the almost ugly jerkiness of the machines calls to mind the elegant motions of the planets, the paths of electrons around nuclei, or the dance between a binary stars.  Rather than show the simplicity in a complex system, as scientists strive for, Shawcross explores the complexity behind simple systems.  By using complex wooden machinery to create simple harmonic forms, the artist suggests that there may be more layers below the surface of simple forms and motions.  And yet, the complexity of Shawcross' machinery is ultimately deterministic -- the forms repeat themselves; nothing is left to chance.  This is another aspect where the piece does not successfully address the quantum nature of string theory, but still stands up to larger scale metaphors such as planetary motion.

The photo above was taken by Jonathan Shaw, and can be found at London's Walker Art Gallery website.  See more about Shawcross' work at Pixelsumo.

Tiny Universes

While I've written before that straight-up scientific images -- as pretty as they can be -- are not necessarily art, they can most certainly be inspiring.   Canadian biologists Eric Lecuyer and Henry Krause have recently published a stunning image of genetic material in fruit fly embryos that challenges boundaries between scientific images and visual art.

View the full sized image here (warning: 27MB file, but well worth seeing!).

Lecuyer et al. published the image for the cover of the Oct. 5, 2007 issue of Cell journal, which contains a corresponding article about their research.  The image shows the separation of genetic material during several stages of Drosophila (fruit fly) embryonic development.  The researchers were testing how much the distribution of messenger RNA (mRNA) dictates the distribution of proteins in a cell.  Using high resolution imaging, they found a strong correlation between mRNA localization and protein localization, showing that mRNA is a major influence on cellular organization, and thus cellular growth and differentiation as well.

The blue in the images correspond to mRNA, while the red shows the cell nuclei.  The mRNA and cell nuclei were stained, and the color was applied artificially using image analysis software.  The images in the article are red and green, which the researchers say provided the best contrast, suggesting that the red and blue combination must have been chosen for the cover for aesthetic reasons. 

The embryo images are not only visually stunning in terms of color, luminosity, complexity, detail, and abstract patterning, but provide several layers of conceptual meaning.  First, it doesn't take a biologist to recognize the exquisitely detailed mitosis (cell separation) occuring in several of the embryos.  This is the fundamental process of reproduction in animals, and seeing it occur in relation to an entire embryo conveys a breathtaking sense of scale.  Secondly, and maybe this has to do with my experience in astrophysics, the embryo images strongly conjure up all-sky images of the night sky, particularly the cosmic microwave background (CMB) shown to the left, that has been such a hot research topic in the past couple decades.  The embryo images suggest windows into the tiny universes of a new organisms.  Swirling luminescent material, bright points of dense nuclei, and fuzzy blobs of diffuse substances all suggest a strong connection between the tiny and the vast, and our bodies and the universe.

Is the image art?  I believe it could pass for art if presented as such, but that said, I think there is much more an artist could do with these images than the scientists have done that would bring out the conceptual issues I described, and quite possibly even more.
 
On that note, the researchers have a beautiful online database of their embryo images sorted by gene.  Click any gene and it pulls up stunning high resolution images that show the genetic expressions.



CMB photo from Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Murmur

A small black bird, the European Starling is known for flocking in astonishing numbers, occasionally totaling over one million individual birds in one flock.  Not only are starling flocks large, but they expand, contract, and spiral in breathtaking unison, without any apparent leader.  In his series Murmur, photographer Richard Barnes has captured the spectacular aerial displays of the thousands upon thousands of starlings that gather annually in Rome, Italy.  Barnes' beautiful grainy black and white photographs call attention to a slew of issues involving science while achieving powerful emotional impact.

At first look, Barnes' photographs appear to be swirling clouds of gritty smoke or dark leaves.  On closer inspection (by viewing the photos large), one can see that the tiny objects are in fact the shapes of birds.  Barnes has done a wonderful job capturing many scales of starling flocks in a single frame, overlaying the seemingly sporadic patterns of closer birds with the tight clusters of birds further in the distance.  The perplexing shapes of the formations turn out to be the result of decisions made by living organisms rather than just scattered objects in the wind.  Barnes makes excellent use of film grain in many of his photos, allowing the sizes and contrast of the bird shapes to approach the size and appearance of the film grain.  The result is a sea of dark splotches, some are birds, and some are grains of background tone.  Where do the organisms begin, and the particles end?

The flocking Barnes has recorded in Murmur are stunning examples of emergent behavior in complex systems.   A hot topic in science, computer engineering, and design, emergence describes the behavior of complex systems and structures that arise out of simple rules or interactions.  Some scientists believe that starlings flock in order to avoid predators, but the reasons for their peculiar and breathtaking style is still unknown.   This fact makes Barnes' beautiful photographs appear even more dark and ominous.

This month's issue of Seed Magazine profiles Murmur, and displays several two-page spreads of the photos.  Picking up this copy (May/June 2008) is well work it.  Also read Jonathon Rosenthal's illuminating article about Barnes and starlings from the New York Times. 

All photos are from Barnes' website.

The Way Things Go

Peter Fischli and David Weiss's 1987 film, The Way Things Go, has become a classic art film, still shown in contemporary art museums around the world.  The Swiss artist's timeless work, which documents a thirty minute long chain reaction using commonly found objects, is still as fascinating to watch today as it was twenty years ago.

The chain reaction was set up in a large warehouse room, and includes objects like tires, planks, water, gasoline, candles, and fuses.  The clip above shows a segment of the film especially devoted to fire and pyrotechnics.  There is no mystery to the work; the artists do a fantastic job of breaking down physical phenomena into simple, mesmerizing steps.  It is an exercise in ways to transfer energy between different objects and systems.

The real genius of The Way Things Go is its timing.  The reactions are paced in a way that makes clear what is happening at each step, but also has a spellbinding rhythm in which objects speed up, slow down, and build into each other.  This fastidious pacing is what sets this piece apart from a mechanical assembly line, or many Rube Goldberg contraptions.  This use of time scale calls to mind the kinetic sculptures of Arthur Ganson, and perhaps Ganson was influenced by Fischli and Weiss.

Measuring Reality: Spencer Finch's Light Installations

As a philosophy, the scientific method holds one axiom above all others: objectivity.  Unbiased observation of measurable evidence forms the basis for reproducible experiments that seek to uncover fundamental truths about nature.  The objectivity of this method has helped push the frontiers of our knowledge to incredible limits.

However, the proliferation and success of the scientific method has led us to sometimes assume that objectivity equals truth.  Artist Spencer Finch demonstrates the precariousness of this assumption through large scale, thought-provoking installations.  In these installations, Finch takes of careful, studied observations of certain characteristics of scene, such as hue and luminosity of light, and recreates them in a new context.

Recently exhibited at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, CIE 529/418 (Candlelight) consists of an entire wall of stained glass windows that reproduce the exact same color profile as candlelight (photo by srdaly11).  Finch used a colorimeter to precisely measure the RGB values of the light eight inches from a burning candle.  The room is beautiful and hypnotizing to stand in, and asks the viewer how similar and how different the experience really is to the illumination from a room full of candles.  He has broken candlelight into window panes of different color that vary in luminosity with the strength of the sunlight.  If the light in the room is precisely the same hue as the light from a candle, is it the same light?  Finch shows how important context is to the meaning of objective measurements.

The photo to the right is of another piece by Finch that uses similar ideas as Candlelight (photo by Spor).  This piece, called Shade (At the Grave of Walt Whitman, October 19, 2006, 10:15 am), recreates the hue and luminosity of the light at an exact place and an exact time.  Again, Finch is asking the viewer what exactly these objective measurements have to do with the emotions and feelings associated with a scene.  Is any emotion conveyed?  And if so, is it due to the precise measurement of light, or to the stylistic way Finch has broken the light up into overlapping colored ovals?

The MASS MoCA restrospective also included the piece to the left, called Night Sky, Over the Painted Desert, Arizona, January 9, 2004 (photo from Finch's website).  In this installation, Finch mixed colors of pigment to achieve the precise hue of the sky described in the title.  He then created light bulb models of each of the pigment's molecular structures.  By hanging these from the ceiling, Finch compares the hanging lights to the way the actual sky would have looked.  In doing so, he asks how well scientific models can recreate reality.  The beautiful installation does seem to convey a sense of the original Arizona night sky, but only to a point.  The piece occupies a middle ground between abstracted concepts and recreating an actual scene, asking the viewer how closely objective measurement really brings us to the truth.

Read more about Finch's work in the Boston Globe and the New York Times.