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SESSION ONE: IMAGING IN ART AND SCIENCE
From: Oron Catts
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 12:02:54 -0500 (EST)
Hi all
Need to be quite telegraphic today as we are preparing for a livinginstallation tomorrow; interestingly enough the installation is in a politicalcontext that explores issues concerning artists transgressing the boundaries of art and other practices.
As for the answers:
1) What role do picturing practices play in your discipline of “knowledgeproduction?”
Working for the last eleven years with the use of tissue technologies as amedium for artistic expression I moved away from the notion of picturing whatwe do (representation) to showing what we do (presentation and in some casesdocumentation). I also (in a somewhat simplistic way) do not believe that as an artist working in this area I am involved in “knowledge production”, butrather, I am involve in (sometimes futile) exercise of “meaningproduction.” The new knowledge I engage with (as you will see below) ismostly already there, the question may be; what does this knowledge mean to the rest of us? Artists use different strategies to deal with the very radical shifts in ourperceptions of life which are presented to us through the life sciences andtheir technological applications. Catharine mentioned Patricia Pecinini whochooses to fabricate fantastical scenarios (that in a sense can only comethrough the use of (mis) representation techniques) while my own practice deals with the direct use and engagement with the tools and techniques of a specificbranch of the life sciences. What I presume we share (with many other artistsin this field) is a desire to make sense of what we are confronted with bymaking it strange.
2) How have your perceptions and attitudes of mind been challenged by currentdialogues within the “Art-Sci” arenas?
As mentioned above much of what I find challenging is the radical shifts inwhat we are coming to know about life through science and more importantly theradical actualities that are been executed on life though the way thisknowledge is been applied (technology). Working with fragments of complexorganisms required me to reassess constantly my perceptions of the body, lifeand its classifications. Even though I work with “science,” I see my workmore to do with life then with “Art-Sci”. Actually, I am quite concernabout much of the rhetoric surrounding the Art-Sci arenas but I will keepmy thought about this issue for a later stage of the symposium.
3) What role have new imaging technologies played in your conceptualizations ofvisual modeling or artistic application?
As mentioned above, my practice moves away from imaging technologies as(regardless of the newness) are still very much constrained by the fabricationof representation. The concern is that in many cases these imaging technologies are presented as reality (whatever this mean) in particular when they arepresented by scientists, but often also by artists.
Oron Catts
Artistic Director SymbioticA-The Art & Science Collaborative Research Laboratory.
School of Anatomy & Human Biology.
University of Western Australia
www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.auwww.tca.uwa.edu.au
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Monday, March 5, 2007
Henig: Picturing Practices
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Picturing Practices
From: Robin Marantz Henig
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 10:46:11 -0500 (EST)
My experience with pictures is a little different. I'm a science journalist,so my metier is words, and the pictures are added by others (and then only when my work appears in magazines, never in books). A few of the articles I wroterecently for The New York Times Magazine were illustrated with photographs byNicholas Nixon, whose sensibilities about the human form must somehow be inharmony with mine. These articles were about difficult topics -- one was about our quest for a good death through hospice and palliative care, the other wasabout a speeded-up aging disease called progeria -- and I thought that I approached them directly and honestly, just as Nick's stark black-and-whitephotos did. But several readers told me that they were really put off by thephotographs, and a few said they had even decided not to read the art
icle because they were there. A friend who was dying of cancer saw my article about death and wanted to read it, but she specifically asked for a version of the piece that she could read that was text-only, without the disturbing photos. I think this reveals the emotional wallop of visual images, which far outstrips whatever it is we writers can do with words alone.
(image) Nicholas Nixon, from a series of photographs that accompanied the article, "Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death?" by Robin Marantz Henig (The New York Times Magazine, August 7, 2005)
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Picturing Practices
From: Robin Marantz Henig
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 10:46:11 -0500 (EST)
My experience with pictures is a little different. I'm a science journalist,so my metier is words, and the pictures are added by others (and then only when my work appears in magazines, never in books). A few of the articles I wroterecently for The New York Times Magazine were illustrated with photographs byNicholas Nixon, whose sensibilities about the human form must somehow be inharmony with mine. These articles were about difficult topics -- one was about our quest for a good death through hospice and palliative care, the other wasabout a speeded-up aging disease called progeria -- and I thought that I approached them directly and honestly, just as Nick's stark black-and-whitephotos did. But several readers told me that they were really put off by thephotographs, and a few said they had even decided not to read the art
icle because they were there. A friend who was dying of cancer saw my article about death and wanted to read it, but she specifically asked for a version of the piece that she could read that was text-only, without the disturbing photos. I think this reveals the emotional wallop of visual images, which far outstrips whatever it is we writers can do with words alone.(image) Nicholas Nixon, from a series of photographs that accompanied the article, "Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death?" by Robin Marantz Henig (The New York Times Magazine, August 7, 2005)
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S. Squier: Picturing Practices
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Picturing Practices
From: Susan Squier
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:03:32 -0500
Carl Djerassi writes that his use of picturing practices has the didactic component of ‘information transmission.’ I view the function of picturing practices somewhat differently. I understand images to be conveying in condensed form the tangle of human relations, practices, wishes, desires and fears that pose social, political and ethical challenges to scientific practice. Such condensed imagesor as Ludwik Fleck terms them, ideogramsserve a particularly important role as sites where alien and archaic thought styles are preserved even into our modern era. As Fleck points out, “To the unsophisticated research worker limited by his own thought style, any alien thought style appears like a free flight of fancy, because he can see only that which is active and almost arbitrary about it.” Yet whether they are ancient or modern, ideograms are essential to science, as part of the process of knowledge production and knowledge dissemination: “There is no visual perception except by ideovision and there is no other kind of illustration than ideograms.” (Fleck 1935, 1979:141)
To turn to a specific and curiously overdetermined--example, in a 1995 essay I explore a photographic image, by Jock McDonald, of a pregnant Carl Djerassi.[1] I argue that this photograph, published in the Stanford Alumni Magazine, not only provides us with a witty visual play on Djerassi’s role as father of the birth control pill. It speaks to a powerful fantasy fueling the technique of assisted reproduction: the wish to usurp female procreative power. This fantasy, Evelyn Fox Keller has shown us, is intimately linked to the rise of modern science. It has been explored in literature as long ago as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and as recently as Angela Carter’s blistering The Passion of New Eve. And as I have demonstrated in Babies in Bottles, it is a fantasy frequently invoked by scientists, fiction writers and the popular press in the years during which the building blocks of assisted reproduction were being developed: tissue culture, embryo culture, laparoscopy, and in vitro fertilization.
Lest it seem that literature is the only place such fantasies are explored, I also point out in my article that McDonald’s image was preceded by a public policy debate on the same question. In 1989, the Australian National Bioethics Consultative Committee issued a discussion paper, “Developments in the Health Field with Bioethical Implications.” In a section on “Transsexualism and Abdominal Pregnancy,” the paper considered whether a case could be made for male pregnancy as a bioethical right. The argument for male pregnancy as a right for transsexual men envisioned a time when abdominal pregnancy was possible for biological men, including those who had undergone sex reassignment surgery. The right to a male abdominal pregnancy could then upheld, the argument hypothesized, as part of one’s right to reproductive autonomy. The counter argument held pregnancy to be a collective choice bearing significant social responsibilities:It may be that the only possible approach to the potential demand for abdominal pregnancy is to focus, not on the desires of individuals, but on the social and political questions posed by resource allocation and the ethical questions posed by the appeal to a technological imperative. (Albury C-4, C-8, in Squier 128)
As my use of McDonald’s photograph in my article demonstrates, I understand the image of the pregnant Carl Djerassi as more than a humorous, topical riff on scientific reality. To my way of thinking, it does indeed convey information, but not precisely in the mimetic sense that Djerassi's post suggest. Rather, the information conveyed is closer to that contained in Fleck’s ideograms: the rich, complex mixture of socially, politically, and personally freighted tensions and desires that gave rise to, and now issue from, the scientific practices we know as assisted reproduction.
[1] Susan Squier, “Reproducing the Posthuman Body: Ectogenetic Fetus, Surrogate Mother, Pregnant Man” in Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, Eds. Posthuman Bodies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995: 113-132.
Susan Squier
Brill Professor of Women's Studies, English, and STS
The Pennsylvania State University
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Picturing Practices
From: Susan Squier
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:03:32 -0500
Carl Djerassi writes that his use of picturing practices has the didactic component of ‘information transmission.’ I view the function of picturing practices somewhat differently. I understand images to be conveying in condensed form the tangle of human relations, practices, wishes, desires and fears that pose social, political and ethical challenges to scientific practice. Such condensed imagesor as Ludwik Fleck terms them, ideogramsserve a particularly important role as sites where alien and archaic thought styles are preserved even into our modern era. As Fleck points out, “To the unsophisticated research worker limited by his own thought style, any alien thought style appears like a free flight of fancy, because he can see only that which is active and almost arbitrary about it.” Yet whether they are ancient or modern, ideograms are essential to science, as part of the process of knowledge production and knowledge dissemination: “There is no visual perception except by ideovision and there is no other kind of illustration than ideograms.” (Fleck 1935, 1979:141)
To turn to a specific and curiously overdetermined--example, in a 1995 essay I explore a photographic image, by Jock McDonald, of a pregnant Carl Djerassi.[1] I argue that this photograph, published in the Stanford Alumni Magazine, not only provides us with a witty visual play on Djerassi’s role as father of the birth control pill. It speaks to a powerful fantasy fueling the technique of assisted reproduction: the wish to usurp female procreative power. This fantasy, Evelyn Fox Keller has shown us, is intimately linked to the rise of modern science. It has been explored in literature as long ago as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and as recently as Angela Carter’s blistering The Passion of New Eve. And as I have demonstrated in Babies in Bottles, it is a fantasy frequently invoked by scientists, fiction writers and the popular press in the years during which the building blocks of assisted reproduction were being developed: tissue culture, embryo culture, laparoscopy, and in vitro fertilization.
Lest it seem that literature is the only place such fantasies are explored, I also point out in my article that McDonald’s image was preceded by a public policy debate on the same question. In 1989, the Australian National Bioethics Consultative Committee issued a discussion paper, “Developments in the Health Field with Bioethical Implications.” In a section on “Transsexualism and Abdominal Pregnancy,” the paper considered whether a case could be made for male pregnancy as a bioethical right. The argument for male pregnancy as a right for transsexual men envisioned a time when abdominal pregnancy was possible for biological men, including those who had undergone sex reassignment surgery. The right to a male abdominal pregnancy could then upheld, the argument hypothesized, as part of one’s right to reproductive autonomy. The counter argument held pregnancy to be a collective choice bearing significant social responsibilities:It may be that the only possible approach to the potential demand for abdominal pregnancy is to focus, not on the desires of individuals, but on the social and political questions posed by resource allocation and the ethical questions posed by the appeal to a technological imperative. (Albury C-4, C-8, in Squier 128)
As my use of McDonald’s photograph in my article demonstrates, I understand the image of the pregnant Carl Djerassi as more than a humorous, topical riff on scientific reality. To my way of thinking, it does indeed convey information, but not precisely in the mimetic sense that Djerassi's post suggest. Rather, the information conveyed is closer to that contained in Fleck’s ideograms: the rich, complex mixture of socially, politically, and personally freighted tensions and desires that gave rise to, and now issue from, the scientific practices we know as assisted reproduction.
[1] Susan Squier, “Reproducing the Posthuman Body: Ectogenetic Fetus, Surrogate Mother, Pregnant Man” in Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, Eds. Posthuman Bodies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995: 113-132.
Susan Squier
Brill Professor of Women's Studies, English, and STS
The Pennsylvania State University
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M.I.D. van Rijsingen: reply to session one questions
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session one
From: M.I.D. van Rijsingen,
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 15:30:58 +0100
Hello to all from Amsterdam!
I will just begin to say something about the first two questions. Try to gather my thoughts a bit.
1) ´Picturing practices´ in my discipline (art history) is, as you probably know, ´core business´. The question what role it plays in knowledge production however is blurred in the course of its 200 year historiography. Art Historians have talked about the image (and about image production) as a source of knowledge. But asking what kind of knowledge, you will get very different answers. I tend to think that this is sometimes not very different from how scientists talk about their images. However, the new generations of art historians are much more into the image and image production as a productive signification practice, considering the image not as a source of (some hidden) knowledge, but as a productive force. And with it the discipline becomes much more a discipline of knowledge production. Or let me say, it takes itself much more seriously. This ´turn´ (linguistic turned iconic) was in itself a boundary project without which we still would be blurred.
For me this turn meant also a new opening to the perceptual side of things, specifically the embodied-ness of perception.
2) My research projects have always been around the body, and representations of the body. I moved from semiotics to phenomenology (and back). Current dialogues, but specifically current (art) works, have focussed my view much more (and again) on the problems of the embodied ´reading´ of ´visuals´ (not only images, but also objects, installations etc.) and the ways in which it produces knowledge.
For example, it/they brought new musings on (conceptualisations of) the real, so easily used in texts and conversations. In the art-sci arena, the real is framed from both fields. In many artworks – I find – it is this framing that could produce knowledge, in that it makes us edgy ´readers´.
I hope I am not too thick here. Will elaborate later on probably, if required. Looking forward to reading more.
Best,
Miriam
Dr. Miriam van Rijsingen
Dept. of Art History, University of Amsterdam
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session one
From: M.I.D. van Rijsingen,
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 15:30:58 +0100
Hello to all from Amsterdam!
I will just begin to say something about the first two questions. Try to gather my thoughts a bit.
1) ´Picturing practices´ in my discipline (art history) is, as you probably know, ´core business´. The question what role it plays in knowledge production however is blurred in the course of its 200 year historiography. Art Historians have talked about the image (and about image production) as a source of knowledge. But asking what kind of knowledge, you will get very different answers. I tend to think that this is sometimes not very different from how scientists talk about their images. However, the new generations of art historians are much more into the image and image production as a productive signification practice, considering the image not as a source of (some hidden) knowledge, but as a productive force. And with it the discipline becomes much more a discipline of knowledge production. Or let me say, it takes itself much more seriously. This ´turn´ (linguistic turned iconic) was in itself a boundary project without which we still would be blurred.
For me this turn meant also a new opening to the perceptual side of things, specifically the embodied-ness of perception.
2) My research projects have always been around the body, and representations of the body. I moved from semiotics to phenomenology (and back). Current dialogues, but specifically current (art) works, have focussed my view much more (and again) on the problems of the embodied ´reading´ of ´visuals´ (not only images, but also objects, installations etc.) and the ways in which it produces knowledge.
For example, it/they brought new musings on (conceptualisations of) the real, so easily used in texts and conversations. In the art-sci arena, the real is framed from both fields. In many artworks – I find – it is this framing that could produce knowledge, in that it makes us edgy ´readers´.
I hope I am not too thick here. Will elaborate later on probably, if required. Looking forward to reading more.
Best,
Miriam
Dr. Miriam van Rijsingen
Dept. of Art History, University of Amsterdam
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C. Waldby: Imaging in Art and Science
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From: Catherine Waldby
Re: SESSION ONE: IMAGING IN ART AND SCIENCE
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:40:24 +1100
Hi ya,
re question 3 [see previous posts below]
I often see a relationship between digital imaging and its endless mutability and tissue engineering, rDNA technology and the mutability of organisms. Sometimes digital animation, manga and sci-fi images appear to act like testing grounds or articulations of biology’s new aspirations to endlessly reorder morphology, to tinker with embryogenesis, to both cause and prevent mutation etc
It is a relationship well exemplified by Patricia Piccinini’s work* – her very obviously synthesized images of cute but very disturbing pet like creatures who are themselves both synthesized and domesticated somehow – the viewer is left to imagine their provenance
Catherine Waldby
* PATRICIA PICCININI
From the We Are All Family installation at the Venice Biennale, 2003
http://www.patriciapiccinini.net
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From: Catherine Waldby
Re: SESSION ONE: IMAGING IN ART AND SCIENCE
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:40:24 +1100
Hi ya,
re question 3 [see previous posts below]
I often see a relationship between digital imaging and its endless mutability and tissue engineering, rDNA technology and the mutability of organisms. Sometimes digital animation, manga and sci-fi images appear to act like testing grounds or articulations of biology’s new aspirations to endlessly reorder morphology, to tinker with embryogenesis, to both cause and prevent mutation etc
It is a relationship well exemplified by Patricia Piccinini’s work* – her very obviously synthesized images of cute but very disturbing pet like creatures who are themselves both synthesized and domesticated somehow – the viewer is left to imagine their provenance
Catherine Waldby
* PATRICIA PICCININI
From the We Are All Family installation at the Venice Biennale, 2003
http://www.patriciapiccinini.net
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Sunday, March 4, 2007
Carl Djerassi: Reply to Session One questions
Carl Djerassi: Reply to Session One questions
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From: Carl Djerassi
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 14:54:34 -0500
(Posted on behalf of Carl Djerassi)
3/4/07 London
As a preamble to my comments, I need to point out that I am addressing the 3 questions from the perspective of a scientist who has turned into a playwright.. Therefore my "artistic application" is play-writing which probably was not even envisaged by the organizers of this symposium.
1) What role do picturing practices play in your discipline of “knowledge production?”
I have now written 8 plays--6 for the commercial theatre and two for pedagogic (classroom) venues--- all of which can be downloaded together with performance schedules, reviews, etc. on http://www.djerassi.com/. All of these plays have a didactic component in terms of "information transmission" which is frowned upon by many theatre scholars as well as practitioners, many of them inherently science-phobic. But since I have chosen to ignore that opposition, visual representation of "practices" are important in my plays. I shall cite just one example: In my play AN IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTION (http://www.djerassi.com/icsi.html), which by now has been translated into 11 languages, the main theme is the practical use of new assisted reproductive IVF techniques and their ethical implications--a theme which is also implied in the play's subtitle "Sex in an Age of technical Reproduction" with its obvious analogy to Walter Benjamin's "The work of Art in an age of technical reproduction." In my play, I discuss ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection)--the direct injection of a single sperm into an egg under the microscope. In real life, the microscope is usually connected to a video monitor and this is also done in my play, where the scientist on stage who is conducting the supposedly first ICSI injection into a human egg, debates this with a physician while the latter observes the procedure on a huge projection wall on the stage facing the audience. In addition, e-mail exchanges and blogs between the scientist and the putative sperm donor are also projected in real life as if they were just typed out.
2) How have your perceptions and attitudes of mind been challenged by current dialogueswithin the “Art-Sci” arenas?
Again, while the "Art-Sci" definition in the above question is probably not meant in the context of theatre, I have addressed that very specifically in terms of "what can theatre do for science" vs. "what can science do for the theatre." Since I have just written a longish article on that topic "When is science on stage really science?"in the January 2007 issue of AMERICAN THEATRE, I refer interested persons to the following web site. http://www.djerassi.com/ScienceStage.html
3) What role have new imaging technologies played in your conceptualizations of visual modeling or artistic application?
My answer to this question is quite short: it is quite important in some instances, but not others.
Carl Djerassi
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From: Carl Djerassi
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 14:54:34 -0500
(Posted on behalf of Carl Djerassi)
3/4/07 London
As a preamble to my comments, I need to point out that I am addressing the 3 questions from the perspective of a scientist who has turned into a playwright.. Therefore my "artistic application" is play-writing which probably was not even envisaged by the organizers of this symposium.
1) What role do picturing practices play in your discipline of “knowledge production?”
I have now written 8 plays--6 for the commercial theatre and two for pedagogic (classroom) venues--- all of which can be downloaded together with performance schedules, reviews, etc. on http://www.djerassi.com/. All of these plays have a didactic component in terms of "information transmission" which is frowned upon by many theatre scholars as well as practitioners, many of them inherently science-phobic. But since I have chosen to ignore that opposition, visual representation of "practices" are important in my plays. I shall cite just one example: In my play AN IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTION (http://www.djerassi.com/icsi.html), which by now has been translated into 11 languages, the main theme is the practical use of new assisted reproductive IVF techniques and their ethical implications--a theme which is also implied in the play's subtitle "Sex in an Age of technical Reproduction" with its obvious analogy to Walter Benjamin's "The work of Art in an age of technical reproduction." In my play, I discuss ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection)--the direct injection of a single sperm into an egg under the microscope. In real life, the microscope is usually connected to a video monitor and this is also done in my play, where the scientist on stage who is conducting the supposedly first ICSI injection into a human egg, debates this with a physician while the latter observes the procedure on a huge projection wall on the stage facing the audience. In addition, e-mail exchanges and blogs between the scientist and the putative sperm donor are also projected in real life as if they were just typed out.
2) How have your perceptions and attitudes of mind been challenged by current dialogueswithin the “Art-Sci” arenas?
Again, while the "Art-Sci" definition in the above question is probably not meant in the context of theatre, I have addressed that very specifically in terms of "what can theatre do for science" vs. "what can science do for the theatre." Since I have just written a longish article on that topic "When is science on stage really science?"in the January 2007 issue of AMERICAN THEATRE, I refer interested persons to the following web site. http://www.djerassi.com/ScienceStage.html
3) What role have new imaging technologies played in your conceptualizations of visual modeling or artistic application?
My answer to this question is quite short: it is quite important in some instances, but not others.
Carl Djerassi
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SESSION ONE: IMAGING IN ART AND SCIENCE
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Welcome to Members of the Panel
From: JD Talasek
On behalf of the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs at the National Academy of Sciences and the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, I would like to welcome everyone to the Virtual Symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience.
Many thanks to Suzanne Anker for her work in planning and facilitating the symposium.
We are looking forward to a dynamic and fascinating discussion.
Welcome
From: Suzanne Anker
Sun, 04 Mar 2007 10:00:29 -0500
Greetings out there and welcome to our symposium, “Visual Culture and Bioscience” sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.County. Although we are located in the United States, our discussion inhabits the “nether zone” of everywhere and nowhere with literally an absent terra firma underfoot. No more waiting for delayed and overcrowded airplanes or ingesting tasteless food. Let us assemble wherever we may be and begin our on-line dialogue. Our international discussion commences onMarch 5th and concludes on March 13th. Intended as an update on the intersections of distinct, yet overlapping disciplines in art and the biological sciences, we welcome your thoughts, fleeting or otherwise, as segues into understanding more fully the nature of experimental representational systems and their influence on the social order.Over the course of the symposium, we will be addressing three inter-related broad-based topics, but leave open the possibilities to reverse courses as necessary, much the way of any trafficking endeavor.
Our schedule is as follows:
March 5-8 Imaging in art and science
March 9-10 Artists in the Lab
March 11-13 Social and Cultural implications of visualizing the biosciences
SESSION ONE: IMAGING IN ART AND SCIENCE
From: Suzanne Anker
Sun, 04 Mar 2007 10:50:24 -0500
Visual Culture and Bioscience: Imaging in Art and Science
The ubiquitous employment of digital technologies within the practices of research science and medicine, architecture and design, filmmaking and video production, as well as the visual and performing arts, has set ajar a multiplex of communication networks which crisscross traditional boundaries. In doing so, malleable coordinates of perception (in time and space,) create vast arrays of alternating conceptions of how to structure the problematics of the 21st century’s arts in relation to the innovations brought forth by science and technology. At a time when the biosciences may be considered to be experiencing a “golden age,” the arts on the other hand, struggle not with public consumption, but with a more profound challenge to intrinsic identity and history. What role do the visual arts assume in contemporary discourses of “knowledge production?” What internal striations are evident in the functions of art as entertainment, commodity and critical practice? How do these aspects intersect or correlate with the contemporary bio-sciences?
20th century art and science shared many defining characteristics: abstraction, fragmentation, and reductionism to select a few. However, in the 21st century, one may inquire, what migratory attractions between these disciplines are currently present? One aspect of art’s relationship to science is evident within modes, styles and devices of visual representation. Digital technologies, part and parcel of all Western-type knowledge producing institutions, enhance the connective tissues between the studio, the laboratory, the scholar’s office, and the writer’s den. To employ a linguistic metaphor, these technologies have become, ipso facto, the linqua franca of our time. In addition, intersecting domains of inquiry appear to confront family resemblances with regard to the questions they consider: beauty, instrumentalized vision, data manipulation et al. Whether conscious or not, these crossovers in visual application, narrative interpretation and symbolic models of the real, continue to exude and reframe the philosophical implications of perception and cognition, authenticity and artifice in both science and art.Pictures, maps, diagrams, drawings, notations, scores and the like become for their moment a mirror of thought. Whether to record or document, deceive or aggrandize, sell or console they are unmatched agents of communication. Like the mind itself, sometimes these agents of signification embrace layers of alternating meanings, ambiguously disguised, hence, subliminally hijacking our nervous system. Or, on a more preeminent day, when media spin is not on parenthetical overload, hints of received clarity or even sudden, subtle epiphanies may muster our reserves of potential energies to engage and consider perplexing questions of the day.These are compelling ideas and I cast them in your direction. Let us see if we can parse the complexities, treacheries and clichés so overtly familiar to this subject. I am aware that this shoot-from-the-hip approach in real-time may be a bit intimidating. Perhaps a discussion of this kind among experts, peers and practitioners, makes us feel like we are inhabiting a primal childhood dream: a dream of being seen vulnerable and naked splayed out on a beach with our private parts in clear view to the external world. As we move forward with this symposium, I wish to assure you that your thoughts on this subject are a necessary next step in further elucidating the intricacies of our cognitive and emotional worlds. Therfore, like Carl Sagan, but in earthly form, I ask, is anyone out there?
With these concerns stated, I present the following questions to our panelists:
1) What role do picturing practices play in your discipline of “knowledge production?”
2) How have your perceptions and attitudes of mind been challenged by current dialogues within the “Art-Sci” arenas?
3) What role have new imaging technologies played in your conceptualizations of visual modeling or artistic application?
Your answers to these questions and issues can be addressed within the realms of your personal experience, empirical evidence or conceptual understanding.
***********
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Welcome to Members of the Panel
From: JD Talasek
On behalf of the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs at the National Academy of Sciences and the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, I would like to welcome everyone to the Virtual Symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience.
Many thanks to Suzanne Anker for her work in planning and facilitating the symposium.
We are looking forward to a dynamic and fascinating discussion.
Welcome
From: Suzanne Anker
Sun, 04 Mar 2007 10:00:29 -0500
Greetings out there and welcome to our symposium, “Visual Culture and Bioscience” sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.County. Although we are located in the United States, our discussion inhabits the “nether zone” of everywhere and nowhere with literally an absent terra firma underfoot. No more waiting for delayed and overcrowded airplanes or ingesting tasteless food. Let us assemble wherever we may be and begin our on-line dialogue. Our international discussion commences onMarch 5th and concludes on March 13th. Intended as an update on the intersections of distinct, yet overlapping disciplines in art and the biological sciences, we welcome your thoughts, fleeting or otherwise, as segues into understanding more fully the nature of experimental representational systems and their influence on the social order.Over the course of the symposium, we will be addressing three inter-related broad-based topics, but leave open the possibilities to reverse courses as necessary, much the way of any trafficking endeavor.
Our schedule is as follows:
March 5-8 Imaging in art and science
March 9-10 Artists in the Lab
March 11-13 Social and Cultural implications of visualizing the biosciences
SESSION ONE: IMAGING IN ART AND SCIENCE
From: Suzanne Anker
Sun, 04 Mar 2007 10:50:24 -0500
Visual Culture and Bioscience: Imaging in Art and Science
The ubiquitous employment of digital technologies within the practices of research science and medicine, architecture and design, filmmaking and video production, as well as the visual and performing arts, has set ajar a multiplex of communication networks which crisscross traditional boundaries. In doing so, malleable coordinates of perception (in time and space,) create vast arrays of alternating conceptions of how to structure the problematics of the 21st century’s arts in relation to the innovations brought forth by science and technology. At a time when the biosciences may be considered to be experiencing a “golden age,” the arts on the other hand, struggle not with public consumption, but with a more profound challenge to intrinsic identity and history. What role do the visual arts assume in contemporary discourses of “knowledge production?” What internal striations are evident in the functions of art as entertainment, commodity and critical practice? How do these aspects intersect or correlate with the contemporary bio-sciences?
20th century art and science shared many defining characteristics: abstraction, fragmentation, and reductionism to select a few. However, in the 21st century, one may inquire, what migratory attractions between these disciplines are currently present? One aspect of art’s relationship to science is evident within modes, styles and devices of visual representation. Digital technologies, part and parcel of all Western-type knowledge producing institutions, enhance the connective tissues between the studio, the laboratory, the scholar’s office, and the writer’s den. To employ a linguistic metaphor, these technologies have become, ipso facto, the linqua franca of our time. In addition, intersecting domains of inquiry appear to confront family resemblances with regard to the questions they consider: beauty, instrumentalized vision, data manipulation et al. Whether conscious or not, these crossovers in visual application, narrative interpretation and symbolic models of the real, continue to exude and reframe the philosophical implications of perception and cognition, authenticity and artifice in both science and art.Pictures, maps, diagrams, drawings, notations, scores and the like become for their moment a mirror of thought. Whether to record or document, deceive or aggrandize, sell or console they are unmatched agents of communication. Like the mind itself, sometimes these agents of signification embrace layers of alternating meanings, ambiguously disguised, hence, subliminally hijacking our nervous system. Or, on a more preeminent day, when media spin is not on parenthetical overload, hints of received clarity or even sudden, subtle epiphanies may muster our reserves of potential energies to engage and consider perplexing questions of the day.These are compelling ideas and I cast them in your direction. Let us see if we can parse the complexities, treacheries and clichés so overtly familiar to this subject. I am aware that this shoot-from-the-hip approach in real-time may be a bit intimidating. Perhaps a discussion of this kind among experts, peers and practitioners, makes us feel like we are inhabiting a primal childhood dream: a dream of being seen vulnerable and naked splayed out on a beach with our private parts in clear view to the external world. As we move forward with this symposium, I wish to assure you that your thoughts on this subject are a necessary next step in further elucidating the intricacies of our cognitive and emotional worlds. Therfore, like Carl Sagan, but in earthly form, I ask, is anyone out there?
With these concerns stated, I present the following questions to our panelists:
1) What role do picturing practices play in your discipline of “knowledge production?”
2) How have your perceptions and attitudes of mind been challenged by current dialogues within the “Art-Sci” arenas?
3) What role have new imaging technologies played in your conceptualizations of visual modeling or artistic application?
Your answers to these questions and issues can be addressed within the realms of your personal experience, empirical evidence or conceptual understanding.
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