Colin Keefe wrote:

There were a few pages of coverage in the Sunday 2.14 New York Times, in
the Art/Architecture section.

One was by Steven Henry Madoff: Out of the Ether, a New Continent of
Art, which I think was meant to introduce the idea to the public that
things are afoot, digitally speaking. Artbyte gets a nice mention, btw.

The other was by Vicki Goldberg: A Playground for Technology's Arts of
Illusion, and covered the Z.K.M/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe.

Both articles appear side by side, and I thought it interesting to pair
the two. Seems like as soon as you spit out the stuff it gets archived
before you even know what the hell it is you've made.

Did anybody read these? Has anybody been to Z.K.M?

A third article called Art and Science: A Universe Apart? by Richard
Panek was also worth a read - on the cover of section 2…

murph the surf replied:

Madoff didn't give the sense that he understood what he was writing
about so his piece wasn't very informative for the general reader. How
could he write an article like that and not mention RHIZOME or any
artists working with the Internet? I was put off by the aura of
techno-hype ("technology is changing the nature of art, taking it
rapidly into the next century…") and the now obligatory quote from
Barbara London of MoMA, who probably knows less than the author. Natalie
Jeremijenko comes off sounding like another one of those "crazy
techno-artists." LoCurto and Outcalt (the artists pictured) are treading
pretty old ground with their photos of body scans but they look good in
print.

The Goldberg piece on ZKM was disgraceful. She didn't even mention Peter
Weibel, the new director and made it sound like the place is nothing but
disfunctioning games.

Matthew Mirapaul, who writes the arts@large column for the New York
Times CyberTimes online edition, has been covering this area in depth
for a couple of years now but the print Times still doesn't use his
journalistic expertise. That's bad journalism on the part of the arts
editor. Matt not only has a good grasp of the general environment but is
able to write about it for the general reader, which is something we
need instead of mediocre hype.

Joy Garnett wrote:

Though it was satisfying to see the Times devote itself to this, my fave
topic, I found the Panek article kinda wanting. He makes some odd
assumptions about the limitations and boundaries of art vis-a-vis
science that to me seem downright uninformed, "unimaginative" and
misguided:

"For hundreds of years, scientists had been investigating the natural
world and artists interpreting those results on a human scale. But now,
science was going where art could not follow, or at least where art had
never ventured–into the nonsensical, intellectual realm of theory. A
rupture was inevitable."

The 'nonsensical, intellectual realm of theory' a place where art had
never ventured??? I guess Mr. Panek never subjected himself to any
graduate courses in art theory…though he says "we" when discussing the
sentiments (presumed) of artists (hmmm) and has recently written a book
about telescopes and the first astronomical illustrations.

Here's some more: "When scientists abandoned sense evidence for the pure
ether of theory, they left the rest of us behind–laymen, artists, even
one another."

(Do we even bother drawing his attention to, say, someone like Lawrence
Weiner?).

Happily and even odder, Roberta Smith comes through somewhat in her
article:

"…In the last three decades–ever since Minimalism and Conceptual Art
declared open season on reality–science has played an increasingly
prominent role in art. Donald Judd used the Fibonacci series of natural
numbers as a compositional device…"

There's also the issue of the development of art whose sole purpose is
as a service to science, (actually, read the early history of
photography; and possibly Mr. Panek's book on astronomical
illustration). The need to "illustrate" the unseeable, the theoretical,
the nonsensical, the unknowable has not been diminished by a less
palpable subject; I would say just the opposite. any thoughts out
there??

Matt Locke wrote:

this probably isn't news to most of you, but one of the best essays I've
read explporing the grey areas of visualisation between art/science is
Arthur I Miller's 'Visualisation Lost and Regained; The Genesis of the
Quantam Theory in the Period 1913-1927', collected in Tim Druckrey's
'Electronic Culture'. Now, I can't pretend that I understood it all, or
even that it was the first essay in that collection that I read (i think
it was one of the last, in fact..) but it offered a fascinating
discussion of the role of 'aesthetics' in the dissemination of advanced
scientific knowledge. Quote (from the first paragraph, natch - i start
to get lost from there…):

"There is a domain of thinking where distinctions between conceptions in
art and science become meaningless. For here is manifest the efficacy of
visual thinking, and a criterion for selection between alternatives that
resists reduction to logic and is best reffered to as aesthetics."

'visual thinking'? hmmm…. sounds like the kind of thing we do all day
long. What's interesting about the essay is how the interpretation
'aesthetically' of advanced physical theories becomes the crucial issue
to their acceptance as valid models within the scientific community.
It'd be interesting to hear from any quasi-scientists lurking on the
list about how important 'visualisation' is to their own (scientific)
practise, and whether the aesthetic vaules of this visualisation is
important to their understanding of their research subjects.

Its a bit of a interest of mine at the moment, as the local university
here is looking to TEST to collaborate on artistic research in various
departments, and one of them is a newly developed nanotechnology
department. There have already been casual discussions about the
potential of crossover between the architecture and nanothechnology
departments, and I'd like to get the nano labs to look at the aesthetics
of their work in a creative way. After all, they've got to do something
more spectacular than company logos and micromodels of electric
guitars…

Perhaps the first nano-public art installation… sold as a multiple and
injected into your blood stream!

twhid - direct to your heart art projects?

micro donald judds that can react with your haemoglobins to form new,
organic structures?

Joy Garnett replied:

In a way, science "as we know it" would not exist without its uses of
visualisation. And vice versa. The two have been affecting/effecting one
another's development for several centuries. Take the invention of
photography as one isolated (and historic) example. The cyanotype,
perhaps the earliest photographic technique, was itself a product of
chemistry. Iron cynaide salts embedded in paper that when exposed to
sunlight and washed with water changes color, chemically, permanently.
(What do we call the person who figured that out, an artist or a
scientist? Isn't technical invention a little–or a lot–of both?) One
immediate change effected by the cyanotype was the possibility to
quickly, accurately and exhaustively catalogue botanical specimens.
Think of how this must have changed everything by rendering moot the
eighteenth century canon of idealized botanical illustration. Or take a
more "intangible" subject, like particle trails. Part of why Wilson
invented the cloud chamber was to find a way to record and observe the
traces left by excited nuclear particles. Science has long been about
apprehending visual proofs of invisible and intangible phenomena. Proofs
is a key word here. Just what hasn't been recorded visually in some way?
Think of what they do to your body in terms of medical imaging. Think of
NASA. Think of the Atomic Energy Commission. The overriding need
(intellectually or venally motivated) to communicate a concept, to the
public as well as to other members of the scientific community. So, I
find Panek's sudden panic about science getting too theoretical and
intangible for art/artists to visualise really off the mark. I was
thankful that at least Roberta Smith mentioned Judd and the Fibonacci
series. there are so many examples, we could make a list if we wanted
to. (Since when have the arts not been about the mysterious, the
theoretical, the metaphysical, the intangible? Take your pick from the
vaults of history). Science and art have each always had theoretical and
experimental sides; visualisation and science have always fed off
eachother, one pushing the development of the other. One thing people
seem to forget or overlook (or perhaps they refuse to accept, eg: Alan
Sokal): science is another art form.

Matt Locke again:

Yes, these are good points, and when I studied photography at the
Glasgow School of Art, our tution was as much in the esoteric chemistry
of 'alternative' processes as it was in the 'aesthetics' of the images
themselves (although this didn't seem to hold when i moved my processes
from chemical to digital. Thomas Joshua Cooper's idea of photography
didn't stretch to video or director installations…)

But I think I was interested in discussing the grey area between
'visualisation' and 'aesthetics'. This is arguable territory, but at
what point (and why) would someone want to present 'observable' results
in an aestheticised format? Is there a solely objective form of
scientific observation?

Again, photography is a good case study. Your example of botanic
illustration is ostensibly visualisation (although very beautiful
visualisation), but what about say, the apollo moon pictures? Did shots
of astronauts on the moon act as scientific documents or to 'sell' the
project to a mass audience? I know this is a pretty crude example, but
the nanotechnologists creating the letters 'IBM' on an atomic scale did
this for press coverage potential as well as scientific achievement.

This example is also problematic, assuming the process of
'aestheticisation' (or perhaps 'surplus' visualisation) is always in
order to 'spin' scientific research to a non-specialist audience. The
cloud chamber is perhaps a better example. I was interested in hearing
about instances of scientific research that had been appreciated
aesthetically by its participants. I kind of like the idea of a
scientific sublime, like the scientists at CERN picking up on the hum
(if it is discernable) of a particle accelerator, or the mini-firework
display presented by a cloud chamber.

That moment of awe when DNA was first visualised, or splitting atoms
traced paths across a chamber, or even (to highlight the dark side of
the sublime) the first atomic explosion - what percentage of that awe is
an appreciation of the scientific breakthrough, and what percentage is
an aesthetic appreciation of the breakthrough's visualisation? Is some
research led by individual's quest for aesthetics as much as scientific
discovery? In a conceptual sense, the formal beauty of the proposition
E=MC2 (sorry, can't find the 'squared' character) in relation to its
meaning is easily as strong, if not greater, than any of lawrence
weiner's texts.

This is a very interesting debate. I've always found conversations with
scientists fascinating, and there always seems to be much common ground.
There are more and more initiatives (Welcome Trust, SciArt etc) that try
to encourage collaborative work between scientists and artists. Bronac
Ferren at the Arts Council of England has initiated seminars for arts
council officers to encourage their appreciation of this shared ground,
hopefully provoking the creation of more opportunities. NESTA is an
intitiative funded by a National Lottery endowment that actually uses
the terms 'science, technology and the arts' in its title. From the
consultancy document I've seen there will be some very interesting
opportunities for long-term collaborative projects.

But artists aren't the only ones who can identify the aesthetic
qualities of this research. How about an aesthetic history of scientific
discovery? Who asks scientists about their appreciation of the beauty of
their work? I'm sure that there are some fascinating insights there, so
if anyone has any leads to existing research or articles, I'd love to
know.

thanks a lot for responding, Joy. This is one of the most stimulating
discussions i've particpated in on RHIZOME.