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FEATURE
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Reframing the worlds of ART AND SCIENCE
// WORDS BY SARAH BLUVAS // PHOTOS BY ADAM BUHLER
Whether it's a research project completed by a student or a dance performance at the Lied Center, recent collaborations between art and science at the University encourage students and faculty members to garner new ways of learning and experiencing these seemingly separate fields of study.
deadful bacteria. Nicole McClure, Topeka junior,
makes a print from an image of E. coli bacteria. Like
Jennifer David, McClure uses scientific imagery in her art — and art to help her understand science. "With art and science," McClure says, "I find a fluid connection between two divides. Art helps me smooth everything out. It actually makes science easier."
The colorful, abstract image on Jennifer David's computer screen looks more like a tie-dyed creation and less like the bone marrow sample that it actually is.
After her high school biology teacher, who was also a photographer, suggested she try combining science and photography, David, Hays freshman, used a microscope and digital camera to take photos of bone marrow, plant and skin cells and other organisms. She then enhanced these images by adding color filters and exaggerations with the computer program Adobe Illustrator.
Seeing photography and science as similar in the way they showcase the "natural" side of things. David transformed the way she viewed art and science by using both in an unusual way. The results were interesting, beautiful pieces of art that gave David a better appreciation of science, a topic she didn't always understand.
"I was able to make something so scientific into something beautiful as well," she says.
And with that beauty came a new perspective.
For scientists and artists alike at the University, crafting a greater public understanding of their respective fields is crucial. Robert Hagen, lecturer in ecology and evolutionary biology, says scientists have failed to communicate science because of the ways in which scientists have taught and approached these ideas. Working with artists, then, provides a crucial opportunity to remedy these miscommunications; new visual representations of ideas such as evolution, for instance, can help change people's perceptions on this sometimes controversial topic. Though certain challenges may arise — art and science are two very different experiences with very different ways of communicating — collaborations between art and science are essential in creating larger connections.
Looking at these broader implications is a main focus of The Commons, a partnership between the Spencer Museum of Art, the Biodiversity Institute and the Hall Center for the Humanities that looks at the relationship between natural and cultural systems. Aimed at making interdisciplinary approaches "part and parcel" to education at the University, The Commons presented a series of difficult dialogues — many of which addressed issues such as climate change — last year and provided seed grants to three research teams made up of faculty members from various academic departments.
"Artists are wonderful at reframing the world."
says Jordan Yochim, associate director of The Commons. "But artists can also benefit from the understandings uncovered by scientists."
The relationship Yochim speaks of provides students with new learning tools. By training them to work across fields such as art and science, they become better prepared to face issues such as climate change, healthcare reform and the depletion of natural resources, all of which have cultural as well as natural implications.
Students, faculty members and organizations across campus have used what Hagen and Yochim both consider essential collaborations between science and art to find new perspectives for themselves as well as for others. Here's a look at a few of these collaborations.
FINDING CONNECTIONS
During one of those dreaded organic chemistry exams that human biology majors are always complaining about, Ali Ainsworth, St. Louis senior, is calmer than most. Rather than thinking about the purely chemical nature of the compounds she's supposed to be connecting.
Ainsworth looks at the structures in terms of movement and pattern, like learning a dance combination. If one structure has a certain function, it will always have that function, just like the dance moves in a combination will always follow a pattern.
Though she hasn't always noticed this relationship between art and science in her studies, Ainsworth, a double major in human biology and dance, realized after completing a research project on ballet and neurobiology that, like on her organic chemistry tests, she subconsciously uses one field to reinforce the other.
A dancer from a young age, Ainsworth originally came to the University thinking she would dance professionally. Her interest in science, a field she enjoys because it seems to "explain" things, led to her dual studies. She recognized the connections between the two when she received an Undergraduate Research Award from the Honors Program to study the relationship between ballet and neurobiology.
Ultimately, Ainsworth found that several different brain functions are at work during dance.
When she draws her leg up and spins around gracefully in a pirouette, Ainsworth employs the movement function of her brain. Likewise, when she memorizes the eight-counts of a new combination, she uses her cognitive, or memory, function. Seeing these connections between science and art, Ainsworth now looks at the two in relation to each other, noticing how dance can be used in more ways than performance.
As a dancer in last spring's Tree of Life performance at the Lied Center, for example, Ainsworth combined dance and science in a multimedia performance aimed at educating and entertaining audiences about evolution.
TWO UNUSUAL PERFORMANCES
The auditorium is pitch black, and the only glimmer of light comes from a neon speck beginning to form on the stage up ahead. A scientist, fashioned from glow-in-the-dark lights, enters the stage and begins building some sort of animal. The scientist's name is Dr. Henslow and his latest creation is a neon-lit dinosaur named Darwin. New to the world, Darwin at first
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