Writing a Composition Is Both an Art and Science

• Periodical List
• EMBO Rep
• v.20(ii); 2022 Feb
• PMC6362349

EMBO Rep. 2022 Feb; 20(2): e47061.

Art and science

Intersections of art and science through time and paths forward

Lian Zhu

^one Section of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA,

Yogesh Goyal

² Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA,

In the 19^th century, the Spanish neurologist and pathologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal studied brain tissue and cells of the nervous organization through a microscope. His observations not only led to important scientific discoveries, which eventually won him a Nobel Prize, just also to sketches that would adorn both the pages of textbooks and the walls of New York art galleries. The medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, likewise known as Fibonacci, once pondered a puzzle about an arcadian rabbit population. His solution was an eponymous sequence of numbers that are now widely found in dentistry to photography and music composition. Ramón y Cajal and Fibonacci were simultaneously impactful to science and art. History is rife with many more examples of scientists who were also artists and who have contributed to both science and fine art in unique and often unexpected ways.

… Although artists and scientists are both driven to observe and create, they largely reside in unlike cultural spheres…

Today, the relationship between art and science in our society is more circuitous: Although artists and scientists are both driven to observe and create, they largely reside in different cultural spheres—sometimes brought together serendipitously, other times intentionally. It is incommunicable to generalize relationships between art and scientific discipline since neither is a fully defined nor homogenous category i. Instead, we present vignettes on the historical and gimmicky human relationship between visual art and science, and offer perspectives on the connection between the two with respect to their inputs (tools and processes) and their outputs (objects and communication of ideas). Finally, we propose ideas for how our society can cultivate these relationships and what might be gained from it.

Art and science through time

Art and scientific discipline have coexisted, often indistinguishable from each other, beyond time and space. A wealth of early documented examples comes from the Islamic culture, where fine art and science joined in intricate star‐shaped architectural geometries, and the apply of "Nur" (light) and cloth science to design utensils and lettering in manuscripts ii. During the Renaissance, the Italian polymath Leonardo Da Vinci was simultaneously a painter, sculptor, engineer, botanist, and scientist. Indeed, the term "Renaissance man" would come up to be synonymous with a person with many talents and knowledge. The separation of art and science into different cultures in the West took place during the 19^th century, which incidentally or consequently coincides with coining of the term "scientist" in the mid‐1800s 3. Both disciplines share their origins in the representation and interpretation of nature, just, over time, their methodologies diverged, and the scientific school of thought became largely driven past specialization and hypothesis‐based inquiries 3. Art, in turn, adult its own schools and methods, from classical art, which tended to detect and imitate nature, to branches of impressionism, cubism, and expressionism. Notwithstanding, in that location are many places of convergence between the two, both in the past and today.

Art and scientific discipline both render ideas nearly the earth into a form that allows the viewer to connect to the idea.

During the Renaissance, sketches of plants, animals, human anatomy, and stars done in lieu of cameras were not simply beautiful pieces of art, simply too forms that required extraordinary technique and skill in order to communicate their observations. Beyond these pieces is an idea that is primal to both fine art and science: the primacy of observation and interpretation. As Peter Due west. Parshall and David Landau write in The Renaissance Print: "Accurate visual representation was more than just a technical accomplishment. It was a highly specialized form of observation… Making illustrations was a way of checking facts, and by mid‐century information technology was being supported past other means every bit well. Public and individual botanical gardens were being planted, and collections of stale specimens were being assembled into herbaria. In such a climate the illustrated herbal was leap to get the standard indicate of reference for scholars attempting to devise different schemes of classification".

At that place are many examples of how art and scientific discipline intermingled based on ascertainment and estimation, ranging from a physical object based on both engineering and creative design to an informative visual piece that acts every bit a communication tool. An example of the quondam is 1 of the world's architectural marvels, La Sagrada Familia, which Antoni Gaudí designed and started edifice in Barcelona in 1883. Gaudí was inspired by geometrical features found in nature and used his observations of nature's organizing principles to design the physical construction of the church building. Gaudí himself said, "I am a geometrician, meaning I synthesize" (from La Sagrada Familia website). This approach is reflected in the unique branching tree columns and staircases with seashell‐like curves placed through the church.

An instance of communication tools is the sketches and paintings of insects and plants past the 17^th‐century naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian. Her drawings were disruptive at the fourth dimension, because they were based on observations that had non yet been within the mainstream impress culture. In detail, her sketch of a behemothic spider devouring a hummingbird was often criticized during the Victorian era as being incommunicable, but was afterwards confirmed. For Merian, observation, science, and art were all parts of the same process, and her paintings were both a manner to communicate and empathize the daring and (then) surprising process of metamorphosis (Figone).

Metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly

One of many sketches of Maria Sibylla Merian, where she studied the metamorphosis of insects, and published in 1705 under the name Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. https://goo.gl/xfGECC Public Domain.

Art and science both return ideas about the world into a form that allows the viewer to connect to the idea. An observation, whether of a spider, a cell, or human nature, is necessary, merely not sufficient to result in a meaningful piece of work of fine art or a scientific finding. It is the interpretation, the focusing of the photographic camera lens, the telling of a story, the choice of what function of the observation will be rendered and explicated, that gives life to it. This coaction underlies much of the modernistic scientific methods and processes of art, equally both artists and scientists do non comprehensively copy, merely rather interpret and curate what they see into something meaningful and relevant.

Gimmicky integration of art and science

The line that separates art and science in the modern age remains a superficial one; at the core, artists and scientists detect and interpret the earth around them, though they may use different methods and expressions. This artificial cultural divide is prevalent in our order, just some visionaries and institutions are consciously bridging it. For example, medical schools are beginning to incorporate fine art into their curriculum. In fact, in that location is evidence that the use of art tin can help medical students "apply their observational and interpretive skills" and "accept the facts that ambiguity is inherent to art, life and clinical experience and at that place can be more one reply to many questions" iv.

Once the need to reestablish the shut connection between art and scientific discipline had get apparent, other institutions began creating centers and think tanks for this purpose 5. Two pioneering examples are the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT and Experiments in Art and Technology, a collaboration betwixt New York artists and scientists at Bong Telephone Laboratories. This momentum benefits from a growing interest by scientific journals and magazines in publishing manufactures and dedicated issues that bring together art and scientific discipline. The founding of the journal Leonardo, which publishes art and science studies, was some other important footstep in this management by creating a dedicated academic space for artists and scientists to collaborate and share ideas.

But to make sense of the data, we demand more than artistic approaches, and art tin can lend new representations of previously incomprehensible forms to represent data in transformative ways.

More recent institutional endeavors in Europe include the Wellcome Trust and CERN. Wellcome Trust has initiated multiple support programs, most notably the Wellcome collection, which uses exhibitions and podcasts among other mediums to develop substantive connections between science, medicine, and art. CERN invites artists to spend time at the institution, facilitating shut collaborations with scientists to understand and represent the structure of the universe. This desire of modern artists to better understand nature, life, and the universe is reminiscent of the past. During the Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer, the artist who later inspired D'Arcy Thompson'due south landmark volume On Growth and Class, prepared some of the start drawings and woodcut maps of stars and constellations. Dürer'south illustrations made it into generations of scientific texts and go on to inspire educators, scientists, and artists alike. Threads, such as those between Dürer's drawings, Thompson'southward work on mathematical biological science, and mod educators and artists, frequently exist beyond disciplines and span centuries. In turn, they enable latent and emerging connections to have a radical and lasting touch.

An of import characteristic of the modern merging of art and science is the understanding and communication of abstract and college‐guild ideas. Like Merian, who communicated her observations of insects and plants using sketches, Tadashi Tokieda, a mathematical physicist at Stanford University, creates artistic demonstrations of abstract mathematical concepts. Tokieda, a painter and mathematician, uses his unique background to create elegant toys that not but demonstrate heady, realizable phenomena from his research, only as well assistance to develop new hypotheses. David Goodsell, a structural biologist at The Scripps Research Institute, uses watercolors and computer‐aided illustrations to present the world of cellular structures and molecules. His work gives access to the nanoscale structures of life that would otherwise invisible to homo heart.

Reciprocally, artists as well utilize abstract scientific drawings and concepts to create art. The steel sculptures past Edward Tufte, a pioneer of data visualization techniques, are not only "abstract glinting art", but much like historical sketches of organisms and stars, also an authentic representation of physical principles, including some that are inspired by the diagrams of Richard Feynman six.

... collaborations between art and scientific discipline can too pb to deeper, less directly tangible ideas.

Another dimension of the gimmicky integration between art and science is the employ of technology. Digital tools, including software such as Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator, take not only become a pop platform to create and share art, but are also driving technical improvements. Similarly, recent developments in semi‐automatic computational platforms allow to create and dynamically revise illustrations of natural processes based on new findings. This approach is likely to accelerate the pace at which society at big learns new concepts. More than advanced applications of applied science in the art include the use of artificial intelligence (AI)‐based robots as a tool. Interestingly, this has led to a current debate seven as to whether such technologies can work autonomously without the intervention of artists themselves.

The collaborative efforts of contemporary science and art can also take important consequences for guild through enabling communication of ideas and access to nature. For instance, Foldscope, a microscope that costs less than a dollar 8, was created using the principles of origami, the Japanese art of paper folding (Fig2A and B). This microscope has a transformative touch, especially in developing countries, where its ease of assembly and depression price open up the window into the microscopic world (Fig2C and D). This non only increases the available repertoire of images and scientific information at the grassroots level, but besides stimulates involvement in nature photography (Fig2D). Similarly, Tokieda's demonstrations and videos of mathematical concepts equally well every bit Goodsell's illustrations of poly peptide structures are freely available on the Net. The piece of work of Fabian Oefner, a Swiss artist, who uses scientific concepts including electricity and magnetism to engineer cute time‐lapse fine art, is the flip side of the same money. Oefner makes scientific concepts accessible to a broader audience by making "the invisible effects of the natural sciences known". In addition to addressing admission to science, these collaborations can also touch on global and societal issues including climate change, migration and deportation, diseases, and pollution. In these endeavors, whether through photography, recycled waste, glass work, metallic scaffolds, or knitting patterns, science and art jointly turn to pressing issues and nowadays creative solutions.

Foldscope: Inspiring lodge by joining fine art and science

A schematic depicting how articulation ideas (A) from art and science resulted in the cosmos of Foldscope (B). In turn, people from all age‐groups (C) from beyond the globe are using this low‐cost microscope to capture images of scientific and artistic merit (D). Images captured embrace a wide range including (left to right) crystalized citric acid, silver berry scaly hair, onion peel cells, and feathers. The images used in this figure are kindly provided by Manu Prakash and Rebecca Konte from team Foldscope.

An important characteristic of the modern merging of art and science is the understanding and communication of abstract and college‐order ideas.

Unraveling complexity through active collaborations

Our newly acquired power to collect large amounts of data has revolutionized many fields from medicine to urban planning. By way of instance, we tin now accept sub‐micron resolution images of how molecules move in a cell. Like an creative person sketching a rare plant species, these images communicate aspects of nature that we had not seen. But to make sense of the data, we need more creative approaches, and art tin lend new representations of previously incomprehensible forms to represent data in transformative ways. In fact, scientists take already begun to accept inspiration from the piece of work of artists such as the charts Charles Minard drew of Napoleon'south march (Fig3) and Pablo Picasso'south lithographs (Fig4) to better understand and effectively communicate the multidimensional features of their data 9.

Charles Minard'due south map of Napoleon's war against Russia of 1812

The ii‐dimensional chart covers multidimensional information including temperature, dates, location, management, and the number of Napoleon's men. Wikipedia/Public Domain.

Scientific inspiration from Pablo Picasso's lithographs

Parallels between progressive abstractions of Picasso'southward lithographs of bulls and understanding the three‐dimensional organization of sixteen cells inside a Drosophila egg. This is one of the many examples of the abstract representation and visualization of complex scientific miracle where scientists accept taken inspiration from fine art. This prototype is provided courtesy of Jasmin Imran Alsous and is also a winner of the Autodesk Art and Biology Laurels at VIZBI, 2016.

An interesting area where art has helped to detangle the complexity of information is studies of the structure and connectivity of the human encephalon, which started as early as in the late 1800s. Danielle Bassett, a neuroscientist and MacArthur Young man, views her multidimensional network data with an creative lens by enlisting artists and designers to assistance visualizing encephalon connectivity. This team recreates neural networks in a physical ("volumetric") space, to see the information in a manner they could not earlier while producing a piece of art. Such partnerships are besides inspired and enabled by cutting‐edge technologies such equally virtual reality (VR) and rapid prototyping techniques, which are becoming increasingly accessible and inexpensive. Martin Kemp, a leading expert in the field of art and science, argues that the ability to imagine and to brand sense of things in three dimensions at a high level is uncommon. Therefore, information technology is valuable to have methods that enable the cosmos of 3D and simulated renderings of the visual works. In this way, as artists and scientists share and use these technologies to develop their thinking and projects, their human relationship may also develop further.

While this may raise the impression that art and science are natural partners, it remains an open question how they can see and engage with each in this age of hyper‐specialization, where information technology has become increasingly difficult for individuals to exist trained in multiple fields. This tin can exist addressed past early career back up through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships that promote the collaboration and exploration of art and scientific discipline. This would not merely atomic number 82 to new ideas, but also assistance create new human being phenomena that event from having experts trained in both. One inspiring instance of this new type of skilful is Matteo Farinella who, afterwards receiving such a fellowship for his doctoral work, became a neuroscientist and an illustrator of comic books.

In a parallel vein, active back up of collaborations between artists and scientists would cultivate spaces where people of unlike specialties can work and larn from each other. In fact, scientific laboratories and corporate offices are now formalizing positions for resident artists. Dedicated business initiatives such as Digizyme, a visitor which makes 3D animations of molecular processes, create spaces for both skill sets to work with each other. Reciprocally, art institutes may promote scientist‐in‐residence positions, as is already being practiced by The Plant of Gimmicky Art in London, UK. Such positions will not only lead to the sharing of tools between artists and scientists, merely also of ideas and observations. Likewise, science–art conferences, such every bit VIZBI, workshops, and competitions, tin play an important role in creating a platform for artists and scientists to come across, discuss, formally propose ideas, and initiate long‐term collaborations. Princeton Academy'due south Art of Science Initiative has already resulted in multiple cantankerous‐disciplinary collaborations (personal advice, previous lead organizer JA Alsous). Another contemporary shared phenomena are online movements, where enthusiastic individuals such as Julia Buntaine, an artist and neuroscientist, are leveraging social media platforms to inspire collective participation.

Although we take focused on concrete ways in which an artistic lens can exist beneficial for looking at scientific questions, collaborations between art and science can also lead to deeper, less directly tangible ideas. Perhaps, the greatest potential lies in their ability to analyze societal and universal questions. For instance, artistic representations can also elucidate changes in societal disparity; a recent study reported that children are cartoon more female characters as scientists than earlier 10. In this time of political uncertainty and fear of the unknown, art (due east.g., comic books and graphic novels) addressing scientific concepts such as global health can help us to bring scientific discoveries into homes, increasing access and creating an ownership and conventionalities in science that extends far beyond the scientific community.

Terminal remarks

At their core, fine art and scientific discipline are both about observation and interpretation. Whether information technology is past using scientific information or technologies such equally AI and VR to create art or by using fine art to understand and communicate science, both work manus in hand. Lodge has achieved a great deal of specialization that has immune us to increment the depth of our studies and the step of our technological progress. By connecting to art through conversations and projects, scientists gain new tools to visualize natural phenomena and communicate its complexities. These tools will enable scientists, like medical students studying art, to create wiser and more empathetic technologies that are considerate of not only what they can do, but how they might impact social club. At the same time, we hope that artists will continue to apply emerging scientific technologies equally tools for their work and to exist inspired by scientific observations of nature, whether information technology is molecules, algorithms, or celestial bodies. Our vision is that their synergy will enable the states to better sympathise and use our work to urgent societal and universal questions of access, disinterestedness, and global citizenship. In club for artists and scientists to access these rich futures, we need development of infrastructural and systemic changes to bring forth collaborations and exchanges of knowledge. Our lives are enriched through understanding the universe and more importantly our place within it. A joint venture of art and scientific discipline is an important, even indispensable, step in that direction.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of involvement.

Box: Further reading

For more on the intersection between art, scientific discipline, and science communication:

• Kemp 1000 (2006) Seen/unseen: fine art, science, and intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble telescope. Oxford University Press

• Kemp Thou (2011) Leonardo. Oxford University Press

• Alda A (2017) If I understood you, would I have this wait on my face?: my adventures in the art and science of relating and communicating

• Entire issue: Abbott A, Rutherford A (2005) Artists on Science: Scientists on Art (Ed.). Nature 434: 293–293

• Bullot NJ, Seeley WP, Davies South (2017) Art and science: a philosophical sketch of their historical complexity and codependence. J Aesthet Art Crit 75: 453–463

For extended reading on examples covered in the primary text including Fibonacci series, Albrecht Dürer, David Goodsell, and D'Arcy Thompson:

• Ricketts RM (1982) The biologic significance of the divine proportion and Fibonacci serial. Am J Orthod 81: 351–370

• Bartrum Chiliad, Grass K, Koerner JL, Kuhlemann U (2002) Albrecht Dürer and his legacy : the graphic work of a Renaissance artist. British Museum

• Thompson DW (1942) On growth and class

• Goodsell DS (2016) Atomic evidence: seeing the molecular basis of life

Further literature on digital and AI‐based art:

• Wands B (2006) Art of the digital age. Thames & Hudson

• Johnson GT, Autin L, Al‐Alusi M, Goodsell DS, Sanner MF, Olson AJ (2015) cellPACK: a virtual mesoscope to model and visualize structural systems biology. Nat Methods 12: 85–91

• Coeckelbergh M (2017) Can machines create art? Philos Technol thirty: 285–303

More literature on data visualization techniques:

• Tufte ER (1990) Envisioning information. Graphics Press

• Tufte ER (1997) Visual explanations: images and quantities, evidence and narrative. Graphics Press

• Zastrow M (2015) Data visualization: Scientific discipline on the map. Nature 519: 119–120

• Frankel F, DePace AH (2012) Visual strategies: a practical guide to graphics for scientists and engineers. Yale University Press

More examples on incorporating art training in medicine:

• Gurwin J, Revere KE, Niepold S, Bassett B, Mitchell R, Davidson S, DeLisser H, Binenbaum G (2018) A randomized controlled study of art observation grooming to amend medical student ophthalmology skills. Ophthalmology 125: viii–14

• Scott PA (2000) The relationship between the arts and medicine. Med Humanit 26: 3–viii

• Stuckey HL, Nobel J (2010) The connection betwixt art, healing, and public health: a review of current literature. Am J Public Health 100: 254–263

Acknowledgements

We thank Martin Kemp, Brigitte Nerlich, and Puneeth Chakravarthula for helpful discussions and pointing us to interesting examples and thoughts nosotros had not considered earlier. Nosotros thank Sir Keith Burnett, Denis Wirtz, Anna Mendlin, Earle Havens, Megan Wheeler, Alice Tang, Ian Mellis, Jasmin Alsous, Connie Jiang, Deborah Schlein, José Ferreira, Orsolya Symmons, Arjun Raj, Ruth Arnold, and Paul Villoutreix for providing suggestions to improve the manuscript. L.Z. would like to give thanks the NSF graduate fellowship (DGE‐1656466) for their generous back up. Y.G. would like to give thanks the Schmidt Science Fellows program, in partnership with the Rhodes Trust, for their generous back up. L.Z. and Y.G. would like to give thanks the NSF grant MCB‐1411898 and Wallace Marshall for providing the initial platform to discuss our ideas. Y.G. would also like to thank Stas Shvartsman for providing the freedom and encouragement to pursue his involvement in fine art and science during his graduate studies at Princeton University. Y.G. would like to acknowledge the Raj Lab surroundings, which encourages having pixel‐perfect figure alignments and using rigorous visualization techniques to present scientific results.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6362349/