Visualization of …
Just a spontaneous spin-off thought inspired by Susanne’s project on the visualization of epidemiology — I fell across the Information Aesthetics blog with the subtitle “form follows data - towards creative information visualization”. I like the range of creative possibilities, e.g. this pic:
“an interactive photo mosaic of a graphical icon or logo made up of hundreds of relevant website screenshots, demonstrating the concept ‘a picture is worth a thousand websites’”.
(see the original interactive collage at urlyart.com).
Would this interactive visualization make sense in the popular understanding of epidemiology?
01 Mar 2006 Thomas
Great stuff for exploring possibilities to visualize epidemiology in an exhibition context! Actually, I think of the visualization & epidemiology project more and more on two levels, i.e. collecting not only the visualizations in use within epidemiology but also ‘epidemiology-associated’ visual/electronic art – and the whole range in-between…
Re ‘popular understanding’ of epidemiology : I think electronic art has a great potential here – not in a didactic/popularisation sense, but rather to shift perspectives on epidemiologic research and to re-assemble it in strange ways (curiosities?) – offering new traces, creating spaces for reflection.
I think you’re right. It’s a big difference between on the one hand using art as a means for popularising science and on the other hand using the framework of art as a space for reflection. After all this is a lesson that can be drawn from Renaissance anatomy, where art was a medium for expressing scientific thinking. But I wonder how it would look like in the case of epidemiology or molecular therapy? What is the counterpart to Renaissance art-anatomy today? Are there any examples out there? Biomedical people using art forms as a way of promoting scientific thinking and concept formation?
Re the use of art within the biomedical sciences: I wonder how the genre of cover art (for example biomedical journal covers) and also poster illustrations could be understood in this context. Although not directed to the general public, they target a broader bioscientific audience, promote scientific concepts, establish iconographies and shape ‘visions’ of research. Yet they also often rather aestheticize and advertise biomedicine… How does cover art relate to the actual science?
That’s a very good point! I thought about the same problem in connection with Canadian-French artist, Jacques Deshaies’ exhibition “Human Genome Odyssey” at the Uppsala University museum (Gustavianum) last autumn. Jacques’ passion is painting with genome and proteome motifs — and he has had a number of covers on Nature Biotechnology, Nature Reviews Genetics and other journals, see his webpage: http://www.jacquesdeshaies.com/bienvenue/index2.html — click “Media- Médias”
There is quite a variety of ‘cover art’ out there - with really different ‘degrees’ of aetheticizing effects and reflexive potential!
I came across these:
the work of Hunter O’Reilly (also on Nature Genetics covers),
http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/08_02/art_hunter.shtml
..“Digital organisms”:
http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v7/n2/covers/index.html ).
..“Polymorphic people”:
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v37/n12/covers/index.html
.. a Utah website illustration on “the art of drawing valid conclusions from experiments or quasi-experimental studies”: http://www.hci.utah.edu/research/graduateStudies~/gradStudies/epidBio.jsp
.. a poster in the “Cytokines in Hematopoiesis and Development” produced as cover art for “R&D Systems Inc.’s catalogue of biological reagents”, winning a honourable mention in the NSF “science and engineering vizualisation challenge”: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/301/5639/1476/F3, scroll down to: Cytokines in Hematopoiesis and Development.
I wonder when scientific journals started putting art/’art’ on their covers? In the 1950s? I’m afraid many libraries sacrificed the covers when they collected the issues into bound volumes. Same with electronic archives — the JSTOR archive has Science all the way back to vol. 1, 1880, but hasn’t pdf-ed the covers until the 1960/70’s.