Art as Science Communication--cartoon, film, theater . . .

A flurry of noticings about art and scientific communication from the past week.

Last week’s American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Foundation announced winners of their annual Visualization of Science and Engineering contest. Some great stuff–including a collaboration between a WFU neuroscientist and a cartoonist. The press release about the winners makes some interesting points, such as:

“. . . By making science aesthetically appealing, science becomes more accessible to people, said Hoon, who won first place in the Photography category with team members Boaz Pokroy and Joanna Aizenberg of Harvard University. “Public outreach has always been a weak side of science,” he added. “By adding art and metaphors to our research portfolio, we, as citizens, can send a clear message to the world: Science—at its core—is focused on the problems of societal importance. This will work better than detailed (and often incomprehensible) scientific debates...” [continue reading . . .]

Put simply, science has a moral charge of engaging with issues of importance and distributing knowledge to broader publics. And art–the wielding of metaphor and narrative–is the medium through which that is done. Here’s a link to the National Science Foundation’s website and the winners.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/winners_2009.jsp

Note that you can see the videos for a few of them. I recommend this one in particular:

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/follow_money.jsp

The title is opaque but it’s got a lot to to do w/ the study of complex networks that we read about in August. Finding ways to illustrate orderings/structures that emerge out of these seemingly chaotic networks—we’re all going to have to get better at it to be bringing students into engagement with new knowledge frontiers, aren’t we? Whether we’re teaching about the brain, social change, or the algorithmic basis of natural systems . . .

How to represent BIG IDEAS visually. A how-to guide produced by a Lemelson-MIT collaboration. Communicating through cartoons. Beautifully done.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/19/howtoons-visual-comm.html

Last week’s American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Diego featured this panel on THEATER as a mode of public communication. What’s that mean? Seems to me an important claim: that theater/performance is PART OF the scientific method! Coverage of the panel here:

http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2010/02/aaas_meeting_-_science_in_the.php

Complexity, Chaos, Friendship, Calculus, Teachers, Students

Mike Wakeford is ARTStem's Project Director and a member of the Undergraduate Academic Program faculty at UNCSA.

. . . Came across a flyer about a new book by Steven Strogatz, The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life while Corresponding about Math. Strogatz is a major math guy and a leader in complex systems (remember our ARTStem reading from the summer?), chaos theory, etc. From the sound of it, the book is part Tuesdays With Morrie, part math problems; but as you sense in the radio story about the book, it helps blur the line between math, narrative, and the personal histories of human beings and their relationships. To me, that's a big part of why I think artists should be actively reaching out into the math and sciences world, more aggressively seeking collaborations, etc. But it also expresses the idea that deep math contains with in it descriptions of the world, stories of existence, and powerful ways of "seeing" the human condition for what it is. Anyways, it's a pretty beautiful little radio story worth listening to:

ARTStem Participant Takes SCRATCH Into Classroom

Ashley Witherspoon sends us some links to student SCRATCH projects.

First, what's SCRATCH, again? Back in November, ARTStem collaborated with the Center for Design Innovation— for a hands-on SCRATCH workshop that was part of the CDI’s roster of events during the Winston-Salem Arts Council’s recent “6 Days in November.” SCRATCH is a free, downloadable computer programming language/application designed by folks at the MIT Media Lab, who explain that “Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.”

Thanks, Ashley, for taking what we learned there, experimenting with it in the classroom, and sharing some of the first results. They're shared freely here, since they're already posted to the public SCRATCH website. (**note: if you want to explore the kind of coding that the students learned while creating these projects, follow the instructions to download the free application and view the projects in Scratch)

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/odoylerules/851070
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/flammingsacks/811916
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Babyt/845105
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/allenpapismith/845181
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/hell0destini/829987

Science, Hollywood, etc.

Really interesting article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education about the increasing collaboration between academic science and Hollywood. ARTICLE. Particularly important--this isn't just about filmmakers mining scientific knowledge and know-how, but about science recognizing it's own existence within mediated fields of knowledge and its dependence on film (and other media) as a key shaper of debates and public understanding.

David A. Kirby is one of the scholars mentioned. Here's his website, which features some interesting essays about the interaction between science and cinema.

Also of interest, the National Academy of Sciences 2-yr-old program--The Science and Entertainment Exchange. Check out the website here. Related video below, featuring Seth Macfarlane.


Other related notes:

Recent symposium at the UPenn Annenberg School of Communication on the "performative" dimension of science--featuring "a wide range of scholars and leading practitioners in the area of the history of performance, science and scientific performance to discuss how persuasive rhetorical skills and public performance are central to the business of making scientific knowledge real."

ARTStemmer Takes Paperfolding From Big Screen to the Classroom

Camie Bell teaches Algebra II and Pre-Calculus at RJ Reynolds High School. She is an ARTStem participant.

". . . Right now we are studying right triangle and oblique triangle trigonometry. When a paper crane or any other design is folded then unfolded, the result is wonderfully symmetric design of the triangles we are studying. When I saw the film Between the Folds this summer with the ARTStem group, I realized that watching the film might help students visualize some of the mathematical concepts. During the segment on the math professor that folds the "bugs," they flash several trigonometric functions that are used to recreate the designs for the bug foldings. Students don't often get to see the application of the trig formulas. Without the ARTStem group, I would not have made the connection. Students actually watched the film. I think they enjoyed it. One of my students recognized Eric [Demaine], the young man from MIT. He is her cousin's boyfriend. [He once folded paper napkins for her while waiting to be served at a restaurant]. That helped add to the interest level. The people in the film became real. Small world! I have really enjoyed having my perspective altered a little bit! It wouldn't have happened without ARTStem."

Above, Camie refers to the film we screened over in the UNCSA Film Village during the ARTStem seminar in August, Between the Folds. Here's a trailer:



And here's Camie Bell in action in the classroom.

Crossing the art/math "canyon" (literally!)

**Those familiar with the UNCSA campus might know that the campus is split down the middle by a kudzu-filled creek bed, "Kudzu Canyon." One one side, the home of the Undergraduate Academic Program offices and classrooms, on the other the various arts schools and the high school academic program. This is just a little story about how ARTStem helped two UNCSA teachers, both ARTStem participants, cross two canyons . . . the kudzu one AND the one that sometimes exists between the worlds of art and mathematics. . .

This winter term, Dean Wilcox is introducing a new academic elective he created called "Chaos Theory and the Arts." His syllabus reads:"It has been well over a decade since James Gleick's book Chaos: Making a New Science made the mathematically dense world of chaos accessible to lay-people producing everything from Jurassic Park to fractal art to Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. This course is designed to explore the basic ideas behind chaos theory and how they have generated artistic criticism and expression. . . " [Download Dean Wilcox's "Chaos Theory and the Arts" syllabus here!]

A few weeks ago, Wilcox wrote of seeking out some help from fellow ARTStemmer, Jill Lane (Dean of the High School Academic Program, and math faculty member):

"I'm moving toward the "iteration and phase space" section of my Chaos class – and I wanted to spend some time looking at a few of the notable equations with my students. So – not having had a math class since the Reagan administration I had a number of questions about how such things work. What I find most fascinating about these sort of higher math problems is that folks discovered certain things about how the world operates by basically playing with the equations. A kind of what-happens-if-I-do-this? scenario. . . . which is not too far off from how I think about the arts. This is totally different from my high school math experiences where there seemed to be an acceptable answer for every problem. What is the fun in that? In any case, Jill Lane made a number of these questions and issues regarding these ideas much clearer. For further info, we actually discussed these two specific problems: the Lorenz attractor and logistic map. I have no idea what to expect in dealing with these in a “humanities” class, but I do feel that I understand them better now."

Dean Wilcox is a faculty member and Assistant Dean of the Undergraduate Academic Program at UNCSA, and an ARTStem participant.

ARTStemmers Explore the Art and Science of Sound

On December 18th, 2009, ARTStem participants Ashley Witherspoon (Science, RJ Reynolds High School) and Jason Romney (UNCSA, Design & Production) spearheaded a teaching collaboration that ended up reaching approximately 140 Reynolds students in six different classes (physics, physical science, tech theater). Here are their reflections on the collaboration, along w/ some pictures and video!

Ashley Witherspoon teaches Earth and Environmental science, and Physical Science, at RJ Reynolds High School. She is an ARTStem participant.

" . . . At our last [ARTStem] meeting Jason was talking about some of the things that he was doing with his students . . . and hearing about what he was teaching his students made me realize how he could really relate to my upcoming "wave" topic in Physical Science. . . .Physical science doesn't get a great deal of guest speakers, so to be working on a collaboration with someone who really works in the arts field with so much physical science tied into it was just an extraordinary find. . . . Jason did an excellent job giving the students a more practical example of how waves are related to something they love—MUSIC! They really found his presentation interesting, and I thought it was great how he had them up moving about the room finding quiet spots due to "wave cancellation" . . . And they really were hooked at the end when he played the hottest new song, "Fireflies," by Owl City. He played the song and let the students tell him when they were hearing sound changes due to phase changes in waves. This made the students realize that waves are not just something "boring" that I talk about in my class, but something that they listen to and are used by their favorite artists to get different sounds and cool effects in their songs! I especially loved how Jason talked about the problems or creative effects that different arenas have for stage designers and musicians and how they have to take all their surroundings into account when they are planning a performance."



Jason Romney is a faculty member in the School of Design and Production at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and an ARTStem participant.

" . . . Ashley invited me to come as a guest lecturer to four physical science and one physics class. They had been learning about the basic science of waves (Ashley can explain that part better than I can) and Ashley asked if I could come and show them some practical application for what they had learned. I gave a presentation on sound wave interaction. There were several demonstrations that allowed them to both see and hear sound waves interacting destructively as a result of phase differences. We heard what it sounds like when the waves combine out of phase electronically and then how it sounds when they combine out of phase acoustically in the air. Once they were familiar with how this interaction sounded, the conversation shifted to how we might assign a value to this information. The science can demonstrate and prove that the sound waves are interacting destructively or constructively but the science doesn't tell you whether that is good or bad. I explained that it is an artist who decides whether this is good or bad, right or wrong, a problem or a solution. For example, if we were doing a live performance of a play and the actor's voice was interacting with it's own reflection destructively, it might make it difficult for the audience to understand the words. In that case, we would decide that we have a problem that we should try and solve. If we're producing a music track, we might decide that this problem is an appropriate artistic effect. I then played an example of a popular song where the artist is purposely causing destructive interactions with the sound of his voice. The concept of wave interaction is used as an artistic effect in most popular music today. Depending on the style of the effect it might be called "flange", "filtering", "chorus", "phasing", etc. But all these involve manipulating the way the sound waves interact constructively or destructively to create the sound the artist is looking for. Overall, the students seemed to really enjoy the presentation. They were very engaged and asked good questions. They really seemed to like the part at the end when we started talking about applying meaning to the science. They were all heading out to fire up their iPods and listen to all their music to identify these effects. Some were particularly interested when I told them how many of my students get fun and interesting jobs using this information. . . . Personally, I really enjoyed it. It's fun to see high school students get excited about learning this stuff!"

Still interested? Here's some video from Jason's presentation.