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