Two Star Marine General Turns Micro Manager Into Art Form

Seoul creative person Yunchul Kim assembles his latest work, Chroma, a 15-metre-long structure of laminated polymer in the class of a torus knot. Credit: Yeongho Kim, courtesy of the artist.

Art can be a powerful medium for exploring the deeper meaning of scientific endeavours. Collaborations between scientists and artists are under mode around the world, and daily postings to social media with the #SciArt hashtag suggest that the frequently-disparate domains are merging in fresh and exciting means. Although many such collaborations aim mainly to engage and educate the general public about science, scientists and artists are recognizing that creative partnerships can turn science into captivating art.

High-profile funders — including the U.s.a. National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia, the Simons Foundation in New York City and Wellcome in London — take promoted arts-and-scientific discipline projects on a broad range of topics, including climate change and bogus intelligence. Yet artists and scientists oft inhabit different worlds, making information technology difficult for them to observe potential collaborators. And, in one case a team comes together, it takes time to build a productive partnership that can meaningfully commutation ideas and set expectations for the concluding product.

Nature Careers sought summit tips from art-minded scientists and scientific discipline-minded artists for launching and maintaining collaborations that can challenge entrenched ideas.

YUNCHUL KIM: Do your homework

Artist and composer in Seoul.

I started in electronic music in Seoul earlier moving to Germany in 1999 to study media arts in Cologne. A lot of young artists at that place wanted to share ideas with scientists, merely it's not piece of cake to get access to the institutions or to professional scientists. Over fourth dimension, I was able to open up communications with engineers and physicists. For example, scientists based at the Leibniz Establish for Astrophysics Potsdam came to my solo show in Berlin, effectually 2010. They were interested in 2 pieces that demonstrated hydrodynamic flow using magnetic fields to create unique patterns of dispersed nanoparticles in fluid (see go.nature.com/hydro).

They invited me to their institute and showed me what they were working on. The experience of meeting and talking with them about dark energy and night matter influenced how I utilize fluidity in my piece of work. We developed a collaboration that led to a conference and an exhibition in 2012 (meet go.nature.com/fluid).

In 2017, I was awarded a 2-calendar month residency at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory virtually Geneva, Switzerland. People think that scientists teach the artists, simply I actually wanted to share my ideas besides as learn. The first steps were not like shooting fish in a barrel because our professional languages were very different. I read a lot about theoretical physics to try to sympathise what subatomic particles are, what an accelerator does, and what scientists desire to notice with these detectors. Information technology'due south important for artists who want to collaborate with scientists to make the effort to sympathize the scientists' inquiry.

Ultimately, I wanted to build my own functional particle detector that could demonstrate how these invisible forces piece of work. I met some scientists who were sceptical and some who were really engaged. Helga Timko, a theoretical particle physicist at CERN, worked with me intensively. Every day for two months, we met and talked about her research and my ideas. Over time, we explored how I approach a topic and how the scientists approach it, talking through the artistic and problem-solving processes. I worried that I took more from her than she did from me, but she said the feel gave her a much richer perspective on her enquiry and on the Universe.

After I finished my residency, I came back to my studio in Seoul and started to build my own detectors for my artwork. I was inspired by cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, colliding with air to produce ubiquitous, negatively charged particles chosen muons. I created Pour, an installation of 3 interconnected kinetic sculptures that apply light and liquid to find and visualize muon motility.

Argos, ane of the iii sculptures, is a cosmic-ray detector consisting of 41 channels of ionization-producing tubes. Information technology sends a detection point to a second sculpture, called Impulse, that pumps fluid into the 18 metres of tubes in the third sculpture, called Tubular. That has micro-tunnels that announced and disappear depending on whether liquid is moving inside them.

The nice thing is that many of the pieces I produced post-obit my time at CERN have travelled around Europe, giving me an opportunity to discourse on how art and science are securely intertwined with gimmicky art.

FERNANDA OYARZÚN: Define success and expectations

Scientific sculptor and marine biologist at the Coastal Social-Ecological Millennium Establish, SECOS. Based in Puerto Varas, Chile.

Artists should know not only that scientists are interested in making their piece of work more accessible to the public but also that grants oftentimes require outreach or public engagement. For artists, it is becoming more important to work with scientists if they are to take a voice on bug such as climate change.

I grew up in Chile, and explored both fine art and science as a teenager and undergraduate. During my PhD programme on larval ecology at the University of Washington in Seattle, I did a science-illustration plan. As I studied how functional morphology affects evolution, I took a grade in ceramics considering I wanted to make 3D images of marine larvae. I at present divide my time roughly into iii categories — science, art and fine art–science collaborations.

I advise interested scientists and artists to get to virtual spaces — Instagram or Twitter, for instance — to follow people who exercise arts and sciences. Most of the fourth dimension, scientists get really excited that someone is interested in what they are doing. And artists accept aught to lose by sending scientists an electronic mail.

Ane common mistake that scientists brand is to invite artists to their laboratory, to get inspired, without building whatsoever sort of relationship offset. A partnership has to start with trust and respect. Each person needs to be apprehensive about what they know. The overarching goal is the procedure of creating something new together — and the resulting commutation and reshaping of ideas.

Sculptor and marine biologist Fernanda Oyarzún in Chile works on a rendering of an octopus. Credit: Fernanda Oyarzún

At the offset of a collaboration, information technology'due south important to define some tangible outputs. This seems obvious, but it is not. Sometimes artists and scientists might have different goals, which is fine, simply information technology's good for both parties to make that clear. Second, the goals will probably not remain the same throughout the collaboration. They will change. If they're not changing, the collaboration might not be working. I find that scientists are oftentimes surprised by how interactions with artists can shift their perspective on their enquiry. The lesser line is to keep communicating. If that stops, so does collaboration.

In the past decade, I accept noticed a substantial increase in interest in science–art collaborations, and last year year was no exception. If annihilation, people and institutions have been more open to innovating and exploring considering of the pandemic, in an endeavor to be creative while reinventing how they teach classes and communicate information. I have been invited to give at least 3 or iv times as many talks on fine art and science as usual — at schools, universities and for the full general public, both in Republic of chile and in the United states.

Mutual respect is crucial. At that place is no way someone is going to collaborate with you if you are standing in a higher place them. Frequently, a scientist will say something like: "I know everything, and let me tell y'all about this." That kills a collaboration right away.

MUZLIFAH HANIFFA: Make inquiry multi-sensory

Wellcome senior researcher in dermatology and immunology at Newcastle University, UK, and associate faculty member at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK.

I don't have an creative background, but I had an interest in transforming my research on peel cells into something that might resonate with the public, by making information technology accessible to the senses of touch, sight and sound. In 2015, I attended a public-date plan held by Wellcome, a British biomedical funding charity, and happened to have dejeuner with the Scottish poet Linda Anderson, who is a faculty member at Newcastle University, U.k., and teaches modernistic English and American literature. She introduced me to a world of artists. After I explained my research to them, we crossed linguistic communication and cultural barriers. I invited a range of artists to my laboratory, where they watched my team do catamenia cytometry and jail cell imaging, and I went to verse readings and art exhibitions held by the artists who came to the lab, and by others.

For an intense eight months, six of us worked together towards a multi-component, interactive event, called Within Skin, which was held for one week at a Newcastle Academy campus edifice. A digital-sound engineer turned the gene expression of allowed-system cells into audio and light. Attendees could footstep into a booth and feel that they were being destroyed by a macrophage, a white blood cell responsible for killing foreign microbes or removing expressionless cells. British poet Linda France wrote a sonnet, which has fourteen lines, for the occasion — which was appropriate, because skin cells are 14-faced polyhedrons. Tech-savvy artists created a circuit board that represented how the cells communicate under the skin. Inspired by my comment that it's hard to dissever my roles as a scientist and a mum, a lensman took pictures of my son in a white lab glaze playing with a glove as a airship.

The experience changed how I perceive and do science. I think a lot about how to present scientific concepts by providing analogies that anyone can relate to. For example, to convey to the public how and why cells migrate to the lymph nodes, which are almost similar a dance floor — because that's where all the cells get together to effort to observe a partner — we created an image called To the Disco.

Scientists should know that creative collaborations tin can accept a lot of time, peculiarly right before an exhibition. I was slightly put off considering I didn't want my inquiry to endure, but I constitute this collaborative, intensive approach to public engagement deeply personal and rewarding. It allowed me to share my work with different groups of people and to have a meaningful dialogue in which I gained new insights and changed how I call back about my own science. In a mode, the experience immune my children to empathize my research better.

I'm at present involved in a bigger, eighteen-month try to back-trail the Human Cell Atlas, a project to map the 30 trillion cells in the human body. The Human Cell Atlas endeavours have taken multiple formats, including animations, a time-lapse picture show, commissioned art pieces, and an online venue to stimulate conversations between artists and scientists, both at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, near Cambridge, and at universities. Because of the pandemic, nosotros've had to move quite a lot of information technology to online formats, but the level of interest has non diminished at all, and the virtual platform has been fantastic. It enables usa to reach a broader audience and engage in wider collaborations.

AOIFE VAN LINDEN TOL: Create a ii-way experience

London-based artist and vice-chair of the International Astronautical Federation's Commission for the Cultural Utilisation of Infinite in Paris.

My art oft involves explosives, so I was in my element during my European Space Agency (ESA)–Ars Electronica Futurelab residency in Linz, Austria, in 2017. It was life-changing. I had ever been interested in art, chemistry and mathematics, and I had explored the physics of light and how information technology travels through the Universe.

When I arrived at ESA, I had what I needed most — time. I had an office on the same block as loads of amazing scientists, specializing in everything from solar flares to magnetic fields. I got to spend time with them, in the spaces where they work. I got immersed in their way of life, which is very unlike from taking information and turning information technology into artwork. Most importantly, I did things to create a ii-way experience. I'm quite a private artist, and don't usually show work in progress, merely I held several open-door sessions to get feedback and input from the scientists to assist steer what I was doing.

The final ESA product was a one-off event in 2017, called Star Storm, held at the Ars Electronica festival for art, technology and society in Linz. Participants walked through a series of explosive events, each representing a process taking identify across the Universe. It was meant to exist a journeying through social club, chaos and discovery. Some of the scientists I worked with were there to see it. One wept.

The crucial elements of a successful art-plus-science partnership are interaction and true collaboration. I propose scientists to make time for that interaction, and to treat the feel like their work, like a scientific project that needs fourth dimension to develop. It's helpful if scientists permit for open-ended interactions with artists, to explore creative possibilities.

One of the pitfalls of these creative person–scientist partnerships is not knowing the other person'due south expectations. Mine were to go involved with my scientist collaborators and to do some actual scientific experiments. That turned out not to be possible, but I did fight difficult to practice interactive workshops with scientists and artists. For example, I organized an consequence where scientists could make a modest bomb of lemon juice, detonate it while stating aloud their research intentions, and create a piece of art from the resulting bear upon splats. Information technology was a fun way for me to invite them to think and assert their original career motivations, which oftentimes get lost over time.

Scientists may seem hard to admission, but I suggest artists to simply reach out to them, and to come prepared: to inquiry their area of interest and really know it, so that the dialogue tin can catamenia in a natural and deep way without a constant need to explain everything. Now I have the conviction to contact scientific discipline organizations anywhere in the world. I realized in that location is no barrier, and I feel empowered to contact other organizations to enquire for a tour of their facilities, or to see whether I can give a talk.

The most common misconception that scientists have about artists is that they are chaotic, or are simply illustrators helping to educate the public about scientific discipline. What gets lost is the deeper pregnant that the artists could give to scientists. Artists are trained to brainwash themselves on a variety of topics and so that they tin can offering critiques on life, guild and politics, and those skills are transferable to science.

XIN LIU: Take risks

An creative person-in-residence at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, California, and arts curator in the MIT Media Lab's Infinite Exploration Initiative in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In my role equally a curator, I help to connect artists and scientists. Information technology's hard to know who volition piece of work well together until you lot try information technology. At that place is some adventure. But, ideally, there is no power differential between the artist and the scientist. That said, it can be difficult to work with artists who have no exposure to science and technology — although, often, an creative person is fascinated past what a scientist does, and a scientist tin can enjoy and feel inspired past an artist's thinking. The only way a collaboration tin can be sustained is if each person has a deep respect for the other's piece of work and feels inspired by them.

After training as a mechanical engineer, I interned at Microsoft — starting time in Beijing, in 2013, and then in New York City, in 2015. In 2014, I worked as an contained contractor conducting enquiry at Google in Mountain View, California, earlier working on a primary'south degree in media arts at the MIT Media Lab (part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and after being hired equally its arts curator.

Arts curator Xin Liu tests a costume made from recycled ocean waste, during a parabolic flight. Credit: Steve Boxall

Whenever I was hired every bit an engineer, I made sure the expectations of that role were met, merely I also played with concepts of design, technology and art. I've always wanted to do piece of work between those spaces. Even in my internships, I created opportunities to practise creative projects and present them at venues other than conferences; for example, at festivals, blueprint weeks or exhibitions. Those experiences helped me to compete for more than-formal collaborations such every bit grants or artist-in-residency programmes, which are typically for people who are more established. Normally, early-stage immature artists don't become grants.

In 2019, as office of the MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative, I designed and made a robotic sculpture using unique locomotion technology to comport a wisdom tooth to infinite. I documented the whole matter and created a virtual-reality film from the tooth'southward perspective. The endeavour was chosen Living Altitude. Last March, as function of the aforementioned initiative, I launched Sojourner 2020, a rotating structure that carried work from 9 groups of artists to the International Space Station and back.

In a collaboration, I want to come across both artists and scientists taking some run a risk, rather than quickly retreating to old techniques that are safety. It'due south important to exist vulnerable with your collaborator, rather than being the 'expert', which can push button collaborators apart.

ABRIAN CURINGTON: Add emotion to science

Graphic novelist and cartographer in Fircrest, Washington.

My fantasy chance comics take ever had a scientific angle (see www.bluecatco.com). My work blends mathematical and scientific elements into fiction. I've even put physics equations in the footnotes. Interested in new experiences, I applied to the Schmidt Ocean Institute in Palo Alto, California. I was an artist-in-residence aboard the Schmidt enquiry vessel Falkor for 2 weeks in 2019 as part of a mission to find meteorites on the sea floor.

I concluded up making illustrations of what happens there, equally well every bit producing a comic travel journal. It shows the ship's operations in progress, too every bit many of the creatures we encountered forth the way.

A lot of artists are afraid to approach scientists. Some think that whatsoever conversations they might have will become over their heads and be full of jargon. And scientists are worried that artists won't understand their science. Simply in that location are fewer barriers than people think. Half the battle is finding the opportunities. I take been working with a new platform called Lifeology, which helps science and art communities to come together to create engaging, scientific discipline-backed educational materials. I've recently illustrated a class on the coronavirus (see get.nature.com/3p5jq) and ane on digital-storytelling basics (come across go.nature.com/3jykc)for scientists.

I practise a lot of inquiry in preparation for spending time with scientists I work with, and then that they know I'm serious. For example, I make clear how I stay truthful to original source material, which helps me to build trust. When I interact with scientists, I also stress that visual communicators add together emotions to the facts, which helps the full general public to retain the information and get excited about it. Igniting that spark is my goal. I'm adding to the science, not taking abroad from information technology.

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

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Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00397-1

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