A panel of experts across art and science came together to discuss their shared passion for challenging the limits of human perception in the latest installment of the Morgridge Institute’s Fearless Science Forum, held at the Chazen Museum of Art on March 10.
Eric Wilcots, Dean of the College of Letters & Science and Professor of Astronomy, was joined by Randy Bartels, Morgridge investigator and UW–Madison professor of biomedical engineering, Meg Mitchell, artist and professor of digital media at UW–Madison, and moderator Kevin Eliceiri, also a Morgridge investigator.
Morgridge CEO Brad Schwartz introduced the speakers, noting how curiosity drives both science and art to “uncover things that are begging to be uncovered and that other people haven’t discovered before.” The discussion highlighted the crosstalk between these two passions, whether that involves finding beauty in scientific data or using art to communicate novel ways of perceiving the world.
A full recording is available above. Below we feature some of the key themes and remarks — and stunning images — from the panel.
Seeking inspiration: the intersection of science and art
While scientists are driven by hypotheses and feel empowered looking for patterns in data, artists like Mitchell feel liberated by looking for patterns in the world and even by the ability to render data “as decoration” and “surface” to explore the ideas of data visibility and invisibility.
But at least as many intersections between art and science emerged as did divergences. Bartels, who leads a research lab developing new optical imaging technologies, sees beauty in perception — turning the “invisible” into “visible” to uncover biological phenomena. He provided a striking example of how computed tomography (CT) scans, an essential tool today for diagnosis in medicine, are akin to Cubist paintings from the 20th century.
Morgridge investigator
“The Cubists would bring forward perceptions that came from different angles so that you’re kind of looking at different perceptions all simultaneously on the same page, and it’s really the same conception, I would say, of tomography. But they did this, you know, just playing around with ideas and presentation and representations of information and media. So I would say the general theme of what I do is really try to look at these sorts of small things inside of cells and their dynamics and find ways to translate that into something that’s visible, that lets us learn something about those biological systems.”
Transcending scales
In response to a question from the audience — “How do scale, structure, and function influence your work?” — Wilcots remarked at how “tiny” we are in comparison to the universe, while Mitchell was enthralled by the ability to now create virtual environments at scales beyond the “body-scale” that dominates modernist sculpture.
Mary C. Jacoby Professor of Astronomy at UW–Madison
“This is a question I get a lot about understanding scale. In this incredibly cosmic sense, we are tiny. We are absolutely tiny. [..] There is a picture that (the NASA spacecraft) Cassini took from Saturn looking at sort of a pale blue dot. And that was us, right — everything that we have on Earth. So the astronomers wrestle with scale all the time, and sometimes it becomes quite sort of philosophical, because you are dealing with questions like that.”
The AI influence, “for better or for worse”
The profound influence of AI on science is already being felt thanks to its ability to process enormous amounts of data generated by modern imaging technologies. Quoting the example of the Rubin Observatory in Chile, which takes images of the entire night sky every three days, Wilcots noted how “using AI to process tons of these incredibly complex astronomical data can help us identify and classify so many objects of different shapes and sizes in the night sky.”
Bartels and Mitchell maintained that unchecked usage of AI in science and art still begs for a certain amount of skepticism. Addressing the question on her and her students’ minds every day — will AI put artists out of work — Mitchell offers a firm “no.”
artist and UW–Madison professor
“The artist is actually an integral part of the art. And not just the artist like making the work, but the artist talking about the work, the artist providing context for the work, the artist providing a commodity for the collector to invest in.”