A slice from the brainstem
of a Brainbow transgenic
mouse captured using a
confocal microscope and
software for image aquisition and manipulation.
Image credit: Jean Livet,
Joshua Sanes, Jeff Lichtman. Harvard University.
design or chance, and these are the images that
last throughout time. Santiago Ramon y Cajal,
often called the father of modern neuroscience,
created iconic images of neurons which
are still printed in neuroscience textbooks
over 100 years later, and are adapted to a
variety of media including the iPhone case. A
contemporary example of uncompromisingly
beautiful scientific visualizations can be found
in Brainbow, a visualization process developed
by Jeff Lichtman and colleagues at Harvard.
Tagging neuronal tissue with blue, red and
green fluorescent proteins enabled scientists to
study the connections between neurons with
greater clarity, and also gave rise to gorgeous
images which verge on becoming Art, a topic
discussed by Ashley P. Taylor in a previous issue
of SciArt in America.
A topic I haven’t mentioned yet is scientific
illustration, which like cartography, must be
concerned with both the science and visual
clarity of what it is trying to communicate.
While illustrations are important in their own
right, science visualizations are crucial because
those are the visuals that scientists spend
all day with and base their findings on, and
are the images that get propagated into the
cultural realm for all to look at and ponder over.
Science-based artists like Jonathan Feldschuh
often turn a critical eye towards and manipulate
standard scientific practices in their own
SciArt in America February 2014
work (see his interview in SciArt in America’s
December issue). As part of his “World
Egg” series, Feldschuh took astronomical
data representing the birth of the universe
and replaced the default black/red/yellow of
radiation images with a pink/blue color scheme.
He named the piece, aptly, Universe Baby Picture.
At the end of the day, scientists and artists
are both concerned with communicating
what we find fascinating about our existence
in this world, and the visualizations from
each discipline are an integral part of the
communication process. Since we accept
that colors are important in most other
aspect of our lives, scientists should seriously
consider the effect of the colors they deal in.
This may indeed be best realized by a more
formal, collaborative relationship between
art and science, a topic the National Science
Foundation and National Endowment for the
Arts recently turned their attention towards.
For Jonathan Feldschuh and other scienceminded artists, this will mean access to funding
and opportunities never before available. For
scientists, this could mean having an artist-inresidence to help create data visualizations. In
speaking of Brainbow, Lichtman’s sentiment
perfectly illustrates the bright future a revisualizing of science could have: “It is as if
beauty exists in the world and if one renders the
world there is no suppressing its beauty.”
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