Essence

by Clifford Johnson     Department: Culture

Over on Asymptotia, I explained a bit about my "Art meets Science" contribution to the cover story of the magazine SEED's December issue:

It is part of a larger cover story by Jonah Lehrer about science and art (which I've not yet read), with a number of other scientists giving their take. I was asked to contribute by picking a piece of art, and writing 100 (they said) words about how it connects to my science. Or I could talk about how a piece might have inspired me, or some combination of those sorts of things showing the intersection between science and art.

In the end, I wrote something that emphasized the theme "transcendence", and that was what appeared - you can learn what piece I chose and what I said by either looking at the magazine or the blog post. I'd be curious to hear what you might have chosen (and why) in comments either here or there.

While working on the contribution, I was hugely conflicted, for many reasons (variety of themes, variety of pieces, art forms, only 100 words, etc...) and another major theme struggled for dominance - "essence". How both science and art strive to identify the essential truth about a subject. My original contribution that I submitted to the editors to get their feedback on whether I was on the right track for what they were looking for therefore had a bit more of this in it, and referred to two pieces of art (I eventually chose one and focussed on developing and rewriting around that, using the "transcendence" theme). The piece I used that did I did not use for the final article is perfect for illustrating the "essence" theme, and so to provoke some thoughts in you while you get on with your holiday business (if that is indeed what you are doing), I include it here, along with some fragments of the paragraphs I was playing with at the time.

Art in all its forms, in both the creating and the witnessing, has several resonances with what we do as scientists. There are so many pieces of art of widely varying types that inspire me in various ways. Most fundamentally, for me the primary point of commonality with my field that I seek in a piece is the push-and-pull dance of representation and expression employed in the capturing of some essential truth about the chosen subject. I'm particularly inspired by simplicity and economy in achieving this with a given idea or technique. [...] The deconstruction of the bull in Picasso's series of wonderful lithographs is playful but deadly serious. Read in either direction, it is also a lesson in much of what we do in physics.

Don't forget to look at the "transcendence" piece that I actually used for the article. It is over on Asymptotia.

-cvj

Tags: art, science

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