Pietro Perona (left) of Caltech and Stephen Nowlin of
Art Center College of Design bring science and art together
in the exhibition entitled NEURO.

Art for Science’s Sake

By Michael Rogers

For years, artists have turned to the world of science for inspiration. But while many scientists dabble in artistic endeavors for recreation, they usually rely on other skills, techniques, and modes of thinking when it comes to their scientific investigations. Now, Caltech and Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design are arranging a shotgun wedding of sorts between scientists and artists, which they hope will give people a new appreciation for science.

From the middle of April through the end of June, the Art Center’s Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery and Caltech’s Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering (CNSE) are presenting NEURO, an exhibition by six contemporary artists who have spent considerable time over the past year picking the brains of and collaborating with Caltech scientists and engineers. Five of the artists will display their work at Art Center, while one of the artists will project images in the lobby of Caltech’s Athenaeum.

“Our purpose in creating this show is not just to present an exhibit of artists who ran with the information they got from their Caltech contacts and did whatever they pleased,” says Jill Andrews, Caltech’s assistant to the provost for educational outreach. “The aim is to capitalize on the collaborative relationships among artists and scientists to increase the public’s awareness and understanding of science.”

Andrews helped arrange the show along with Professor of Electrical Engineering Pietro Perona, an art lover and the director of CNSE, and Stephen Nowlin, vice president and director of Art Center’s Williamson Gallery. The show grew out of a need to satisfy the educational outreach requirement of a grant from the National Science Foundation, which provides the funding for the CNSE. Investigators at the research center, established in 1994, use biological systems as models for designing and fabricating machines that can relate to their environments in ways similar to those of living creatures.
While planning an outreach program for the CNSE, Andrews read an NSF guide that recommended using art shows as a means of bridging the gap between science and the public. That eventually led her to Art Center, which had recently begun a series of joint programs with Caltech. In the summer of 2001, Andrews met Nowlin and discovered that for years he had been curating art shows revolving around science and technology, and that he had once worked at Caltech while he was a young art student.

Nowlin worked at Caltech from 1970 to 1971, first drafting computer parts for Palomar Observatory and other Caltech observatories, and then working with John Whitney, a pioneer in computer animation, who was a visiting artist working in Caltech’s Booth Computing Center.

“Caltech had invited artists to interact with scientists and learn about technology and I came to the Institute to get involved in the program,” Nowlin says. “I needed to be part of the Caltech community to qualify for participation, so I got the job in the astroelectronics lab. But I was also interested in science, and would have been eager to work there anyway.

“Artists are always looking for new media in which to express themselves,” says Nowlin. “But it was also the zeitgeist of the time that by creative applications of science and technology one could address age-old problems in a new way. I was pretty young, but sensed possibilities in the overlap between art and science, which prevails in my thinking today and has led to the NEURO project.”

Together, Nowlin, Perona, and Andrews came up with the idea of creating a show of contemporary art based on some of the research under way at CNSE. Nowlin knows many artists whose work is linked to science and technology, and he eventually settled on six who had some technical expertise. They were invited to Caltech in February 2002 to meet with CNSE faculty and to hear about their research. A few weeks later, scientists and engineers who were interested in the project made a reciprocal visit to Art Center, where the artists presented their work.

Rather than deliberately pair up artists and scientists whom he thought would work well together, Nowlin says that he “let the collaborations evolve.” Artists generally took the first step and picked the scientists with whom they wanted to work, but it worked the other way with Peter Schröder, professor of computer science and applied and computational mathematics. Schröder told Nowlin that he wanted to work with Martin Kersels, a Los Angeles–based conceptual artist who has gained an international reputation by creating works that often use sound and machinery. Schröder says that he was immediately drawn to Kersel’s comic bent.

“I instantly responded to Martin emotionally,” says Schröder, whose primary research interest is multireso-lution modeling to create dynamic computer graphics. “He was having fun with technology and wasn’t all caught up in overanalyzing things.”

Schröder and Kersels had numerous meetings, often over dinner, and it quickly became apparent to both of them that Kersels would not be using Schröder to solve a technical problem that would help Kersels realize a work of art. Instead, they would find a way to truly collaborate.

“We talked about the role of science and technology; what people want from science; what people fear about it; ethical questions,” Kersels says. From their discussions, they developed a project called Sciance, a play on the words “science” and “séance.” The installation will feature a glass booth in which a Caltech student will sit. The student will answer questions from visitors via computer, which will also be linked to the Web so that people who can’t make it to the gallery can interact. Students will not be available at all times, so earlier questions and answers will be projected in the gallery.

To some observers, this project may not sound or look like art, but Nowlin says “it’s conceptual art with a kind of funky twist for which Martin is known. Thus the modular industrial prefab ‘office’ with a scientist inside, on display.”

“This piece is about exploring people’s fantasies, hopes, visions, and worries about science,” says Schröder, who was so impressed with Kersels that he arranged for him to teach an art class at Caltech last fall. Adds Kersels, “It really is a true collaboration between Peter and myself because it is a formulation of what we talked about.” While he could have used Schröder’s expertise to create a technologically impressive work of art, Kersels says that it was more rewarding to “gain a friend and collaborator within a different realm. That we were able to find areas of commonality is amazing.”

Andrews says that while she had a hunch that the show would be more interesting than the typical outreach program, in which professors visit public schools to talk about their work, for example, she never thought that the collaborators would be so enthusiastic. “I’ve never seen so many people in the scientific community so excited about outreach. They normally feel uncomfortable with popularizing their research.”

The pilot art collaboration has been so successful that Andrews is now planning two others: a lecture series to accompany a future Art Center show on the revolution in genetics, and a project that would bring together materials science researchers with artists at the California Institute of the Arts.

Other artists in the NEURO show include Simon Penny, professor of arts and engineering at UC Irvine, who is working with Malcolm MacIver, a Caltech postdoctoral scholar in mechanical engineering, to create an environment that explores the world of electrosensing fish. In another aquatic-related project, Ken Goldberg, an artist and professor of industrial engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, worked with Perona and Michael Dickinson, Caltech professor of bioengineering, to create a multimedia work that allows viewers to see the world through the eyes of a koi. Goldberg calls it Infiltrate.

Architect Christian Möller, from UCLA’s department of design/media arts, worked with Perona on a project that tests the limits of facial-recognition software. In this work, six video displays show female models attempting to smile naturally for up to three hours at a time. The software apparently recognizes unnatural smiles.

Video artist Jessica Bronson is interested in retinal painting, and her Caltech contacts led her to researchers outside the Institute who helped her develop technology to design screens that display words that are only visible peripherally. Media artist Jennifer Steinkamp is creating the only work that will be shown on the Caltech campus. After meeting with several Caltech professors, Steinkamp developed images of exploding fireballs—symbolic of the impact that new scientific knowledge has on human culture—that will be projected on a semicircular wall space in the Athenaeum.

“There’s a notion that art and science are polar opposites, and that artists and scientists only visit the other side as a kind of escape from the rigors of their own disciplines,” says Nowlin. “I don’t think that’s the case. There’s a place where they overlap. There’s no doubt that science and new technology can transform the world we live in, but they can also transform the nature of art."