308 NATURE | VOL 434 | 17 MARCH 2005 | www.nature.com/nature

To generalize about the relationshipbetween art and science is not so much

hazardous as impossible. Neither science norart are homogeneous categories. Just as sci-ence ranges from the observed complexitiesof environmental biology to the unseeabledimensions of theoretical physics, so artextends from the figurative representationof nature to the elusive abstractions ofconceptual art. And even if we take just onearea of science, say molecular biology, itsexpression in art may vary from straightfor-ward iconographical reference (for instance,by allusion to the iconic double helix) to the use of molecular processes to form anunpredictable image.

What is clear is that we serve any enquiryinto art and science badly if our criterion issuperficially the influence of science on art,or the influence of art on science. Deeperrealms of enquiry concern complex dialoguescentred on issues of cognition, perception,intuition,mental and physical structures,thecommunicative and social action of images,and the role of what we call the aesthetic as ashared instinct across the arts and sciences.There are as many potential relationshipsas there are artists who undertake pro-foundly imaginative scrutiny of science,and scientists who knowingly exploit theircreative instincts in seeking what is ‘trueand beautiful’.

Historically, the most straightforwardrelationships have been iconographical andillustrational. The Renaissance revolution innaturalism allowed both the convincingillustration of scientific specimens andprocedures, and the production of portraitsof scientists in various media.No science wasleft untouched by the new modes of illustra-tion, whether the descriptive science ofanatomy or the three-dimensional geometriesof cosmology. The stock portraits of scien-tists presented with suitable attributes will befamiliar to anyone acquainted with olderscientific institutions.As with portraits of allprofessionals, the image of the scientist inaction only became unexceptional in thenineteenth century. This type of portrayal

obstinately persists, not leastin photography, but there are now encouraging signs ofartists taking a creative lookat the issue of portraiture.Marc Quinn’s ‘portrait’ of SirJohn Sulston, using a culturefrom Sulston’s own DNA, isperhaps the most strikingcase in point1.

In the traditional media ofsculpture, painting and draw-ing, artists have recentlyinvented a mode of represen-tation that involves neitherillustration nor iconographical reference.Richard Deacon’s Out of Order was triggeredby discussions about a major piece to celebrate50 years of DNA, but came to assume its ownindependent life as the artist began to thinkabout the structures and processes that lay at the heart of the origins of life. The hugeresulting complex of ribbons wheeling inspace — seen on the cover of this supplement— expresses what the artist sensed to be theessence of big organic molecules withoutillustrating them. It is, in effect, RDNA(Richard Deacon Nucleic Acid).

Some aspect of structure is involved in alldeeper dialogues between the arts and sciences. I have signalled this shared qualityin my phrase ‘structural intuitions’, whichrefers to the resonances between our mentalstructures and patterns of organization —dynamic and static — in nature2. Compara-ble instincts operate at all scales in the scrutinyof our natural and technological worlds, andthe cosmos. The Korean artist, Nam JunePaik, has reached out into cosmic realms ofinfinity through the endless rebounds oflasers on basic geometrical figures3. Hismodelling of light in space has clear affinitieswith physicists’ and astronomers’ imagina-tive visualizations of space-time. But the endproduct of Paik’s installations is designed toinduce a sense of awe through a suggestiveextension of what can be rendered visible,rather than provide a model that is availableto testing.

In quieter realms, the traditional orderingof painted and sculpted spaces through opti-cal geometries and pythagorean harmonics,explored by Renaissance artists such as Pierodella Francesca, continues to present newpossibilities. Alex Colville, the Canadianpainter, shows how ideas closely related tothose of the Renaissance masters can exercise

From science in art to the art of scienceShared intuitions about the natural world drive the pursuits of artists and scientists, says Martin Kemp.

artists on science

In The Five Senses by Annie Cattrell, transitory neuronal activityis caught within glassy cubes.

Dancing with the elements: beautifullyengineered components pivot around rotatingaxles in Susumu Shingu’s Locus of Rain.

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an undiminished magic, both formally andpsychologically4. In a different physical mode,the kinetic sculptures of the Hungarian Attila Csörgö assemble the geometrical solidsbeloved of Johannes Kepler from apparentlyincoherent medleys of rods5. Both bringbeguiling order from unsettling chaos in waysthat have an enduring history.

The structures intuited by artists andscientists also involve the patterns of processin nature. In the past, painters have frozenthe self-organizing motions of phenomena,such as turbulent water, into lineararabesques. Leonardo da Vinci is the greatmaster of these effects, but he is only theforemost among many.

One of the characteristics of twentieth-century art was to embed the temporal natureof the process dynamically into the work —either so that the ‘finished’ piece was theunpredictable result of dynamic parametersset up by the artist, or such that we watch thework transforming in front of our eyes as akinetic experience (for examples,see ref.6).

The use of process to reveal forms oforder shows obvious affinities with themathematics of complexity.The monumentalsculptures of the Japanese artist SusumuShingu typically exploit a series of beautifullyengineered components that pivot aroundaxles, which are themselves in rotationalmotion7. When the sculptures are subject tonatural forces, such as the flow of wind or fallof water, they perform fluid ballets of infi-nitely variable choreography within theuniverse of cycles and epicycles prescribedby their construction. Shingu’s sculptureoutside the old Fiat factory at Lingotto inTurin relies on successively filled and errati-cally emptying trumpets whose thirst issatisfied by the chaotic pattern of waterdrops spouting fountain-like from an aper-ture at the apex of the sculpture.

Latterly, artists have been fascinated bythe revelations of mental processes frommodern imaging techniques, especiallyfunctional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI).In one sense,art has always presentedan experimental field for mental processes,but the nature of the processes themselveshas now become accessible. Artists such asthe English Andrew Carnie and the ScottishAnnie Cattrell have seized upon the imageryemerging from neuroscience to create theirown three-dimensional translations of thedata generated by scientists with whom they

have collaborated8,9. Cattrell’s series of TheFive Senses, an ancient theme, translates thelocalization of sensory activity into translu-cent sculptures in which the jagged sites oftransitory neuronal activity are capturedforever within glassy cubes.

Those scientists who generate the datathat so fascinate many artists are themselvesfrequently alert to the aesthetic dimension oftheir activity. This dimension can operate atthe earliest levels of hypothesis formulationand mental modelling, and can intervene atany point in the processes of observation,experimentation and deduction that resultin a publishable piece of science. Publicationitself involves a series of conscious andunconscious choices of what the resultsshould look like. It is virtually obligatory thatany presentation of data in visual formshould manifest a high-tech style. Manyauthors,particularly those aiming to commu-nicate to an audience outside their immediateprofessional orbit, use artistry to stimulateengagement, impact and excitement. Formany scientists, these dimensions are barelyimplicit,but for others the aesthetic motive isconsciously present throughout. This isparticularly apparent in astronomy andcosmology. Jean-Pierre Luminet’s recentreinstatement of a polygonal model of thecosmos — albeit one that exploits the strange spatial properties of a hypersphere— involves artistic instincts throughout,from conception to presentation.

So can art be science and science be art?Avoiding the pusillanimous answer that itdepends on what kind of art and what kind ofscience, I should like to conclude by drawingattention not so much to differences inmeans that are sometimes clear, sometimesblurred, but to a divergence in intentionalends. A work of art always remains open forinterpretation, drawing the spectator intothe shape of the artist’s visualization, butwithout being able to exert fixed control overthe feelings it induces. There is always roomfor the beholder’s share. Scientists may wishto engage the reader or spectator in a won-derful journey of imaginative visualization,but in the final analysis they wish to commu-nicate an interpretation that embodiestestable content in an unambiguous way.Butbehind these diverging streams of intentionruns a turbulent river of shared intuitionsabout the order and disorder of things. ■

Martin Kemp is professor of the history of art atthe University of Oxford, and co-director ofWallace Kemp Artakt.

1. Kemp, M. Nature 413, 778 (2001).

2. Kemp, M. Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and Science 1–4

(Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2000).

3. Kemp, M. Nature 404, 546 (2000).

4. Kemp, M. Nature 430, 969 (2004)

5. Kemp, M. Nature 428, 803 (2004).

6. Kemp, M. Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and Science

144–145, 148–151, 154–155, 162–163 (Oxford Univ. Press,

Oxford, 2000).

7. Kemp, M. Nature 419, 882 (2002).

8. Kemp, M. Nature 416, 265 (2002).

9. Kemp, M. Nature 424, 181 (2003).

Light in space: in Three Elements by Nam June Paik, lasers endlessly rebound.

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