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Scientific illustration and Accessibility of knowledge
Throughout history, the creation of image has always been the main mean to communicate informations. Wether as a testimony of the past, whether as an observational annotated sketch. From the study of anatomy by Leonard Da Vinci to A Manual of Elementary Geology by Charles Lyell, passing Nie Hang’s illustrated album of Miscellany (Quing Dynasty, 1698), Orra White Hitchcock’s illustration, or the meticulous and delicate nervous system architecture of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, scientific illustration, has not only been a mere informing tool, but an art of its own. Capable of its own captivation and fascination, this unique craft seems to have been put aside in favour of supra-simplification and compartmentation of skills and knowledge.
This proposal speculates on the need for the re insertion and normalisation of detailed and complex depiction of scientific phenomenas and principles. By re-envisioning its use not only as replica of materiality, but also as visual translation of laws and principles, it argues for a better bridging of knowledges, and revival of interest from the general public in science by stimulating the cognitive ability of human beings to appreciate beauty.
We will focus here partly on the concept of Viscosity, as described by Cristian Simonetti, as a ground experiment on how to make an illustration of it as a geoscience property, but also a visual retranscription of it as a cultural concept and a tension which tends to divide the sciences and the humanities along lines that define what is hard and soft in knowledge.
Proje
This proposal speculates on the need for the re insertion and normalisation of detailed and complex depiction of scientific phenomenas and principles. By re-envisioning its use not only as replica of materiality, but also as visual translation of laws and principles, it argues for a better bridging of knowledges, and revival of interest from the general public in science by stimulating the cognitive ability of human beings to appreciate beauty.
We will focus here partly on the concept of Viscosity, as described by Cristian Simonetti, as a ground experiment on how to make an illustration of it as a geoscience property, but also a visual retranscription of it as a cultural concept and a tension which tends to divide the sciences and the humanities along lines that define what is hard and soft in knowledge.
Proje
Viscosity is, in geosciences, a fluid’s resistance to flow and deformation. It is characterised by high internal layer’s friction. It represents one of the main domain of study of rheology3.
In Six Stories from the End of Representation,4 James Elkins describes what seems to be a viscous gap between the humanities and science. Making a dense depiction on the limit of representation in the material culture of physic he states a mutual alienation of natural and humanities scientists.
As scientific research needs to remain based on a scientific method, to establish a trustful link with the people, which is nowadays nearly non-existent, scientists have to become better communicator 5
To spread scientific knowledge, the use of image cannot only demonstrates, it needs to illustrate, to interpret. For it to not only be something you look at to understand or analyse, but something which is to be admired.
Interpretation operates by metaphors and models that are themselves not necessarily part of the originating discourse.6
As we seem to loose a bit more everyday an interest for the sublime of existence, and that we not seem to be too keen on countering climate change, we could perhaps help an existential geo-centrism. You cannot demonstrate the elegance of geo layers with a microsoft paint drawing. You cannot transmit the complex progression of isotopes, with a 2 frames per second animation.
Interstellar7 has given more exposition to astro-physic and cosmology, than any released complex and condensed research articles.The sudden public interest in space science was not caused by the screenplay8, but by captivating the audience by the sublime of Gargantua9. This sequence achieved the requirement to hold people attention: the sublime of general relativity.
Theorised by Edmund Burke, the sublime defines the strongest aesthetic experience, making the human surrender to a terrorised passion facing its its insignifiance in a grander space going beyond its imagination and comprehensions.
As the sublime remains a controversial concept, we will not elaborate on it here, we use it here for its connotative emotional range. As an ambiguous planetary anxiety/passion, diving into a scalar feeling of micro-being state in an endless expanding stellar state. Coming back to scientific illustration, for the human being to pay attention, especially in a contemporary context, where brain is fed by Ai and TikTok, reducing dramatically our attention abilities, we desperately need sublime depictions, translations of the Earth. We require a geological sublime. For the geological time scale to not be a mere table but to become an object of awe and petrifaction. An emotional ad irrational viscous dichotomy, between the self and the humility of an ungraspable space horizon.
A geological sublime as catalyser against self-inflicted and alienated temporal anthropogenic sublime.s. What's the point of piercing the secret for the universe if they remain an in apprehensible maze of buzz words only accessible to an "educated"10 minority of people.
A three seconds GIF on the wikipedia page of viscous matter, has more efficiency into explaining this material property than a twenty pages condensed article11.
In a time of climate change denial, people turning their back on science, alienated by the weight of an omnipresent sublime human experience, the least we can do is to try as much as we can to depict as accurately as possible the beauty and complexity of the Earth. From its conception and birth, to the anthropogenic erasure of its atmospheric layer, passing by its complex internal composition of layer, and the richness of its multi spheres.
After all we are on a big floating rock,
But it is a very pretty rock.
In Six Stories from the End of Representation,4 James Elkins describes what seems to be a viscous gap between the humanities and science. Making a dense depiction on the limit of representation in the material culture of physic he states a mutual alienation of natural and humanities scientists.
As scientific research needs to remain based on a scientific method, to establish a trustful link with the people, which is nowadays nearly non-existent, scientists have to become better communicator 5
To spread scientific knowledge, the use of image cannot only demonstrates, it needs to illustrate, to interpret. For it to not only be something you look at to understand or analyse, but something which is to be admired.
Interpretation operates by metaphors and models that are themselves not necessarily part of the originating discourse.6
As we seem to loose a bit more everyday an interest for the sublime of existence, and that we not seem to be too keen on countering climate change, we could perhaps help an existential geo-centrism. You cannot demonstrate the elegance of geo layers with a microsoft paint drawing. You cannot transmit the complex progression of isotopes, with a 2 frames per second animation.
Interstellar7 has given more exposition to astro-physic and cosmology, than any released complex and condensed research articles.The sudden public interest in space science was not caused by the screenplay8, but by captivating the audience by the sublime of Gargantua9. This sequence achieved the requirement to hold people attention: the sublime of general relativity.
Theorised by Edmund Burke, the sublime defines the strongest aesthetic experience, making the human surrender to a terrorised passion facing its its insignifiance in a grander space going beyond its imagination and comprehensions.
As the sublime remains a controversial concept, we will not elaborate on it here, we use it here for its connotative emotional range. As an ambiguous planetary anxiety/passion, diving into a scalar feeling of micro-being state in an endless expanding stellar state. Coming back to scientific illustration, for the human being to pay attention, especially in a contemporary context, where brain is fed by Ai and TikTok, reducing dramatically our attention abilities, we desperately need sublime depictions, translations of the Earth. We require a geological sublime. For the geological time scale to not be a mere table but to become an object of awe and petrifaction. An emotional ad irrational viscous dichotomy, between the self and the humility of an ungraspable space horizon.
A geological sublime as catalyser against self-inflicted and alienated temporal anthropogenic sublime.s. What's the point of piercing the secret for the universe if they remain an in apprehensible maze of buzz words only accessible to an "educated"10 minority of people.
A three seconds GIF on the wikipedia page of viscous matter, has more efficiency into explaining this material property than a twenty pages condensed article11.
In a time of climate change denial, people turning their back on science, alienated by the weight of an omnipresent sublime human experience, the least we can do is to try as much as we can to depict as accurately as possible the beauty and complexity of the Earth. From its conception and birth, to the anthropogenic erasure of its atmospheric layer, passing by its complex internal composition of layer, and the richness of its multi spheres.
After all we are on a big floating rock,
But it is a very pretty rock.
3° study of the deformation and flow of matter, covering everything from liquids and gases to "soft solids" and complex materials.
4° Elkins, James. Six Stories from the End of Representation: Images in Painting, Photography, Astronomy, Microscopy, Particle Physics, and Quantum Mechanics, 1980-2000, Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2008
5° TED. Naomi Oreskes: Why We Should Trust Scientists, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=RxyQNEVOElU. June 25, 2014.
6°Elkins (n4)
7° Nolan, Christopher, dir. Interstellar. Paramount Pictures, 2014
8° We are not here for a cinema critic, but incase, there’s a load of wordy cinephiles on Letterbox
9° Fictional supermassive black hole simulated by Nobel-prize winning physicist Kip Thorne
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Last Updated 24.10.31