"We must do this more often" was the
constant refrain at a gathering of scientists, artists, film makers,
designers, writers, editors and art historians at a meeting in Los
Angeles. They were there to explore the use of images in science,
for both understanding data and communicating it to
others.
Image and Meaning 2, held from 23 to 25 June at the Getty
art museum, was the successor to the first conference of this sort,
staged in 2001 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
Boston.
The conference series is the brainchild of Felice Frankel,
a science photographer working at MIT. Frankel helps scientists
present their work using imagery that is both informative and
striking. Her photographs have graced many covers of Nature
and Science.
Frankel convened the meeting because, she
says, "we have a serious problem. There is an assumption that in
science our graphics communicate. But they often don't." Frankel
argues that many scientists don't see imagery as an integral part of
the scientific process. This, she says, is doing the community a
disservice.
Animated discussion
Many at the conference
tackled the notion of how best to find patterns within their data.
Creating graphs or maps becomes more challenging as the data get
more complicated. Some have turned results into animations to wring
meaning from them, whereas others have displayed their work using
virtual reality 'rooms'.
There is an assumption that in
science our graphics communicate - but they
don't.
Felice
Frankel Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
There is now a wealth of computer tools for generating
sophisticated imagery. But scientists at the meeting complained that
many of these programs never get beyond the computer-graphics
community that develops them.
The audience was impressed when David
Salesin, a computer scientist at the University of Washington,
presented the interactive visual tools that he is developing for
Microsoft. Salesin showed software that can construct
realistic-looking aerial photographs from maps after being trained
with a few real photo/map combinations. He also had programs that
could blend different faces, and automatically turn random objects
into 'Escher tiles': these are shapes that can be rotated to fill a
space without leaving any gaps (see some Escher tiles here).
Salesin's methods got many
researchers thinking about new ways of looking at their findings.
But they also raised a host of questions about proper limits to the
manipulation of images. "I had not realised how easy it is to make
changes in images seamlessly," says chemist George Whitesides of
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He says the community
should work out rules for what is acceptable in 'improving' images
for publication.
Simple scribbles
On the
opposite side of the coin, many argued that low-tech imagery can
have advantages over high-tech in communicating research. A very
polished image, says Frankel, can discourage a viewer from engaging
with and thinking about a work. "If something is raw, it gives the
viewer permission to participate," she says. Beautiful,
computer-generated renderings can also mislead viewers, some argue,
giving a false sense of certainty about the ideas they
represent.
Cartoonist and self-described "lapsed mathematician" Larry
Gonick argued that cartoons can be used to great effect in
communicating science without having to turn to expensive or
complicated techniques. "Cartooning's graphic style has certain
features conducive to explanation," argues Gonick. "It invites the
eye and draws the reader to the 'main character' of the
illustration," he says. It also comes with a widely understood
visual language, he argues, that can convey motion or
narrative.
"Even the biggest-brained scientists at this conference
have confessed an inability to comprehend some complex diagrams,"
says Gonick. Sometimes, he says, what one needs to understand a
concept is a story.
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There is an assumption that in
science our graphics communicate - but they
don't. 
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