Images workshop Nottingham, 2010

Visualisation, images, art in science and society

Report on Networking workshop in Nottingham:

Ethics and aesthetics in the age of advanced visual engineering: Challenges for science and society

Date: 25 June, 2010

Venue: University of Nottingham Staff Club

Organised by the Institute for Science and Society (School of Sociology and Social Policy)

Brigitte Nerlich, Andrew Balmer, Burcu Gorgulu

Supported by the Centre for Advanced Studies (University of Nottingham, UK) and the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway, Rasmus Slaattelid)

The aim of this workshop was to bring people from different disciplinary backgrounds together to talk about the challenges to science and society posed by the proliferation and growing sophistication of visual images in science. Visualisation and images are becoming increasingly important to the process of science, especially in fields where the ‘objects’ of science are actually invisible or highly complex. Issues relating to visualisation and images are also becoming more and more important in scientific publications as well as in the communication of science. Some questions we wanted to address in the workshop were:

What is the relation between conveying information and imparting aesthetic pleasure?

When does visual enhancement become ‘visual fraud’?

How can one ensure public ‘visual trust’ when using images to disseminate knowledge of scientific advances or engage lay publics with science?

What is the role of the ‘science illustrator’ in a Photoshop world when image making has become ‘democratised’ and taken out of the hand of ‘experts’?

What is the role of the instrument used? From paint brushes to digital imaging technologies, from ‘light microscopy’ to ‘blind microscopy’ (scanning tunnelling probes etc.), from Galilean to radio to space telescopes, from X-rays to fMRI and beyond, each has its particularities and consequences for the kinds of images produced and their potential application and dissemination.

To this end we started the workshop with an overview presentation delivered by Brigitte Nerlich which set out the main challenges, problems and opportunities of visualisation and images in science, focusing on the ethical pitfalls inherent in the use of both verbal and visual images, in particular the creation of the illusion of knowledge. This was followed by four presentations by scientists from different disciplines: physics/astronomy, biochemistry, neuroscience/psychology and GIS/geography. By chance rather than through organisation, the talks built on each and followed each other beautifully from the invisible quantum level to the visible geographical level, from fields where ‘shadows’ don’t ‘exist’ and are added to make images understandable to disciplines where they are and can be actively manipulated, from worlds where scientists can ‘interact’ with atoms and molecules through the use of Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy to worlds where scientists can interact with the real world around them while at the same time manipulating its virtual representation. In all cases scientists try to abstract meaning and create meaning from images and through images, a meaning that can vary substantially between the producer of the image and its recipient. The four presentations were followed by a very lively discussion which centred mainly on the question of the meaning of scientific images and their understanding by various audiences. For some scientists there was meaning and beauty in ‘images’ embedded in mathematical formulae or datasets, for others the beauty was only in the images that resulted from a process of transformation. The question was whether all viewers should be made aware of the process of production and transformation that makes images emerge and gives them meaning and what the relation is between attractiveness and scientific accuracy.

Lunch brought further opportunities for chat and discussion but was also the occasion for some to enjoy a lesson of Tai-chi in the Millennium Garden in beautiful sunshine, organised by Andy Balmer. This image of academics doing Tai-chi certainly gave parents and prospective students who had come for the University’s Open Day something to think about.

In the afternoon three talks shed new light on our topic from three very different perspectives: a practicing artists talked about his efforts to make the unseen seeable (from invisible objects created by light and shadows to nanoscale objects) and about how to make things attractive without compromising scientific information; a social scientist talked about the issue of images in scientific publishing and new guidelines that are being proposed in this context, the difficult negotiations this entails between safeguarding ‘objectivity’ and making an article persuasive, how guidelines impinge on practice, trust, and transparency, on the relation between reader and writer and also on how scientists think of themselves and what they do; a specialist in cognitive psychology and the learning sciences talked about science learning, the increasing necessity of acquiring visual competence, of learning with and about representations, and the dilemmas of learning with and through images, where beautiful representations may make things clearer, where affective reactions may be effective in terms of motivation but may also be seductive in a negative way and distract from learning.

At the end of the afternoon, the workshop participants split into two streams or groups and discussed issues around visual enhancement, fraud and the pleasure that images can convey. The workshop ended with a very enjoyable meal at The Hemsley.

Programme

Evening meal at Kayal, 24 June

Workshop, 25 June:

9:00-9.45 Registration and coffee (there were 25 participants)

9.45-10:00 Introductions and setting the agenda

10.00-10.30 Brigitte Nerlich (ISS, Nottingham): “The ethics and aesthetics of pretty pictures”

10:30-11:30 Scientists on ‘making of images’: Scientists are asked to bring one image of their own and one classic image from their field.

10.30: Philip Moriarty (Physics, Nottingham): “Mapping and manipulating the atomic world”

10.45: Boyan Bonev (Biochemistry, Nottingham): “Portrait of a molecule”

11.00: Alain Pitiot (Psychology and Neuroscience, Nottingham): “Image production and image analysis, between the human and the machine”

11.15: Gary Priestnall (Geography and GIS, Nottingham): “Reality Check: Landscape visualisation and fieldwork”

11:30-12:00 Discussion

Moderator: Arthur Piper (former leader of university funded Image Network; journalist)

· Commonalities in ‘technical’ and ‘aesthetic’ concerns in production of images across disciplines

· Contrasting the concerns underlying the aesthetic traditions of individual disciplines

12:00-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:00 ‘Using images: Practices in art, publication and education’

13.00: Chris Robinson (Artist, South Carolina): “The art of seeing at the nanoscale”

13.20: Emma Frow (ESRC Genomics Forum, Edinburgh): “A crisis of trust: Setting guidelines for digital image processing in scientific journal articles”

13.40: Shaaron Ainsworth (Psychology and LSRI, Nottingham): “The benefits of beauty in visual learning?”

14:00-15:00 Discussion

Discussants: Martin Kemp (History of Art, Oxford [unfortunately he could not be at the workshop) and Chris Toumey (Cultural anthropology, South Carolina) (10 mins each)

· Production and dissemination versus critique of knowledge

· Visualisation of science: as science versus as art

15:00-15:30 Coffee

15:30-16:30 Workshop

Stream 1, led by Andrew Balmer: Visual enhancement, visual fraud, public/scientist trust

Stream 2, led by Burcu Gorgulu: Conveying information and aesthetic pleasure

16:30-17:30 Discussion and closing remarks; Chair: Brigitte Nerlich

· Summary of the day; Questions; Future collaborations

18:30 Dinner at The Hemsley (Staff Club)