Other conferences

A book based on this conference has now been published! Summary below:

Harald Klinke (ed.): Art Theory as Visual Epistemology, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014, ISBN 1-4438-5439-5

How can we "know"? What does "knowledge" mean? These were the fundamental questions of epistemology in the 17th century. In response to continental rationalism, the British empiricist John Locke proposed that the only knowledge humans can have is acquired a posterior. In a discussion of the human mind, he argued, the source of knowledge is sensual experience-mostly vision. Since vision and picture-making are the realm of art, art theory picked up on questions such as: are pictures able to represent knowledge about the world? How does the production of images itself generate knowledge? How does pictorial logic differ from linguistic logic? How can artists contribute to a collective search for truth?

Pictur(e)ing Climate: Image Politics: Pictur(e)ing Climate – Visualizations, Imaginations, Documentations (Potsdam, 2012)

You Need To See This -- Pushing the boundaries of scientific visualization

Tuesday 25 September - Wednesday 26 September 2012

The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, H.C. Andersens Boulevard 35, DK-1553 Copenhagen V, Denmark.

Scientific visualizations are essential for the processes involved in generating and presenting scientific data. This symposium explores how connections between art, design and science inspire and advance research, innovation and working processes in scientific data visualization. Speakers will share ideas for and processes of their work in visualization across disciplines. Talks and discussions will address how visual ideas and intentions are transformed by the use of different tools and technologies, how to meet the challenges of cross-discipline collaborations, how to gain and apply inspiration through multidisciplinary processes, and how these processes can enrich both the practice of science and art.

Speakers: David Goodsell (The Scripps Research Institute), Colin Ware (University of New Hampshire), Bang Wong (The Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard), Alessia Giardino (Thread Count Lab London), Nik Spencer & Kelly Krause (Nature), Amanda Cox (The New York Times), Gaël McGill (Harvard Medical School), Poul Nissen (Aarhus University), Søren Brunak (Technical University of Denmark), Ebbe Sloth Andersen (Aarhus University), and Mette Høst (Niels Bohr Institute).

For full details of the programme and speakers, please see: http://projects.au.dk/sciviz/. Please note that deadline for registration is Friday 14 September 2012: http://projects.au.dk/sciviz/registration/

Exhibition and publication: The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot:

Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York City, 18 West 86th Street

On view September 21, 2012 – January 27, 2013

Exhibition Explores the Role of Images in Scientific Thinking

Featuring never before exhibited works on paper and objects including

dynamic black and white drawings, computer print-outs, photographs,

and computer-generated films Focusing primarily on the work of one of

the most notable mathematicians of the twentieth century, The Islands

of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking

explores the role of images in the development of what has become

known as fractal geometry and chaos theory. Nina Samuel, visiting

professor from Das Technisches Bild in Berlin, is the curator of this

exhibition, which will be on view at the Bard Graduate Center from

September 21, 2012 to January 27, 2013.

For thousands of years, Western thought assumed that fundamental

geometry consisted of regular, ideal forms, such as cubes, spheres,

and cones, with straight or evenly curved faces and edges. Benoît

Mandelbrot (1924–2010), however, explored mathematics as he saw it— in

all its untidiness and irregularity, devoting himself to the study,

for example, of the forms of the coastlines of real islands, with all

their unpredictable inlets, creeks, and furrows. Mandelbrot, in other

words, looked at the world. In so doing, he flouted what was in effect

a prohibition pervading much of mathematical thinking against the use

of visual representation. To reintroduce the visual, Mandelbrot took

the groundbreaking step of harnessing the potential of computers,

thereby transforming mathematics into an experimental science. The

result was his invention of fractal geometry, a geometry of actuality

rather than of abstraction, as exemplified in his classic work, The

Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982).

The notion of islands is central to Mandelbrot’s work, associated in

his thinking with both the inspiring and the seductive role of images.

They challenge his own dictum that “seeing is believing” and point to

the interaction between the hand and computer visualizations to

generate new ideas. Frequently, the computer alone is unable to give

an insight, and hand drawing becomes necessary for transforming a

confusing computer image into a new idea or theory.

At his death in 2010, Mandelbrot left a mass of idiosyncratically

organized drawings, computer print-outs, films, manuscript scribbles,

objects, and polaroids in his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts— an

extraordinary trove to which Mandelbrot’s wife, Aliette, generously

allowed Professor Samuel access. “To explore it was like wandering

through the mathematician’s brain,” said Samuel. “It was like

witnessing the ephemeral traces of his very thought processes.”

Selections from these materials form the core of the exhibition.

Along with this rare look into Mandelbrot’s working process, sketches

from his contemporaries — the French mathematician Adrien Douady and

the German biochemist Otto E. Rössler — will also be publicly

exhibited for the first time. The work of the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz, a pioneer of chaos

theory, will be represented by loans from the Library of Congress.

The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality

of Thinking allows the viewer to question the idea that the

illustration of a work must always be secondary to the work itself. On

the contrary, substantive images often play generative roles in the

scientific process, constituting a kind of material thinking conducted

by producing and interpreting visual traces, such as

computer-generated images. These images are often aesthetically

compelling even if they are initially scientifically impenetrable.

This constitutes another revelation of the exhibition: the beauty of

material thinking that can be found in the visual detritus of

scientific investigation.

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery is located in New York City at 18

West 86th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and

Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. The admission fee is $7 general, $5

senior and students (valid ID); admission is free Thursday evenings

after 5 p.m. For more information about the Bard Graduate Center and

upcoming exhibitions, please visit bgc.bard.edu.

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