PLACES & SPACES
Retrospective: Imag(in)ing
Science
By Danielle McCloskey
Contributor
From visualizations
of neurons, Fukushima
seismographs, light-sensitive
chloroplast-generated
photographs, and electron
microscope captured specimens of the HIV
virus, the idea for “Imag(in)ing Science”, the
exhibition at Grunwald Gallery of Indiana
University, sparked about three years ago
when Jeffery Wolin, Ruth N. Hall’s Professor
of Photography at IU, began his hunt for lensbased imaging in all methodologies. Wolin
visited Claire Walczak at the Light Microscopy
Imaging Center on campus and began to discuss
the possibility of an exhibition that paired
scientists and artists to make images together
using the microscopes at LMIC. Walczak
introduced Wolin to Jim Powers, research
scientist and manager of LMIC, and to Alex
Straiker from the Psychological and Brain
Sciences department.
“Alex and Jim were already making incredibly
beautiful images of incredibly tiny things. So
they were all recruited to be part of our art and
science collaboration.”
Around the same time, Andrew Lumsdaine,
professor of computer science at IU and
eventual collaborator, contacted Wolin after
hearing how Wolin’s graduate photography
seminar had discussed plenoptic photography—
something Lumsdaine was working heavily on.
Both agreed plenoptics would benefit the art
and science fields and decided to work together.
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“Then it was a matter of finding a few other
pairs of visual artists and scientists from a
variety of fields,” said Wolin. “We could have
had dozens of such teams but to keep things
manageable we chose artists from the School
of Fine Arts with a variety of diverse media and
met as a group along with researchers mostly
from the life sciences with the odd geologist
thrown in for effect.”
The collaborative teams met repeatedly
over the past year to compare notes and were
constantly blown away by what other teams
were accomplishing. Graduate students from
fine arts and the sciences were also assisting
the projects from its early stages. Zach
Norman, a graduate student in photography,
and previous students of Lumsdaine, assisted
in their plenoptics project. Norman also
assisted collaborator Caleb Weintraub with
prints. Finally, in August of 2013, six teams of
scientists and artists had established "Imag(in)
ing Science," where each team produced a piece
dealing with their respective fields of science
and imagery.
The teams formed for “Imag(in)ing Science”
plan to continue their cross-discipline
relationships. Wolin, when asked about the
process of collaboration, replied, “It’s rare,
SciArt in America December 2013