scientific art
the beauty of science in art

Odra Noel's vision of Scientific Art
Scientific Art cannot yet be considered an entity (either in the world of art or science), but a trend.

Several elements have contributed to this emerging movement, but two had a significant weight: the growing gap between the complexity of scientific disciplines and their understanding by the general public, and a multiplication of the image-based tools and techniques in many branches of science. Riding on the back of these elements, art has been called as a medium to bridge the comprehension gap and to transmit some of the beauty and the awe of what real life has to offer when you know how and where to look.

At its basic level, scientific art is not new. Art and science were far more interwoven in the past than they are now, and we have countless examples of intermixing over historical times. Think of the ornamental/didactic armillary spheres used to represent celestial bodies since ancient times, the enormous murals maps depicting newly discovered lands that adorn many large palaces across Europe,the anatomical description of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo that illuminates countless walls and books, or the mathematically precise visual tricks of drawings by Escher.

The new scientific art development has two fairly distinctive factions. On the one hand are the artists that use science as their inspiration. This group takes science only as the starting point and puts the stress on the artist’s personal interpretation of its subject.

On the other hand are the artists and scientists that put the stress on the science and give accuracy and reality the principal weight of the work. The four historical examples provided above and Odra Noel belong to this group.

• Ina Schuppe-Koistinen
• David S Goodsell
• ASCI