The Open Windows of Science

“Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.”

— Bertrand Russell, What I Believe, 1925

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Ten startlingly beautiful images of viruses, cells, and proteins — some more than 7 feet in diameter and others 7 feet square — greet people passing the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research in Kendall Square.
“These are windows into what we do,’’ said Robert Urban, executive director of the Koch, which will be dedicated today. “These are a storefront. You can imagine what’s going on here by looking through that window.’’

— Vivid art offers a window into intricate science, The Boston Globe

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When Volker Steger was given the assignment to take portraits of a dozen Nobel Prize winners in science, he decided to conduct an experiment. He asked the scientists to draw their award winning discoveries. 

“Nobody gets a prior warning. That is essential. I don’t want to get another Powerpoint presentation,” says Steger. “They come in, surprised by the lights and the setup. Then, I simply ask them to ‘make a drawing of what you got the Nobel Prize for.’”

Sir Timothy Hunt, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in physiology or medicine, in his introduction to Sketches of Science, writes, ”There’s a playfulness about these portraits that’s quite beguiling, and unlike most official portraits of these distinguished people, there are hints that they don’t all take themselves that seriously, knowing very well that great discoveries result from a considerable degree of luck, as well as prepared minds.”

Sir Harold Kroto, 1996 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
Kroto and his colleagues earned the award for their discovery of fullerenes.
© Volker Steger

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The Blue Marble visits the Exploratorium

In museums, schools, and research facilities, scientists and artists are swapping methods to illuminate natural phenomena and solve global problems. 

— quotes from ARTnews “Under the Microscope” by Suzanne Muchnic 

“This pairing of art and science is sort of inevitable if you look at the whole history of modernism,” Nowlin adds. “You can follow the progression from painting as a frame or window through which you look into a fictional space, with the perspective shortened, to Mondrian and Malevich, when the painting was an object in real space. And that continued with Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella. Not only was the painting an object on the wall, but the painting moved physically into real space. And science has always been about real space.”

— Stephen Nowlin, director of the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design

“They engage with ideas that are floating around, ways of thinking about in- formation, systems, and materials. At a certain point, that permeates into the milieu as a whole.”

— Evan Ziporyn, composer, clarinetist, director of MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology

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Proclaim it to everyone everywhere:

"On this day, at this time, you, the Earth and everybody on it will have their picture taken

... from a billion miles away!"

— Carolyn Porco, Planetary scientist, Cassini imaging lead

The Blue Marble waves on July 19, 2013 at 2:33:57 PM
when Cassini took a photo of the Earth.

#DayEarthSmiled #WaveatSaturn