If your right and left brains are constantly at war, have them make peace by delighting in On the Surface of Things, an art book for science nerds and gadget heads - and, simultaneously, a science book for artists and aesthetes.
This colorful volume features ravishing photographs shot by Felice Frankel, a Guggenheim fellow, artist-in-residence, and research scientist at MIT. Frankel artfully renders scientific breakthroughs - from DNA analysis to holographs - as mysterious, brightly hued images. Her work conveys the profundity of scientific inventions and observations in visual lyrics that intrigue the eye - and mind.
Her main goal as an artist-researcher is to find the aesthetic component of scientists' work to add to their documentation, without changing the science. In the visually stunning On the Surface of Things, Frankel communicates an emotional response to scientific discovery that cannot be fully captured in prose, by translating the depth of these findings into a language we all understand: beauty. Even those with no technical training can relate with raw enthusiasm to silicon, etched by light or microelectrodes, for example, as Frankel portrays them in images as alluring as the most gorgeous abstract canvases by painters Richard Diebenkorn or Frank Stella.
The words accompanying Frankel's photographs, by Harvard chemistry professor George M. Whitesides, are equally moving. A paragraph published alongside an absolutely stunning magnified image of otherwise unglamorous ferrofluid reads: "Pity the gryphon, the mermaid, the silkie, the chimera: creatures assembled of incompatible parts, with uncertain allegiances and troubled identities. When nature calls, which nature is it? When instinct beckons, approach or flee? A ferrofluid is a gryphon in the world of materials: part liquid, part magnet ..."
Take it from me, someone who schizophrenically makes a living by both writing about and teaching college kids the virtues of art and science: On the Surface of Things presents one of the year's more intriguing concepts for an art book (or is it a science book?). It's a rare yin and yang concoction that satisfies both sides of the brain.
On the Surface of Things: Images of the Extraordinary in Science, by Felice Frankel and George M. Whitesides: US$35. Chronicle Books: +1 (415) 537 3730, on the Web at www.chronbooks.com/.
STREET CRED
Age of Interpretation Online Synergy
Art as Science
