Critics Page
What if?
Many of us in the arts now feel we have to prove our worth and relevance by building partnerships with and serving other fields. I work with scientific ideas and imagery, and this has been my experience. As someone who has spent most of her career working in the sci-art genre, I am often called upon to identify ways to draw more science and technology professionals into our field—but art's function is not to translate science. Data visualization can produce remarkable schematic forms, but it is not art. An illustration paired with scientific text aids the language of science, but is not art. These are supporting actors. They will never be offered the leading role.
When we incorporate science into our work, we are making no claim to be scientists. We are not appropriating scientific research and calling it our own. We are not re-presenting scientific findings in a visual format, factually or abstractly. We are not remotely suggesting our work is their work manifested as a painting, a sculpture, a computer animation, or an installation.
While I can’t speak for all artists, my observation has been that artists are drawn to the wonder of science. As Robert Krulwich of RadioLab says, “The world is a rich, fantastic place, and all you have to do is scratch anywhere, and there it is, but it starts with a belief in wonder and curiosity.” This terrain is not exclusive to science: we share this common ground. We share a sense of purpose. We research. We share tools and materials. We both conduct field studies. We observe. We reflect. An openness to new ideas and information is a cornerstone of both our fields. We share interests in the not- knowing and the pursuit of answers that result in more questions.
Both scientists and artists simply wonder… What if? We share this impulse with the farmer, the chef, the parent, the writer, and the auto mechanic, not just with scientists. For each of us What if? is the starting point for further investigation.
And if we’re honest, it’s fine to go our separate ways after sharing this common ground. In the studio, What if? leads to an active response, resulting in real-time, here-and-now movement. I am not looking for a scientist’s evidence-based language to support a hypothesis. The outcome for me is a work of art divested of facts and purpose but imbued in beauty and poetry. In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Contributor
Lorrie FredetteLORRIE FREDETTE is an Hudson Valley-based artist whose work is influenced by medical and environmental news stories.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Money Magic
By Paul MattickOCT 2020 | Field Notes
That the feasibility of using the ongoing depression to further drive down wages, cut benefits, and worsen working conditions is being discussed via a social-scientific disputewhether a short-term relief measure is a disincentive to work at a time when 30 million jobs have vanishedtells us more about the nature of economics than about the motivation for employment. It provides further support, if any is needed, for historian of science Jerome Ravetzs description of economics as a folk science, a body of accepted knowledge whose function is not to provide the basis for further advance but to offer comfort and reassurance to some body of believers.2

Transcendent Kingdom
By Joseph PeschelSEPT 2020 | Books
Yaa Gyasis second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, blends science and religion, the past and present, in a story about a small Ghanaian family that immigrates to Alabama.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase’s wild wild Wild West / Haunting of the Seahorse
By Megan N. LibertySEPT 2020 | Art Books
While these two attached books tell very different stories, the first about the death of the artists grandmother and the other a science fiction tale of a family living on a space station, both grapple with grief, love, and the haunting nature of bodies.
A Delian Mode: Dear Delia
By Israel LundAPRIL 2020 | ArtSeen
The British science fiction TV show Doctor Who, which has aired intermittently on the BBC since 1963, is such a staple within British culture that one might consider it an institution