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cience and art are often considered to be polar opposites of each other. One is highly logical and rational and beset by rules, while the other is highly creative and completely without rules. But science and art have much in common and their journey and evolution are intertwined throughout history.
"When he wasn’t spending dark nights peeling the skins of corpses to reveal an intricate structure of nerves and muscle fibres, he was looking to the stars to question Earth’s place in the universe or inventing the helicopter 450 years early. " Where better to start in the journey of science and art than perhaps history’s most famous polymath – Leonardo Da Vinci? As well as being considered one of the greatest painters to have ever lived, Leonardo’s scientific studies spanned across almost the entire realm of contemporary human knowledge. When he wasn’t spending dark nights peeling the skins of corpses to reveal an intricate structure of nerves and muscle fibres, he was looking to the stars to question Earth’s place in the universe or inventing the helicopter 450 years early. But for Leonardo, these were not separate pursuits. Many of his scientific works were also beautifully detailed pieces of art. The Vitruvian Man, one of the most iconic drawings in Western civilisation, is both a work of artistic expression and a detailed scientific observation of
human proportions. The chosen size and ratio of each body part depicted in the drawing were the result of his extensive knowledge of geometry and over 200 measurements of the human body. But, at the same time, the Vitruvian Man is anchored in philosophy and self-reflection. The drawing is widely believed to be an idealised self-portrait in which, according to the historian Toby Lester, “Leonardo, stripped down to his essence, peers at himself with furrowed brow and tries to grasp the secrets of his own nature”.
of artistic expression, a common thread was the focus on capturing a single moment in time as perceived by the human senses. This could be a photo-like image of a scene according to the painter’s eyes or a portrayal of the impression a moment left behind. Artists portrayed ideas, real or imaginary, from a perspective limited by their senses. But, come the turn of the century, the fields of mathematics and science were revealing the world beyond human perception.
Similarly, some of Leonardo’s most enduring artworks are, at their heart, deeply scientific. For centuries the alluring smile of the Mona Lisa has had its audience enraptured, captivated by her elusive gaze, and this effect is entirely by scientific design. His dissections of the eye combined with his study of optics revealed the interactions of light and the retina and how this effects our perception of light and shadow. The result is an almost imperceptible flicker in the smile of the most famous yet mysterious woman in the history of art.
The year 1905 revolutionised physics with the publication of Einstein’s paper describing his special theory of relativity. His theory stated that time is not a universal experience but relative to the observer, and it is not a separate entity, as human experience would suggest, but is joined with three-dimensional space to form four-dimensional spacetime.
For Leonardo Da Vinci, science and art were one and the same. Simply a medium through which to paint the mystery and beauty of the world he saw before him. But science and art are not just means of portraying our perceptions of the world, they also shape the way we see it, growing and evolving together as new ideas come to light. Never was this truer than at the birth of the 20th century. Leading up to the early 1900s, art had progressed through many distinctive movements, varying in their levels of realism. Throughout the varying forms
Science and art:
Two branches of the same tree LUCY DAVIES
As well as Einstein making the front pages, only a few years earlier, Henri Poincaré’s book, Science and Hypothesis, had brought ground-breaking science and mathematics to the masses. Amongst these masses, and said to have carried Poincaré’s book with him, was Pablo Picasso, a founder of a revolutionary new art form – Cubism. Picasso, like Einstein, rejected the limits of human perspective, and filled his works with abstract geometric forms, showing objects from multiple temporal and spatial perspectives. This treatment of reality as more than just the three-dimensional world we see, reflected both Einstein’s discoveries and the non-Euclidean geometry discussed in Science and Hypothesis. Scientific and artistic creativity were uniting in reflecting a new abstract view of the world. This is a partnership that continues today, notably at one of the world’s most famous research organisations – CERN. The home of particle physics research and the Large Hadron Collider, research at CERN spans from trying to detect dark matter to recreating the conditions of the universe moments after the Big Bang. CERN’s visionary work has sparked the imaginations of artists and, in 2008, an art residency was set up. Artists are paired with a CERN researcher – an ‘inspiration partner’ – and produce artworks inspired by the physics they discover during their residency.
"There are many different kinds of creativity, and art and science are two equally creative ways of channelling the need to understand and portray the world around us. " One such artist, is Ryoji Ikeda, a Japanese visual and sound artist who was resident at CERN from 2014-2015. Ikeda is known for his immersive live performances and installations combining visuals and sound with mathematical and physical phenomena. During his residency, Ikeda met with experts on theories of extra dimensions and supersymmetry and developed his installation supersymmetry. It combined 40 projectors and computers to produce a disorientating combination of light, sound and visual data that mirrored the breath-taking complexity of the mysteries of the universe being tackled at CERN.
ASMR + AI EXPERIMENTS KAROLINA GLINIEWICZ
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There are many different kinds of creativity, and art and science are two equally creative ways of channelling the need to understand and portray the world around us. Whether the chosen medium is mathematical equations or oil paints, both portray the beauty of reality that is beyond the limits of our senses. Perhaps, by standing at their intersection, we can truly appreciate the full picture.