Kevin Zelnio, Karen James, Miriam Goldstein and Southern Fried Scientist. Having an intense discussion about sea chanteys, I believe. 
The Beagle Project is a serious, serious endeavor. Karen James is its serious spokesperson. Seriously.
Jason Robertshaw and Cephalopodcast for a better tomorrow! Jason saved my hide during my session presentation. Turns out I know nothing about using laptops for projecting useful images. Hm.
Having din-din with Bora Zivkovic, Karen James and Brian Switek. Bora stole someone's chair.
Blake Stacey is an awesome dinner companion. He keeps an extra brain in his hat. Both are witty.
There were coffee, sugary confections and wine. Me with Southern Fried Scientist after dinner. 
The Minnesota Posse. Greg Laden, Ben Zvan and Stephanie Zvan. After this picture was taken I tried to jump Ben and steal his outfit, but it turns out he knows ninjitsu. Dang.
Tanja Sova, my presentation-partner gave me a sweet wooden flying trilobite necklace! Go to her Etsy shop. Right now. Skip the rest of the pictures. 
"A poem is never finished, just abandoned". Paul Valéry's quote also applies to the visual arts.
Alrighty, first, in case you were not in the session, please go and check out the artwork of every single artist on the wiki page. I will wait patiently without looking at my watch and display my Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle in this post.
Today was filled with meeting more bloggers and my head is bouncing. The pace of conversations in each session that moved deftly from topic to comment to rebuttal to expansion to completely-different-fascinating-facet.
After a very strange black-out that knocked out power for a huge chunk of Toronto's west end and after braving public transit to the airport due to the aforementioned black-out, I made it to ScienceOnline 09!
In my last post here about this topic, blogger Eva Amsen of Expression Patterns brought up an interesting point about the possibility of diverging technical complexity in both art and science. After thinking about this lucid point for a while, I've added it to the page on the conference wiki, and added some of my own thoughts. I've left my opinions out - for now!
Do any of my regular or irregular readers have thoughts, suggestions or other examples? 
5 types of science-related art
Here are some rough categories of science-related art for use as starting points. (My bias is showing: many are biology related.)
1. Scientific Illustration - Examples: Carl Buell, Michael Skrepnick, Albrecht Durer, James Gurney, many artists’ work at the Guild of Natural Scientific Illustrators.
2. Science Fine Art & Design - Examples: Felice Frankel, Wim Delvoye (Cloaca), Marc Quinn (blood portrait sculpture).
3. Art inspired by scientific subjects - Examples: Dali’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), my own work, Archimboldo.
4. Art inspired by scientific technique - Examples: op art, trompe l’oeil, Man Ray, Holbein
5. Speculative science art & science fiction - Examples: Nemo Ramjet, Speculative Dinosaur Project, some Dougal Dixon books, Wayne Barlowe.
Discussion questions:
-Is art parasitic on science? Does art ever inspire science or lead science to new areas of inquiry?
-Is art about science beneficial to the public or confusing issues in science?
-Art is often based on allegory and symbols, by their nature inaccurate; science often strives for accuracy and precision. Is it possible to make wholly accurate art?
-Should it be possible to inject more skepticism into the often ‘New Agey’ art world of artistic subjects? Technique often relies on innovative technologies, media and materials; should this be a starting point?
-How much scientific content is there in your local art gallery? Is science obviously intended as villain, savior, or inspiration?
Vote for some art in awe of science! First round of voting ends November 29th, so click that tiny circle. You know you love clicking tiny circles. You knooow it.
Using scientific discoveries, diagrams, principles and images to increase the visual language in art. This is something I strive to do with each piece. When taking history of western art 101, I recall being amazed at the idea that the general public of the Renaissance would have understood the significance of an orange on the table in a portrait. Or that much of Michaelangelo’s work was an attempt to portray platonic ideal forms.
Exploring the same sort of method for my work has led me in attempts to personify ‘extinction’ and ‘mitochondrial eve’ as beings rather than concepts, or Haldane’s precambrian rabbit quote as a puzzle. I regularly depict my wife in paintings and drawings holding diatoms, because they are beautiful, delicate, and (thinking of photosynthesis here) essential to life. An example outside of my own work would be Dali’s Christus Hypercubus (scroll down), or Jessica’s Aposematism. The golden ratio gave us this stunning cover composition in Imagine FX recently. In pop culture, I marvel at Davy Jones’ crew in the Pirates of the Caribbean series as monsters difficult to present to a public unaccustomed to detailed images of nature. I could go on.
The reverse is what’s difficult for me to see: how does science benefit from art? From viewing it, and resolving a problem or…?
Is art a parasite on science, except when used as illustration? Many naturalists are painters as well.
Seed magazine’s article by Jonah Lehrer in issue 13 was interesting. So was this Cocktail Party Physics post.
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Here are some more up-to-date thoughts I've been pondering lately, and I will update to the wiki. I think this is a better synopsis for where my head has been.
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The relationship between the cultures of art and science: does art act as a parasite on science? The benefits of scientific findings to the inspiration of art have numerous examples. Popular culture at large may benefit from art inspired by science. But does science ever benefit from art, other than illustration? Can art inspire science?
Good art usually is connected by metaphor and symbolic representations to its subject matter. Metaphor and symbols are by their very nature, imprecise descriptions of the world. Science, on the other hand strives for accuracy and precision. Is art only capable of being a metaphor for a small aspect of a single phenomena, and not the whole?
How does art inspired by, say, palaeontology differ from art inspired by physics? Will an illustration of a Mesozoic landscape always be inherently more precise than a sculpture inspired by quantum phenomena?
In my university days, science and art seemed to be considered non-overlapping pursuits. So I tilted at windmills and would show up at class with drawings of trilobites and extinct fish. The first time I showed up at class with drawings of trilobites, my prof said, "ooo, I don't want any of those in my soup," and the critique was done.
Learning from other bloggers helps. Renaissance Oaf continues his series But Is It Art? and has an astute analysis of the importance of the market, whatever the style of art. Bond's Blog pondered the variations in illustrations of one dinosaur genus, and how to move forward with his own rendition. My incomplete image of Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle wound up on Infectious Greed, an economic blog, illustrating the perils of lousy analysis. Cocktail Party Physics looked at the question But Is It Art? and showcased some fascinating examples.
Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker, Abel Pharmboy with help from Brian Russell and Paul Jones, are planning the big event in January 2009.
You can visit the conference wiki here, and see a list of registrants here. There's also details about Open Laboratory 2009, and submissions are being taken for what you consider the best science blogging of the year. There's a lot of great writing out there, and no limit to how many submissions you send in.
I've registered for the conference, and I'll be bringing my sketchbook.
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All original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow. The contents of this blog are under a Creative Commons Licence.
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