Art Monday: airport sketches

Some sketches done while waiting at the airport to ScienceOnline'09.
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow under Creative Commons Licence.
2009 Calendar available for a limited time

Umm.

Oh what the heck. I look like this now.

Expect tweaking to follow.

Greg, I always did just like jumping in the pool without testing the water.

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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. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store. 2009 Calendar available!

ScienceOnline09 - Art & Science afterword

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.

Thanks to Jason Robertshaw of Cephalopodcast, we had images on the screen! I was totally flummoxed by the projections, which is always an inspiring way to stand in front of a crowd. Jason let my mouth and brain work and kept my hands from messing with the keyboard. Thanks, man.

After glancing through some of the examples and attempting to throw some definitions on-screen, the discussions in this unconference began. Some points (and further questions to explore!) that stood out:

-Movies such as Jurassic Park have done a lot to inspire science down specific paths (could a T-Rex catch that jeep?)

-Despite the success of movies, visual (static) art inspiring areas of research remains elusive. The example by Andy of The Open Source Paleontologist notwithstanding, the question remains: can art inspire new areas of research? With any sort of regularity?

-The question of whether art and science are separate cultures about to come back or not is one that we were reminded happens over and over, perhaps every twenty years or so. I wonder then, is the relationship between art and science something that stands out against the backdrop of history better than standing inside one's own culture?

-How much of nano-imaging, for example, could be taken seriously by the fine art world? Could it be taken seriously?

-When scientists choose how to image data captured about objects in space, algal blooms and so on, they must have some knowledge of colour theory and make artistic decisions.

-When I inquired as to how many people working in science in the room ever sketched out a visual, back-of-the-napkin sort of thing, many people raised their hands. Anyone willing or able to share? I'd love to post a few examples here at The Flying Trilobite.

-Many people knew of terrific examples of art and scientists co-mingling in provocative ways! Please send me links in the comments or by email, and I'll publish them here.

- We left with an open suggestion: how could each person in the room involved art or an artist in their area of research? Please email me, days, months or years from now if you follow through!

Thanks to the excellent group that coalesced in room C, and thanks to the people who cornered me variously at the conference and dinner afterward to discuss the issues further.

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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. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.
2009 calendar available for a limited time!

ScienceOnline09 - my bouncing brain

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.

My sketch pens were put to some furious scribbling in my sketchbook about what I saw and heard. Marvelous day.

For those not at ScienceOnline09, there are multiple topics in each time slot. Here's where I was Saturday, along with random, (and unfairly uncredited, sorry) comments that stuck with me. Random bits, that's all - I don't drink alcohol, so three dinner coffees and two Cokes later, and my brain is bouncing like a superball.

-Science fiction on science blogs with Stephanie Zvan. Though SF has a something of a credibility issue on many science-based blogs, there is still a strong sense of SF culture, especially in random asides and jokes, often in the comment threads. Also, in a way, each time a scientist proposes a hypothesis, it is a kind of science fiction put forth until data back it up.

-Transitions - your online persona as your life changes with ScienceWoman and Propterdoc. The idea of 'polyblogging' to preserve anonymity, and the importance of being able to say things from a responsible, anonymous standpoint to help others, and to gain community. Revealing yourself when you can to widen the acceptance of blogging as a valuable aspect of your cv.

- Teaching college science: blogs & beyond with Andrea Novicki and Brian Switek. Useful ways for students to learn how to give and take criticism. Accretionary blogging vs wikis. Bait student above abilities, lead them up the ladder. Use of lecture notes into blog posts as a study aid.

- Delicious lunch sponsored by ScienceInTheTriangle.org . Two things; thank you, and does this caterer deliver to Canada?

-Blogging adventure with Karen James, Talia Page, Anne-Marie Hodge, Meredith Barrett, Kevin Zelnio, Vanessa Woods and Rick McPhearson. Don't be alone in a room with two or more marine biologists in the dark. Especially not when they have puppets. New frontiers of humanity untouched by cellphones do not exist. Don't blog when you have the runs in India or you'll be robbed. Don't accidentally take a poacher's picture. Very informative lively session.

-Art & Science avec moi. I'll post about this separately. I learned some things from the group, so I hope that means it went well.

- Online science for the kids with Janet Stemwedel. Great googly-moogly, there were a lot of resources here!

More later today about my art & science session -I have yet to update the wiki- and I'll be attending a few more, and sharing a workshop with artist Tanja Sova about putting images online. It sort of begs the question about where all the images are in this post, doesn't it?

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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. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.
2009 calendar available for a limited time!

Arrival at ScienceOnline '09

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!

Managed to get a couple of drawings started in my advance-copy Moleskine 9x12 sketchbook too, including some rough work on my new Darwin Day piece, and a weird little opabinia with a sort of tail-net thing.

I feel pretty lucky to be here. Less than two years of posting pictures of anatomically incorrect arthropods, and I'll get to meet a ton of science-bloggers I love to read, and I'm sure, meet many more I'll be happy to know.

A big thanks to all the sponsors, Bora, Anton, David, Enrico and the rest.

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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. See sidebar for details.Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.
2009 Calendar available for a limited time!

Art Monday - forgotten format

A few years ago, I became very excited by a possible format for a huge series of paintings.

The canvas was 12"x24", small-ish on the wall, but a comfortable size to depict some detail. My intention was to do a series of images blending human elements with unusual organisms that catch my fancy. I referred to it as a "Primer Series" to inform viewers about the subject matter I tend to paint.

The composition was straightforward. Over the years, I have found that we as human beings tend to enjoy and be intrigued by images of other human bodies. Not too surprising. So I put a human figure or at least partially human figure in the center to entice the eye, and draw viewers in. Around the human, I would place the fossil or organism, and as you can see in Life As a Trilobite, I blended the trilobite with the man.

Above and below the figure, I placed the thematic organism in series as an almost decorative element, possibly with labels. This idea was inspired in part I think, by my love of Alphonse Mucha's work, which you can see influenced Life With Diatoms quite a bit. Then, I planned on having a small card with the work's title and information about why the organism grouped with the human figure mattered so much. The Primer Series would then provide an introduction into the rest of my work. One of the main reasons behind using this format was that I found that many of my peers in university, my professors and my close friends did not necessarily share my interest in biology and paleontology. They enjoyed my paintings, but greater insight was a little closed off.

I had an art show with another excellent artist and close friend as my university days waned. When I exhibited Symbiosis (left, click in gallery to enlarge), a fellow coffee shop employee who was also a zoology major, asked me, "okay, if this means nothing to you, never mind, but in that painting with the green guy, is that a tardigrade?".

Replying that it was, she smiled and said, "I could tell because of those little hooked feet." It was an inspiration. Most people thought the painting looked cool, a little dark and creepy, and here was someone who understood the purple blobby thing hovering above the plinth.

So the plan was to draw in non-bio-paleo folks into the paintings with intriguing paintings of people, and then open them up to the wealth of creatures I find so fascinating, perhaps with an explanatory card off to the side.

When I took this show on the blogosphere almost two years ago, the beauty became that so many people who were also fascinated with these organisms find me.

There were others planned in the series. An ammonite, shells like ram's horns on his head. A Primer Series version of Symbiosis with the tardigrade looking all cute and water bear-ish.

Perhaps one day I'll begin explaining myself again.
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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. See sidebar for details. Please visit my blog, gallery and reproduction store.

2009 Calendar available for a limited time!