Science Art

 

The Science Art, or SciArt, is a new genre in painting.  It is the creative and aesthetic depiction of images expressing science concept s, thereby offering new images of the physical and natural universe in line with the expanding knowledge-base provided by science. Science Art does not simply present mere organic patterns or shapes of nature as in "Biomorphism". It is also not the mere application of biological materials to generate artefacts

 

My beginnings in Science Art go back to the late 1970´s. Throughout the 1980´s I found a livelihood as science illustrator, cartoonist and painter in Cambridge, UK, where in 1984 I held a solo large exhibition devoted to science art and called "Art in vivo", at the central public exbibition hall.

 

Historically, Science Art began as illustrations of scientific texts. Until the 1990`s there was still a clear demarcation between science illustration, and that, which today we call Science Art. Illustrations are produced as visual explanations or representions of concepts or objects of scientific investigation and are typically aids to understanding a scientific text.

 

The advent of digital art tools have enabled and provoked science illustrators, mostly themselves scientists, into taking a more liberal approach to illustration, creating images that go beyond the precise explanatory function. Gradually the delineation between the iIllustration and liberal representation of science subject matter is dissolving.

 

The term Sciart is simply a catchy acronym Science Art. originated in the 1990´s, it appears almost simulataneously, from a number of art projects. For example, one was initiated by the the Wellcome Foundation, a pharmaceutical organisation, to purvey the positive attributes of the pharmaceutical technology. To varying degrees these projects were also tied to some fuzzy hopes that opening science to art might further a new approach to scientific investigation. However, Science Art need not lead to, or even be expected to provoke new thought in science, let alone spark off new lines of scientific investigation. It´s purpose should be to engage and generate interest in the presented images.