Showing the unseen

Where Art meets Science.

The first Saturday evening lecture of series 11 was packed to the gunnels tonight.

Tonight's lecture was given by Bang Wong, the Creative Director of Broad institute of MIT and Harvard.

Bang Wong illustrates concepts and quantitative data that have no physical forms. He has been working on illustrating data the scientists at Broad have been collecting on the various Genomes, recently the Dog Genome.

He says his work can be very challenging as 'It's like illustrating the 'strategy' for playing chess rather than drawing the chess pieces.

Amongst many other valuable projects, The Broad Institute is involved in The Human Genome Project. The scientists work to extend this knowledge by identifying all of the functional elements in the human genome and revealing how these working parts vary both in humans and other species.

We were shown a fascinating slideshow of various medical illustrations, from a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer 1515 of a rhinoceros to the present day photographs and illustrations by Wong.

He spoke about how great care had to be taken not to mislead people when illustrating scientific data and also where art has help to interpret scientific data. He recalled a conversation with a NASA scientist who explained to him that 'space pictures' are actually in black and white. The NASA scientist went on to say that if these pictures had been used to illustrate space, the public would not have been interested in this area of science. Therefore the full spectrum of colour was used to illustrate nebula, making the pictures far more eye catching.

Bang Wong went on to explain that art can change how someone thinks about science.

At the institute there is an Artist in Residence called Daniel Kohn.

He has been the Artist in Residence at Broad Institute for Genomic Research since 2004 were he is investigating the crossover between art and science.

He works in a lab that he shares with scientists so that each discipline can influence the other.

Tonight?s blip is one of Kohn?s pieces created during his time at Broad.

Bang Wong is involved in creating interactive exhibits, in the DNAtrium (lobby) of the building that can be accessed internal and external of the building. The exhibits showcase how new scientific approaches and collaborations are helping to progress biology and medicine.

One of the exhibits; the Phylogenetic Mobile looked fantastic. It?s a 17-foot wide
steel and aluminum mobile shows the profiles of 30 mammals that have had their genomes sequenced.
The gently moving sculpture includes an elephant, armadillo, dolphin, dog, cat, human, and many more. The mobile illustrates the relationships between these organisms.

As you can probably tell, I was absolutely buzzing from the lecture and further enjoyed the free glasses of wine afterwards.

Just to balance our 'intellectual' night out, we went to Ketchup loves Burgers in Tay Street and had a very tasty meal, including a huge dish of choccywoccydoodah scottish tablet and chocolate brownie ice cream with flakes.

Definitely recommend the free lectures at Dundee University, keeps the old grey matter ticking over and burgers at Ketchup too.