The Art of the Brain

ON TOPIC Letter from the Editor THE ART OF THE BRAIN: “Brainbow” and the Difficulty Hello Readers! of Distinguishing Science and Art I wanted to start out this edition of my bimonthly letter by thanking you all, wholeheartedly, for your readership. I like to think of SciArt in America as being in its infancy; while the pith of SAiA resides in the fascinating artists and projects we feature, I see amazing possibilities in how SAiA can grow into the larger role of serving as a major platform for all things SciArt. It is thanks to your support, and the fantastic additions to the SAiA staff, that we were able to help SAiA grow up a little this issue, and we’re thrilled to now be reaching readers across the globe. Since launching our first issue, it has become increasingly evident to me that while the greater art world is characteristically less group/movement and more individual/movement-based, the SciArt part of the art world is brimming with enthusiastic, dedicated, and inspirational artists to whom an artistic community is still a central concern. Whether it is because SciArt is riding the implicit communal energy of a recently founded art movement, because the particular artist concerns in SciArt make community more ap- pealing, or because we’re all a bunch of science nerds at heart and just like talking about science with other nerds, the degrees of separation between everyone in the SciArt world are very few, and wonderfully so. While SciArt varies across medium and subject, the drive to share the wonderous phenomena of our existence is what binds us. And it is through the fruits of this shared artistic goal, I believe, that science-based art will become central to the greater culture at large in the years to come. A slice from the brainstem of a Brainbow transgenic mouse captured using a confo- I sincerely hope you enjoy this issue, and the many more to come. Happy cal microscope and software for image acquisition and manipulation. Credit: Jean reading. Livet, Joshua Sanes, Jeff Lichtman. Harvard University. By Ashley Taylor Contributing Editor Julia Buntaine, Founder & Editor-in-Chief When I start to ponder art, science, and what distinguishes them, I immedi- ately think of a photo that I saw several years ago of a mouse brain whose individual neurons had been genetically engineered to fluoresce in one of around 100 aquatic-looking colors—violet, blue, chartreuse, ruby, yellow, and 4 SciArt in America October 2013 SciArt in America October 2013 5 everything in between. In a word, “Brainbow”; them. You’re kind of forced to confront this that is the name that biologist Jeffrey Lichtman weird conflict between art and science, which, and colleagues at Harvard gave the brilliant- to most people, seems very straightforward— brained mouse. In an image of the brain stem, there’s the world of art and there’s the world of the blue, violet, and green neuronal fibers form science—but when scientists use images to por- Van Gogh-like whorls; in snap-shots of the hip- tray the world, especially to portray an aspect of pocampus, the cell bodies and their members, the world that they think is important, we are axons, look like a bunch of balloons floating up doing something exactly the same as what art- and dragging their strings. A Harvard press re- ists are doing.” lease described the images as “equal parts poin- Though art is what fascinates me most in life, tillism, fauvism, and abstract expressionism” in I have always respected science and been in- 2007, when the paper describing Brainbow was terested in it as a way of posing and answering published in the journal Nature. questions. I majored in biology in college and Though I would gladly put up Brainbow post- now work as a science journalist. My concept of ers on my wall, I hesitated, at first, to call the “answering questions” and my approach to do- images art; instead I placed them on the science ing it, by coming up with ideas and seeing how side of a very fine, subjective line. Brainbow is a they hold up, are rooted in science. In the spirit feat of genetic engineering meant to distinguish of the scientific method, let’s consider some individual neurons in order to better under- hypotheses about what distinguishes art from stand the organization of the brain. The data science. happen to be beautiful. Are they art? Are they SciArt? And what, if anything, distinguishes art Hypothesis One: Science is done for a sci- from science when their media overlap? entific purpose; art, for an artistic one. I originally thought about Brainbow as sci- SciArt, when created by people who call ence because it was created for a scientific themselves artists, seems rather straightfor- purpose, not for art, and expected Lichtman to ward. Artists use labs and scientific tools, mi- bolster that argument. In fact, Lichtman makes croscopes and petri dishes, as ways of making the argument that artistic and scientific pur- work or creating art inspired by science. Yet poses are equivalent. scientists, who publish their work in scientific journals also make beautiful images. In these “What is the purpose of art?” Lichtman be- cases, as with Brainbow, the question is “Is gins. I fear the answer, knowing that his, like there art in the science?” and that is harder; the mine, like most, will be incomplete. “What is fact that these images are produced by scien- art?” is a question that, like “Does this dress tists in the course of work patently intended as make me look fat?” I instinctively avoid answer- science forces people to think about what art is ing. beyond the easy (circular, unnuanced) answer of “The purpose of art,” Lichtman goes on, “is “anything made by an artist.” so that people look at those images and learn “Most people think science is a completely something, about something… a lot of art, I different realm from art, but I think that scien- think, has an impulse to display a point of view tists who spend a lot of time making pictures to teach an idea, to see the world in a different get very confused about this." Lichtman, Har- way; okay, how is that different? I see it as the vard professor of molecular and cellular biology same thing. Yes, I particularly am trying to un- and head of the Brainbow project, tells me on derstand something about how the brain works, the phone. “At least I do.” and that’s why we did this.” Here, Lichtman points out the “scientific” purpose of his work, “Because these pictures are so… pleasing, I but goes on to say that “trying to understand woudn’t say artistic, but pleasing to the eye,” something” is also what artists are doing. Lichtman says, “I’m often confronted with “To me, maybe because I’ve thought about it so this issue. Places like the Louvre in Paris, and long, I can no longer see the fundamental dif- other museums, have exhibits where they put ference. I mean, I have a very particular issue pictures such as these in the exhibits to kind in mind, but maybe certain kinds of artists are of force people to look at the beauty in nature also focused on a particular idea that they want and how scientific images can have beauty in to get people to understand, and so their art is 6 SciArt in America October 2013 about a particular thing.” As Editor-in-Chief Ju- Conclusion: The distinction of purpose lia Buntaine wrote in the inaugural issue of this becomes blurry. magazine, art and science have a similar motiva- tion: “an unquenchable thirst for understanding Hypothesis Two: Science uses a pre- the nature of our existence.” scribed method. Art does not. Yet a common symptom of art is that an artist My ready answer to the question of what declares it to be so. The question of intention distinguishes art from science is that scientific matters, and it complicated my view of Licht- data come from experiments, which in turn are man’s work. Lichtman is a scientist, not an designed according to the scientific method. artist, and though the Brainbow images have The scientific method, taught to me in elemen- appeared in museums, he did not set out to tary school and reinforced throughout my make Art. Lichtman’s work was beautiful sort scientific studies, is the following: you come up of by accident, as a byproduct of his scientific with an idea about how you think something project. Art, on the other hand, looks as it does works or what something does, a hypothesis; because artists plan it that way, doesn’t it? you design an experiment to test that hypothesis, in which you compare two cases differing Or does it? Art, even visual art, goes beyond only by that one factor, the variable; you and/or looks; often it’s the artist’s idea that makes a others then repeat to make sure the results hold work of art, as is the case with conceptual art. I up. I later realized, though, that this is not the recently saw an exhibit at the MoMA of a white entirety of the scientific method, as I’ll soon floor covered with yellow pollen that the artist explain. had gathered from hazelnut trees in Germany over a period of years. “Pollen From Hazelnut,” Art, it seems to be, does not operate in this was impressive to look at, but a large part of way.

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