2020 in Science & Culture

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Books & arts 2020 in science & culture

The new uncanny valley, climate on film, imperilled elephants and Earth Day at 50: what’s coming this year. By Nicola Jones

Ecovisionaries Tilapia) and mining lithium for Royal Academy of Arts, London. batteries in the Atacama Desert Until 23 February. (research studio Unknown Fields’ In The Breast Milk of the Sustainability demands creative Volcano, 2016–18; pictured). sculpture. Evidence suggests thinking. At the Royal Academy, that a battle between the Hittite architects, artists and designers Troy: Myth empire and Greece ( which they are collectively reimagining called Ahhiyawa) might have our relationship with nature and Reality been the real Trojan War. British Museum, London. amid challenges ranging from Until 8 March. climate change to species Origins: Fossils extinction. New commissioned The ancient city of Troy has many works include The Substitute by faces. There is the legendary, from the Cradle of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg. This war-torn Troy of Homer’s epic Humankind life-size digital reproduction Iliad and Odyssey. And there Perot Museum of Nature and of the critically endangered are the Troys uncovered by Science, Dallas, Texas. Until 22 March. northern white rhinoceros archaeology in modern-day (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) Turkey: a ‘layer cake’ of sites Hominin fossils rarely leave their was made using film footage spanning 3000 bc to ad 500. countries of origin. Now, two enhanced by data from This blockbuster exhibition South African skeletons from artificial-intelligence company covers both, and includes recently discovered branches DeepMind. Older works explore artefacts stretching back three of the hominin family tree are endangered fish in Africa’s Lake millennia, from Athenian pottery on display in the United States: Victoria (Tue Greenfort’s 2017 (detail pictured) to Roman Karabo (Australopithecus sediba) and Neo (Homo naledi). Both are from digs led by palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger. Researchers will attempt to 3D-print missing parts of Karabo’s skeleton, using scans of rocks from the discovery site. People keen to learn more about hominin history can look to the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town, where Earth the Origins of Early Sapiens Behaviour Exhibition has been Day 50th expanded. Anniversary

Sahel: Art and 22 April Empires on the Shores of the Sahara The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 30 January – 10 May. Africa’s Sahel (Arabic for ‘shore’) is a vast semi-arid band spanning Senegal, Mali, Mauretania and Niger. This culturally rich region, now plagued by

L TO R: UNKNOWN FIELDS; THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM; MARIO TAMA/GETTY; FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUMS OF SAN FINE ARTS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM; MARIO TAMA/GETTY; FIELDS; THE TRUSTEES R: UNKNOWN L TO war and desertification, has a

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fascinating history. A succession Technology (MIT) Media Lab in of influential kingdoms held Cambridge — a facility renowned sway here, from the empire for fomenting academic of Ghana (ad 300–1200) to creativity at the intersection that of Segu (1640–1861). This of art and science. This show show is the culmination of a will feature 8 major projects four-year partnership with from Oxman’s 20-year career in academics from Yale University ‘material ecology’: the realm of in New Haven, Connecticut, biologically inspired or created Dakar’s Fundamental Institute products. Silk Pavilion (2013) of Black Africa and elsewhere. used thousands of silkworms to Featured are manuscripts, spin a dome in an MIT building; textiles and sculptures ranging Ocean Pavilion (2014) built from a 3-tonne eighth-century structures out of chitosan, a Senegalese megalith in the form polymer found in crustacean of a lyre to a 7-centimetre statue shells. of a female torso more than 4,000 years old. Uncanny Valley: As the Met celebrates its 150th birthday in 2020, look Being Human in out for other shows, from the Age of AI Making Marvels: Science de Young Museum, and Splendor at the Courts San Francisco, California. 22 February – 25 October. of Europe (until 1 March) to Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil In 1970, Japanese engineer Tradition (24 November 2020 to Masahiro Mori noted that 28 February 2021). lifelike androids occupy an ‘uncanny valley’ — a realm Countryside: Future between non-human and fully human that evokes discomfort, of the World even revulsion. This exhibition, Guggenheim Museum, New York City. 20 February – Summer. a few dozen kilometres from Silicon Valley, explores modern Cities house more than half of denizens of this uncanny realm. humanity, but cover less than A statue in the museum garden 3% of Earth’s non-icy lands. has an active beehive for a head Here, architect and urbanist (an allusion to the complex Rem Koolhaas turns to the rural. workings of a neural network; The show will examine artificial pictured); termite mounds intelligence and automation, the symbolize the minions of the In 1970, some 20 million people across the United effects of genetic experiments, crowdsourced marketplace; States joined the first Earth Day to protest against political radicalization, abandoned patents are the constellation of problems plaguing the planet, migration, large-scale territorial 3D-printed to bring them to management, human–animal life. The biases and pitfalls of from toxic dumping to extinctions. This year, the ecosystems and the impact of artificial-intelligence algorithms Earth Day Network is launching a series of events to the digital. are thrown into stark relief by a kick anniversary protests into high gear, including host of art and film projects. a citizen-science mobile app and a registry of Neri Oxman: Earth-inspired art, theatre, dance and film. See Material Ecology go.nature.com/36xxi1e for more. Museum of Modern Art, New York City. 22 February – 25 May.

Can useful structures be grown rather than built? So asks Neri Oxman, a medically trained architect who directs the Mediated Matter group at the Massachusetts Institute of

Books & arts Serpentine Galleries 50th Anniversary The Serpentine Gallery, London. 4 March – 17 May.

The Serpentine Galleries will celebrate its 50th anniversary with events on issues from sustainability to new technologies, guided by curator of ecology Lucia Pietroiusti. Two shows will spearhead the year. Cao Fei: Blueprints will feature virtual reality and installations alongside the artist’s film Nova (2019), all examining the urbanization of Beijing’s Jiuxianqiao district. And Amsterdam-based Studio Formafantasma presents Cambio, a project on the ecological legacy of forestry and wood products. A summer exhibition will kick off the multiyear programme Back to Earth, with works to spur action against the climate crisis (see also ‘Climate change on show’).

Janet Echelman’s 1.8 Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. The Flight of the Hummingbird 3 April 2020 – 14 August 2022. CLIMATE CHANGE Touring schools in British ON SHOW Columbia, Canada. The initial inspiration for January – May. Janet Echelman’s ephemeral Stage and screen events Based on a graphic novel by installations were fishing highlighting a climate crisis. Indigenous Haida artist Michael nets on Indian beaches and Nicoll Yahugulanaas, this opera Lithuanian lace. She scales them Climate Speaks 2020 brings issues of climate change, up with high-tech materials to Climate Museum, New York City. social justice and personal create building-sized works January — June. responsibility to an audience that reflect the global impacts The first US museum dedicated aged 5 to 15. of seismicity. Her 2010 work to the climate emergency is 1.26 — a fibre sculpture sparked hosting its second spoken-word Billie Eilish Eco-Village by computer simulations of that programme for teenagers. March – July. year’s earthquake and tsunami Successful applicants will Alternative singer-songwriter in Chile, which shortened the spend six months exploring links Billie Eilish has partnered with day by 1.26 microseconds — has between climate change, social sustainability-focused non-profit been hung between buildings, justice and the arts, leading to a organization Reverb to ‘green’ from Colorado to Singapore. 1.8, May performance (pictured, one her 2020 world tour. Venues another installation of knotted of last year’s participants). from Miami to London will host fibres, was sparked by the ‘eco-villages’ where fans can catastrophic 2011 earthquake Last Catastrophist learn about climate change. and tsunami in Tohoku, Japan, Boston Center for the Arts, which cut off 1.8 microseconds. Massachusetts. Greta vs Climate 24 January – 8 February. Director Nathan Grossman is Hiroshima: 75th In this dystopian science- planning a documentary on fiction play by David Valdes, pioneering teenage activist Anniversary 6 August. climatologists Marina and Lucia Greta Thunberg — who founded are holed up in Iceland, hiding the Friday student climate The Summer Olympic Games from the threats of anti-climate- strikes that have swept the in Tokyo will be threaded with science cabal Eternal Sunshine. globe. memories of the Second World

L TO R: SARI GOODFRIEND/THE CLIMATE MUSEUM; JAZZ EDITIONS/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY; MARK ROGERS/UNIVERSAL PICTURES VIA GETTY; MARK ROGERS/UNIVERSAL EDITIONS/GAMMA-RAPHO MUSEUM; JAZZ GOODFRIEND/THE CLIMATE R: SARI L TO War nuclear attack on Hiroshima

75 years earlier (pictured, the 9 August Nagasaki attack). The The Division Hiroshima Peace Memorial, for SCIENCE FICTION Rumoured Netflix release. example, will be on the Olympic ON FILM On Black Friday, bioterrorists in opening ceremony’s torch- New York City seed banknotes relay route. Memorial events Apocalypses and AIs. with a modified strain of will also be held around the smallpox called the Green world. The Japanese American BIOS Poison. Jake Gyllenhaal and National Museum in Los Angeles, US opening 2 October. Jessica Chastain star in this California, in partnership with Tom Hanks is back. Playing video-game adaptation directed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, will a sickly inventor and the by David Leitch. display artefacts belonging to last human left on a post- victims of the attacks (Under a apocalyptic Earth, he creates Robopocalypse Mushroom Cloud: Hiroshima, a robot to keep him and his Rumoured cinematic release. Nagasaki, and the Atomic Bomb, dog company, and to protect In the 2011 novel of the same will show until 7 June). And in the dog after he dies. Director name, artificial intelligence Hiroshima itself, the annual Miguel Sapochnik boasts an Archos R-14 sets out to preserve 6 August Peace Memorial epic CV, including the Game of life on Earth — by wiping out Ceremony will mark the moment Thrones episode ‘Battle of the human civilization. Produced by with silence, and a procession of Bastards’. Steven Spielberg, this long- thousands of lanterns floating delayed project might finally down the Motoyasu River. Dune come to fruition in 2020 under US opening 18 December. the direction of Michael Bay. Elephants and David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling The Invisible Man Us: Considering 1965 cult-classic novel US opening 28 February. Extinction (featuring giant sand worms Loosely based on the 1897 novel National Museum of American and battles over a mind-altering of the same name by H. G. Wells, History, Washington DC. drug called the spice) was a this psychological thriller — Until 13 September. box-office failure. Fans are directed by Leigh Whannell and From the nineteenth to the hoping that Denis Villeneuve’s starring Elisabeth Moss (of The mid-twentieth centuries, ivory version — the first of a planned Handmaid’s Tale) — follows the was a luxury commodity used two-parter — will prove more tribulations of a woman stalked to produce piano keys, billiard satisfying. by an invisible ex-boyfriend. balls, buttons and hair combs. African elephant populations plummeted from more than ten million to fewer than one million. This exhibition tracks US work to stem the trade, starting with the enactment of the African Elephant Conservation Act in 1989. Yet a poaching surge that began in 2006 threatens the bush and forest elephants of Africa: a 2015 count was the first in 25 years to report a decline in elephant numbers.

Turner and the Modern World Tate Britain, London. 28 October 2020 – 7 March 2021.

Artist J. M. W. Turner was a technophile, famously capturing the Industrial Revolution in paint. Tate Britain celebrates his fascination with machine power in this major exhibition. The show — featuring works from the 1790s to the steam boats and railways of the 1840s — coincides with the showing of finalists for Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia Kass in The Invisible Man. the year’s Turner Prize.

Correction 2020 in science & culture This article (Nature 577, 22–25; 2020) misspelt the title of the novel Robopocalypse. See https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019- 03912-7