Jay Gould’s Photography Blog

“We were wanderers from the beginning.”:”(Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, New York: Random House, 1994, introduction.)”: This is the famous phrase astronomer Carl Sagan used to describe humankind’s inherent need to question, explore, and explain. Now that we have scoured the planet and colonized nearly every spot of land, the wanderers have had to create new avenues of exploration. For both scientists and artists these new avenues are space, the mind, and the realm of the unobservable. Complex theories are generated daily. Science’s empirical nature is dissolving into philosophy. This is bringing art closer to science than it has ever been. In a world full of exceptionally complicated explanations of unobservable phenomena those who wish to understand are hindered by a severe lack of visual support. But there are artists out there facing this task head-on, unafraid and even excited by the possibilities of our unpredictable reality. This essay illustrates the relationship contemporary artwork has with modern science with a special emphasis of science’s influence on my own artwork and those whose work I admire.

Nearly everyone can relate to Leonardo DaVinci or Galileo. Two historic and legendary figures who were placed on very high pedestals, but with whom many can still identify on a personal level. I certainly feel closer to DaVinci than, say, Napoleon or even George Washington. On this I am sure that I am not alone, and for good reason. It all comes back to the wanderers. Even those without the slightest interest in science or art are still interested in answers of some sort. Of course the days of DaVinci and Galileo are long gone. To this day they represent the epitome of the romantic artist-scientist idea, but it is hard to imagine what their potential might have been in our current, vast scientific arena. I imagine that even the most god-like of Renaissance men would find extreme difficulty breaking ground in more than one vein of modern physics. Not to mention the fact that the prerequisite knowledge necessary to unravel contemporary, scientific theory is exponentially more complex than older, more visual physics. Modern scientists and artists have different expectations. They also have the accumulation of centuries of ideas, technique, and history.

The Renaissance men of old didn’t have it easy. By attempting to prove Copernicus’ heliocentric solar system, Galileo was persecuted by the Catholic Church and was nearly put in the dungeon as an elderly man. Challenging the accepted truth can be a long, difficult task. Galileo’s desire for truth and mental endurance was legendary. He still serves as an important reminder of experimentation. Today’s wanderers face new, mind-stretching challenges, and endurance, as it was in the Renaissance, is still a necessity. This juncture is where we witness a necessary connection between art and science at a very fundamental level. Both fields share a need for the participants to perform their work with rigor and procedure. The wanderers often become experimenters by developing a persistent method to their explorations.

Experiments frequently fail. This potential failure is the reasoning for the rigor. Just as a scientist must try again, an artist relies on their endurance in order to make their own creative discoveries. Having a solid procedure along with rigor and the willingness to try and try again makes innovation possible. In both science and art there is an expectation that successful outcomes should be repeated. If a scientist creates a carrot in a test tube, but can never repeat it again there will be doubt about its truth and validity. If a sculptor carves a striking bust, he will likely be expected to produce more of a similar, high quality. There is nothing wrong with aberration, but consistency seems to be what separates the lucky from the talented.

There is, of course, something to be said about genius. It is not enough. Bertrand Russell said, “In art, nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science, even a moderate capacity can contribute to supreme achievement.”:”(Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1976. )”: This is the stereotype we are used to in our culture, the hard-working scientist versus the brilliantly talented artist. Instead, consider author Sian Ede’s statement “real scientific progress could not happen without daydreaming: intellectual research and logical planning are essential for the making of art.”:”(Siân Ede, Art and Science, London: I.B. Taurus & Co., Ltd, 2005, 2.)”: Put the ideas of Russell and Ede together and there is a whole new model. Blurring the lines between the stereotypes like the Renaissance men of old once did; artists and scientists whose experiments become as “Art” or “Science” only by their outcome.

The experiments performed by both artists and scientists have become some of the most prevalent of modern rituals. These actions and procedures carried out with such an ordered elegance are perhaps more apparent in Western culture than religious ceremonies. The formalized pattern of a laboratory full of men and women in white coats filling small tubes with graduated syringes is a common ritual-like activity, yet has a certain clean, elegance. Likewise, witnessing artist Stacy Levy filling a room with perfectly placed, small, white flags blown by computerized fans set to mimic the outside wind appears to be a controlled translation of a ceremony that could easily have been practiced outside centuries ago. Similar to the whirling Sufi Dervishes practicing the beautiful “Sama” ritual, whose long spinning prepares them for deep meditation, these modern scientific and artistic rituals are active and inscribed with a purpose and meaning. Not being raised with many religious rituals, I have always identified more with obsessive artistic and tedious, methodical, scientific rituals.

When I began the wanderings of my recent work I thought it would be easy street. Science provides so many possible narratives I could never be short of inspiration. However, like any experiment worth doing, failure would be common and my own rigor would be pushed to its limits. Those failures are best left in the dark corners of my mind, where they can serve as reminders of what I don’t wish to repeat. Those dark corners were filling up until I had my Eureka moment unexpectedly one evening. It would have been a more interesting story if I had run around naked like Archimedes did through Syracuse after discovering properties of density and buoyancy when taking a bath. Nonetheless, it was exciting when I first applied some graphs, drawings, and a grid to the piece currently titled Flight. At last the rigor had paid off and I was ready with a procedure to continue and hopefully create what I hoped would be my own elegant, visual metaphors for the scientific ideas that inspired me.

It is interesting for me to evaluate why I was failing so frequently in the early stages of my artistic experiments with scientific ideas. As mentioned before there were plenty of concepts and inspiration to work with for creating visual metaphors of the exciting, scientific ideas that I was reading about. What was stifling was that there was too much for me to try to illustrate specific ideas. Take Astronomy as an example. When one looks to the stars they do not typically look for specific things. The sky is too vast for that to payoff regularly. Instead a good astronomer looks through their telescope and observes. If he sees something unusual or noteworthy he marks to observe it again the next night. This pattern continues and leads to a more complete understanding. After trying to create work the hard way, I have taken the lead of good astronomers and put this less preconceived method to use in my own artistic working method.

Often I will go out and capture images of areas that interest me and interactions of myself with that particular environment. I don’t go out looking for something specific, I just go out looking. Sometimes I have illustrated ideas I wish to construct, but this method is so specific and picky it always takes much more time. I prefer to make the observation/photograph spontaneously, and then analyze later. This analysis manifests itself visually in the form of superimposed scientific grids, graphs, drawings and writings.

This work could not be done without a certain amount of reading and research. Focusing mostly on science journals and books, I am always looking for inspiration and any new ideas that will dwell in the front of my mind while I photograph. This allows me to create images on the spot that fit a rough idea. Sometimes I look in order to know, but this is about knowing in order to look. This is my struggle with objectivity. I understand that I cannot perceive the world and make art without introducing my emotions, imagination, and ideas. As a result I make observational photographs that strike my interest and possibly remind me of a theory or concept, then use legitimate scientific information to interpret it.

What art and science share beyond the physical acts of testing and creating is the desire to control and understand in an elegant, visual, and interesting manner that can be shared with others. The wanderers can travel alone, but like to share their experience afterwards.

However, for all of the obvious similarities that art and science have, there is still a commonly held perception that they are two opposing languages. Science is rooted in Empiricism, and the belief that the senses can directly receive knowledge and lead to a provable understanding. Art, on the other hand, is generally associated with Rationalism, favoring an exploration of essential, underlying structures through which the external “real” is understood. Both of these ideas are out of date.

True, science was once almost always associated with Empiricism. In fact, the two terms are almost synonymous in our culture, but Post-Einsteinium Physics has ended that. When phenomena they sought to explain ceased to be observable, everything changed. The surety and exactness that their language once had was forced to adapt. Many artists and scientists are now philosophers, seeking a visual for their ideas.

“The belief that something can be exact in a totally inexact world is perhaps one of the few reasons to test science and art together in the same context.”:”(Sacha Craddock, ‘Physical Moment’, in On Physics, Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2004.)”: Quantum Mechanics began this inexact trend. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle showed how confusing reality can be. The Uncertainty Principle:”(Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. A principle in quantum mechanics holding that increasing the accuracy of measurement of one observable quantity increases the uncertainty with which another conjugate quantity may be known.)”: showed physicists that it is impossible to measure two properties of an elementary particle. For instance, if the particle’s momentum is measured accurately, its position is unknown. Now, art and science were closer than they had ever been. Closer than DaVinci’s or Newton’s time. The cubist painter Georges Braque said, “Art provokes while science tries to reassure.” There was no reassurance in the quantum era, but there was more than enough provocation. Science could be so absurd and amazing that an artist’s fiction could become reality. Take Alfred Jarry for example. At the end of the 19th century the playwright, poet, and artist founded ‘Pataphysics.’ Jarry wrote, “Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions… extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics.”:”(Alfred Jarry, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, trans. Simon Watson Taylor, New York: D.A.P., 1965, 21. )”: This parody broke the barrier between fantasy and reality. However with recent discoveries of anti-matter, Jarry’s Pataphysics’ theories have been robbed of their satirical absurdity. Anti-matter for example, has raised many questions such as would an anti-matter apple obey gravity and fall to the earth like a regular apple? The premise of that current question was addressed nearly one-hundred years ago when Jarry stated, “Instead of formulating the law of the fall of a body toward a center, how far more apposite would be the law of the ascension of a vacuum toward a periphery.” :”(Alfred Jarry, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, trans. Simon Watson Taylor, New York: D.A.P., 1965, 21.)”: In Jarry’s day this statement was absurd, today it is quite a legitimate philosophy.

Strange as this twist of our understanding of reality is, the world is still intact. The wanderers have not given up their quest for some universal truth. The artists have chosen their tools and are making new, amazing discoveries and ‘truths’ with them. Paramount amongst those tools is the camera. Photography has had a position of significance in the search for scientific truth. Its history closely linked to a scientist’s search for visual proof. All photographs have some element of reality in them, no matter how disguised. They are indexical signs, using light to trace reality. Ever since the camera’s creation, arguments of objective documentation have increased across every field it has had a place in. Art has seen figures like Pedro Meyer generate confusion and intrigue with a photograph. Meyer’s Truths and Fictions series shows us realistic, digitally altered, documentary images that create their own decisive moment by implanting objects into a scene. The controversy this work has raised has proven that we must approach photography with caution. This caution created by artists like Meyer may be part of the reason why a large number of people believe that moon landing was a hoax utilizing fake photographs and video.

Taking advantage of science’s use of photography as proof / evidence is an exciting element in contemporary art. Many excellent artists use the camera to their advantage in an endless variety of ways as a means to their own ends. Joan Fontcuberta uses photography as a means of creating a believable fiction packed with questionable absurdity. In the series Fauna, Fontcuberta uses photography’s ‘that has been’-ness:”(Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, France: Editions du Seuil, 1980, 80. Barthes argued that photography is a direct referent to reality because of the direct light rays that create the photographic image.)”: to make his viewers believe in biological discoveries that never were. Photographs displayed alongside journals, taxidermy, and more create such a full, museum-like experience that it is hard not to believe at times. Writer Sacha Craddock perfectly described artists like Fontcuberta with the statement, “The artist photographer, in a contemporary play is judge, jury, defendant and executioner of the process and result of their very own work.”:”(Sacha Craddock, ‘Physical Moment’, in On Physics, Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2004.)”:

Nicolas Kahn and Richard Selesnick are an artist duo that also effectively uses photography as proof for a fiction. Photography becomes evidence of a performance they or someone else once did in front of the camera. Elaborate, beautiful, and often historic-looking, the images are so well executed and realistic the myths they create are believed even in the age of digital. The two artists also work with a methodology similar to the astronomy example I mentioned earlier. For instance, there is an image of a man under a tree in a desert. Like most of their imagery they came across the tree and made an image that involved a somewhat spontaneous performance. The image could have been left as that. Only later did they add the elaborate story displayed beside the image as a form of analysis. The aging of their photographs by staining paper, inking, folding, and more elaborate methods gives much of their work the look of just being found in an old cabinet or buried box. Like Fontcuberta, Kahn and Selesnick also exhibit these photographs with objects from the image, appropriated historic photographs, and extremely well considered narratives all for the chance that the audience will suspend their disbelief and enter their imaginary world.

While I have trouble grouping myself with these artists I most deeply respect, I also utilize the power of photography as proof and evidence. My work speaks directly about a desire to question and understand. The young scientist character I present in my photographs documents himself either performing ritualistic experiments or simply observing an otherwise normal scene and looking for whatever scientific truth might be hidden beyond sight. I do try to be factual about my science and ideas, but the experiments are fiction and the character doesn’t exist as the camera portrays him. Instead, the viewer witnesses a humorous, witty narrative about a wanderer whose camera can give the world some more depth.

This element of proof is one of the reasons I have always loved photography. Seeing images that amaze not only because of their beauty, but also because they represent a slice of time. Now, however, I am still enthralled with photography, but not necessarily for the same reasons. The beauty is still there or course, but how viewers suspend their disbelief when confronted with a photograph is most fascinating. While Fontcuberta, Kahn, Selesnick, and myself are showing evidence of a photographer’s performance in front of a camera, we are not showing complete truth. Instead, the beauty of a photograph becomes the few minutes or split second where the viewer believes what they are seeing.

Photographs by themselves have some power to suspend the viewer’s disbelief, but there is something to be said for attraction. Getting the viewer to want to see more and spend time with a work is the power of seduction. Both science and art wish to grab their audience and amaze them with what they want to share. The work of Isaac Newton seduced first and foremost by the elegance of his logic. The very readable Optics, for example, showed Newton as a speculative scientist that didn’t have all the answers, but could use reason and methodology to explain the amazing elegance of light and other features of our reality and then explain them to nearly anyone.
Many scientists are satisfied with aesthetic contemplation and a quest for beauty. String theory, for example, has become a scientific trend in recent years. It is a beautiful theory seeking to explain every aspect of the universe with one very elegant theory. Unfortunately, beneath that elegant idea of a universe made up of vibrating superstrings of energy, there is questionable complexity at every turn. Biologist Thomas Henry Huxley perhaps sums up this theme best with his famous quotation, “The slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by a nasty little fact.”:”(Thomas Henry Huxley, Presidential Address at the British Association for 1870, Biogenesis and Abiogenesis, Collected Essays, vol. 8, p. 229)”: Obviously, scientists trying to convince the world of an elegant universe sometimes long for the fiction that art commands.

Conversely, art sometimes seeks the ritualistic discipline that science is renowned for, opting to dismiss beauty if it doesn’t come to be. Photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher are wonderful examples of this idea. Since the 1950’s the couple has photographed a vast inventory of industrial buildings. The photographs are all captured in the same, straight-forward, “true” fashion, then arranged by kind – water tower or blast furnace for example. The images are not particularly beautiful, but as a whole, the Becher’s long running project has presented an architectural vernacular in such a disciplined manner that it is striking and intriguing.

In their search for successful, simple theories, scientists are aware of the power of seduction, or at least are under its spell. Their imaginations run wild with possibilities of a universe of beautiful simplicity just waiting for the next Einstein to come around and notice what is going on. Attractive current ideas, such as String Theory, do manage to successfully grab the attention of millions, despite the fact that they cannot be observed. Artists, of course, have known of this power of beauty for as long as history tells. Discipline and beauty each have their own power, but when used together the effect of the theory or artwork on the audience is amplified.

An artist duo that is the epitome of this idea is Robert and Shana Parke-Harrison. The husband-wife artistic team makes work that has a very characteristic 19th century look that grabs their viewer’s attention almost without fail. This well executed look is the product of a great deal of discipline, both technically and conceptually. Also treating photography as evidence for some performance, the painstaking use of paper negatives and seamless collage is reminiscent of the past power of pre-digital scientific photography. The muted palette of the 19th century techniques also serve as a simplified vision of a post-apocalyptic future where their scientific character is making a futile effort to rebuild a world using what clumsy technology is available.

I appreciate and am completely seduced by the look of their work, but that is not what keeps my attention. Again, it is the story. Their wandering “everyman” character set on creatively interacting with the wasteland he inhabits is incredibly interesting. The careful constructions of fascinating objects that have a purpose, but always appear to be at the brink of failure is an excellent metaphor for modern science. Immediately after seeing Parke-Harrison’s work I was inspired to make my own visually striking connections with science.

There is no missing the influence that their work has had on my own during the last few years. I created a similar persona in my work, a scientist/geek/amateur and all around curious wanderer. Sometimes he is present like Parke-Harrison’s everyman. Much of the time, however, he is not in the frame, but his presence is meant to be inferred. Whether it be the construction in the image, the drawing, writing, or graphs; my manifestation of my personal wanderer has made his mark. Even in the Experiment series, where he is never seen and the images have a different structure and aesthetic, the tedious and amusing qualities of his work are unmistakable.

This character I present is a manifestation of everything I question. He is a wanderer that finds fascination everywhere and a reason to examine things more closely at every chance. He is the lead-in to the next, and most obvious connection between art and science, the use of scientific ideas subjects in art. Up until now I have discussed the underlying ideas that connect the two fields. With their unification clear, perhaps it doesn’t seem very odd that so many artists, already utilizing left and right sides of the brain, use science as the subject of their artistic explorations.

“Artists turned to science for a rich narrative source… At the end of the twentieth century, many more members of the contemporary art audience could relate to the story of Dolly the cloned sheep than that of the Golden Fleece.”:”(Laura Steward Heon, Unusual Science, Massachusetts: Mass MOCA, 2000, 15.)”: The miracles of the bible and other classical stories have been replaced by miracles of contemporary science. A flood of miracles wash in regularly, leaving a great deal of topics to explore, interpret, or even criticize. New, powerful imaging systems show mankind images from across the galaxy as well as what was formerly unseen beneath or in our noses. These images not only inspired more curiosity, but also seduced the audience with the amazing beauty inherent now in scientific imaging.

Before I started this science and art endeavor I didn’t realize how many artists explored scientific subject matter. Whether they are seeking understanding, presenting amazement to others, or criticizing modern science morality, each of the following artists I wish to quickly introduce are well versed in their material and have nurtured their own unique symbiosis between science and art.

When I picture the archetypical artist-scientist, I picture DaVinci, but photographer John Chervinsky would be my vote for the modern Renaissance man. While holding down an important job at the Harvard Physics Laboratory, Chervinsky has simultaneously created many bodies of constructed photographs that display his unique visual metaphors for science. Also, there are explorations of the value of faith in the age of unobservable science. These carefully created images take advantage of the camera’s single-point perspective to distort our understanding of space and add an element of awkwardness.

Chervinsky’s rigor, discipline, and eye for elegance is exhibited obviously in his work. Catherine Chalmer’s work also exhibits these qualities in a very different manner. Her rigor and extreme discipline is realized in her raising of the insects and animals that become the subjects of her large photographs. The beauty of the work is created by the creatures themselves doing what they would do anyway, but in a sterile, white setting. Chalmer’s images reward the viewer with the work of nature captured perfectly, but she also “aestheticized the death of these creatures, making it hard to look, but harder to look away.”:”(Laura Steward Heon, “Catharine Chalmers”, in Unusual Science, Massachusetts: Mass MOCA, 2000, 39.)”:

As painstaking as Chalmer’s amateur zoology-like methods are, performance artist Janine Antoni makes work that pushes the limits of endurance as well as thought. Antoni has been performing the piece Slumber since 1994. At night an EEG machine records her eye movements while dreaming. During the day she weaves a blanket based on the patterns of those dreams. The blanket created and the captured images of her activity both become records of the performance and her dual states of being. The work methodically questions universality of dreaming, abstract scientific language, and the subjectivity of scientific recording.

Just as Antoni uses her performance to create a physical representation of her dreaming, photographer Gary Schneider uses images of his own chromosomes to create a unique self portrait. Genetic Self Portrait is a large installation of microscopic photography. Schneider, known for his photographic portraits, carefully selected genetic markers that describe his features and flaws. This work not only interestingly describes the artist, but also criticizes the 19th century practice of physiognomy, the study of facial features to identify moral character, utilized to “improve” humanity by preventing undesirable people from reproducing.

Some artists aren’t necessarily commenting on science, but are appreciative of its imagery. Early 20th century photographer Bernice Abbott is one of the first artists to express this with the camera. Perhaps better known for her large-format urban images, Abbott also produced images of the mechanics of physics. Motion, waves, light-refraction; all of these subjects were explored not to collect data, but because they made elegant, beautiful, and interesting photographs. Abbott sought to “impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography.”:”(Getty Museum, “Bernice Abbott”, Getty.edu)”:

Naglaa Walker also uses photography to display the beauty of physics, but in a more abstract, interpretive manner. By coupling an equation with a documentary-like image she is creating her own visual metaphors for the properties of that principle. Also included is the artist’s own explanation of that principle to further help those who may not have studied physics. Walker’s work is loaded with fascination and play. A simple humor and a casual look serves to relate abstract physics to the everyday life it is always connected with.

Conceptually, I am more connected to Walker’s work that any of the other mentioned artists. We both have training in physics and enjoy using that language to interpret that which fascinates us. Walker takes equations and prescribes a photographic metaphor to clarify their meaning. My work, on the other hand, operates the other way around, creating interesting images first; adding grids, graphs, drawing and text later to assign meaning.

My images do not strictly deal with fascination alone. While a sense of wonder and beauty is what I believe to be the best part of science and art, there are always elements that deserve criticism. The scientist character has often been referred to as a “mad scientist.” This is certainly not far off the mark. Analyzing things to the extent that they lose their original meaning or distort the simple truth is fun in art, but a serious concern in modern science. My character’s appropriation can serve as satire when compared with the daily studies we read and see on television telling us what to do. There is an extreme amount of over-analysis and jumping to conclusions, and the media leads us to believe these studies blindly. Take diets for example. Just because something is unhealthy one day doesn’t mean it will be a month later when a different variable is tested.

The idea of believing without seeing has been discussed before in this essay. Just as scientists discuss elegant theories for the universe based on unobservable phenomena, a few studies lead to the newest, unusual weight loss plan. Photographs also present a world that is believable because it looks like reality. In all these cases it is important to explore and decide what is interesting and worth exploring and what should be approached with even more caution. In my work I approach the world with an open mind and imagination. Exploring with a scientist’s rigor, procedure, and discipline, while also utilizing the power of artist’s beauty and photography’s history as a tool of proof in order to reclaim my own understanding of the world around me.

For the most part, criticism aspects are played down in my work. I love science and art for the sense of wonder they share. They are universal languages searching for metaphors that will stir their viewer’s emotions and convince them of a viewpoint that, more often than not, stems from a desire to cause change. Whether it is social change, or intellectual growth, both fields push boundaries in their own right, but also work effectively together when harmonized by brave wanderers, unafraid to test their rigor, discipline, aesthetics and imagination.