1- what is your background as a scientist?
In the arts, design or humanities?
As a young person fascinated by science and
nature but with a penchant for the arts (including music...inspired by Laurie
Anderson's tape-bow violin, I had an electric pick-up installed in my flute
during my early teens), I decided that my life's mission would be to
communicate about the wonders of science and nature through art. Not knowing
exactly what this would look like and having no mentor to guide me (in the
mid-1980's, a high school student with an interest in what may now be referred
to as interdisciplinary education was steered into "liberal
arts"...but this did not quite seem to fit the bill for me...I wanted to
be a "real" scientist...), formulated a plan: I would gain a formal
education in science first, followed by training in scientific illustration.
As
an undergraduate I pursued a BS in Biology at Southampton College, part of Long
Island University (this campus and its excellent math, chemistry, and
physics-heavy marine biology program unfortunately no longer exists). I am so
grateful to have received this rigorous education...from it I learned the kind
of critical/analytical thinking and experimental design that informs every
aspect of my current work.
After Southampton I went directly to Providence,
RI where I enrolled in Rhode Island School of Design's Graduate Certificate
program in scientific illustration. This too was a rigorous curriculum that, in
addition to providing solid training in traditional illustration, allowed me to
explore other media, such as sculpture and printmaking. Providence in the early
1990's was a fertile place for artists...lofts in old factory buildings were
cheap, and silkscreeners, bands, painters, industrial designers, and other
creative practitioners lived and worked in close proximity, willingly sharing
studios, skills, and equipment. To support myself while going to school at
night, I was fortunate to secure a job as a research assistant on a biochemistry
and aquaculture project at the University of Rhode Island. I felt like a bit of
an impostor in both worlds...by day, my friends at the lab thought of me as
some crazy artist, and by night, my artist-friends saw me as a professional scientist
who happened to make art.
Not long after graduating from the RISD program, I
got hired as a seagoing oceanographic research assistant on the Global Ocean
Ecosystems Dynamics (GLOBEC) project. I spent three months total a year at sea,
in increments of three weeks at a time, floating around Georges Bank in the
North Atlantic, for over four years. This was a pivotal time for me...which
leads to the next question...
2- when and how did you become involved in a
hybrid art/science practice?
While at sea, I had lots of time to think,
read, draw, write...and converse with my fellow scientists (this was in the
mid-1990's, before the internet was available on ships at sea!). Over the
course of the years that I worked on the GLOBEC project, it was becoming
clearer that things in the North Atlantic were amiss...counts of zooplankton
and larval fish appeared to be dropping. I asked the lead scientists whether and
how this information should be communicated to the public. I came to understand that our job as scientists should be to collect data, not necessarily to interpret it. Logically, I could see how scientists putting any "spin" whatsoever on data
– no matter how dire the results may appear – could be taken as bad practice. I felt
conflicted...I wanted to be a good scientist...but if the scientist's
job isn't to sound the alarm bells...whose job is it? I believe that because
there have historically been so few individuals in the position of
"science communicator"...not just a journalist or an illustrator, but
someone whose job it is to cross fluidly between those worlds, and understands
what it means to be a "good scientist"...this is in part why we are
now in the mess we find ourselves in re: climate change. Fear of bias has
actually led to extreme bias...the vast majority of media on science comes from
the corporate media, the kind of media that has a vested interest in
suppressing the reality of what is happening.
Alarmed by this, I started
making art about the foibles and hubris of science. I began designing
"experiments" and making "laboratory equipment" to study
the intangible, the parts of reality and the human experience that are
unquantifiable. In other words, I became a kind of philosopher...
3- what have been the major obstacles to
overcome?
As others have already mentioned, one
persistent obstacle is the prevailing view in our culture of "art" as
something "extra", an embellishment, something that exists in a
support capacity for science but not as something integral, with equal
importance or value. The STEM to STEAM movement has been extremely helpful, and
"sci-art" and "eco-art" have become much more common and
widely accepted in recent years. But there is still much work to be done to
dispel the idea all these neat categories are really anything more than
convenient descriptors that, upon closer examination, are not nearly as neat in
practice as they are in theory.
In addition, perhaps like many people on this
list, I work in a nebulous, sort of "genre-free" zone. Some of my
work involves sound and music, some of it is sculptural, much of it is
ephemeral or conceptual....I tend to use whatever medium I feel is necessary to
convey a particular idea. It's the ideas that are, to me, important...the
pieces are just artifacts of a concept....and the concepts are free for the taking.
For me the joy – and the point – is that ideas should be freely exchanged,
open-source, collaborative...information is power, and everyone should have
equal access to it. This leads to a variety of problems: a) the work doesn't
fit neatly into any handy category that makes it easy to show, sell/buy, or
write about, b) it does not tend to generate a significant amount of income.
4- what have been the greatest
opportunities/breakthroughs?
Delighted to read that others have mentioned
Goethe here! When I first learned of his concept of "delicate
empiricism", it was a breakthrough for me. Confirmation of my hunch that
we are not as separate from our experiments as we make ourselves out to
be...and that "bias", or intuition based on sustained, earnest reflection
might actually be useful...these assurances gave me permission to further
develop my own "hypotheses".
5- what would you do differently, knowing then
what you know now?
I would have abandoned my role as a "good
scientist" and embraced my role as one whose job it is to act as a liaison
between scientists and the public sooner...I would have helped sound the alarm
bells about climate change in the mid/late-1990's when I could see what was
happening and was discouraged from speaking out.
Although my plan to study
biology first and scientific illustration later ultimately worked out in its
own way, I wish I'd known sooner of other options for someone who wanted to
become well-versed in both art and science. I would have liked to pursue a PhD
so that I could eventually teach, but I am only just now discovering PhD
programs that seem to accommodate interdisciplinary studies.
6- any advices to someone who may want to walk
in your footstep?
• People who understand science and can communicate clearly and/or creatively about it are more urgently needed than ever. Thus far, the
problems of our time – when conveyed accurately at all – have been presented in
cold, detached ways that have not tended to inspire action on the scale
necessary. In my view, "the poetics and aesthetics of science
communications" could be a course of study unto itself. A young person
looking for ways to combine art and science might consider seeking out or
self-directing such a program.
• Without creativity, there can be no
innovation in art, science, technology, or anywhere in between...and if we are
to effectively confront the challenges we currently face, we need to teach,
learn, and practice creativity.
• For those whose practices are not
well-defined or well-compensated, living simply and staying out of debt are
strategies that can result in greater freedom, time, and flexibility.
• A
couple of offerings for anyone who may wish to know more about my path in
particular:
My
book Philosoprops: A Unified Field Guide, which was written with a young reader setting out on a path to combine
art and science in mind, is available as a free download
(the download button is at the bottom of the page).
7- Add other questions and your responses
you think are relevant.
Added question: What are you working on now?
• In collaboration with my husband
guitarist/composer Julian Mock I am working on developing a means of
visualizing the intervals and modes commonly used in the Western 12-tone
musical system. This method employs a tertiary color wheel to depict tonal
relativity and shapes to depict intervals. As a musician who is constantly seeking
to improve my skills and pallet as an improvisor, I developed this method out
of frustration for the ways that the modes are taught in most standard music
theory books. More on this project here:
http://alycesantoro.com/mode_chart.html
• I am one of the
co-founders of Defend Big Bend, a group here in the high desert of far West Texas that is resisting against
the 42" high-pressure Trans-Pecos Pipeline. I mention this because the
fight is putting all of my skills as both an artist and a scientist to the test
– I find myself serving in the capacity of environmental journalist and
creative direct-action/social media strategist...in other words, "science
communications poetics/aesthetics"! Fascinatingly...local scientists on
the ground here whose jobs are funded through the government – including Big
Bend National Park employees, UT-funded astronomers, and state funded
archeologists – have been silenced by the pipeline company. In other words: the
very experts who could comment most authoritatively on threats to this region's
plants and wildlife, aquifers, dark skies, etc. have had their jobs threatened
by an industry that pours money into the state's coffers. Who is left to fight,
and to point out this conflict of interest? The answer is artists, students,
self-employed and retired people, and others without affiliations or anything
much to lose. This is not just happening here – this is the story of what has
been happening on a national and global scale for many, many years. Again, I
implore any young person to bear this in mind when choosing a career path:
those who can understand the gravity of the issues we are facing and are
willing and able to speak out on them eloquently and effectively...you are
urgently needed!
