Dr. Rob Dillon, Coordinator





Friday, February 4, 2011

When Art and Science Collide

Editor’s Note – This essay was subsequently published as: Dillon, R.T., Jr. (2023c)  When Art and Science Collide.  Pp 335 – 338 in The Freshwater Gastropods of North America Volume 7, Collected in Turn One, and Other EssaysFWGNA Project, Charleston, SC.

Last fall I received an unusual email from Mr. Mark Wentzel, a sculptor living in the Atlanta area, bearing the subject line “L. columella.” Mr. Wentzel explained that he was working on an art exhibition for the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and inquired whether there might be “a source for ordering Lymnaea columella shells,” or if not, advice as to “a good method (or locality) of obtaining one. I was intrigued.

Connections between the Mollusca and the visual arts have a long and lavish history. Seashells, in particular, become decorative items almost untouched by the hand of man, save for a good cleaning. Entire coffee-table books have been dedicated to seashells as adornment in the primitive peoples, seashell motifs in the works of the renaissance masters, sailor’s valentines, X-ray photographs, and so forth. Upon entering the church of St. Sulpice in Paris, one finds the holy water contained in a massive pair of Tridacna valves, gifts from Venice to Francis I. How they got to Venice in the early 16th century, God knows.

Freshwater gastropods, however, are not decorative. One could certainly fashion the image of a freshwater snail into a logo and put it on a tee shirt. But I cannot (off the top of my head) think of any works of visual art, intended to stand alone, featuring our favorite creatures.

So I struck up an email correspondence with Mr. Wentzel to learn more about his project. Fishing for a connection to public health, I asked if his interest in L. columella might be somehow tied to the potential of lymnaeids to host fascioliasis. He replied that “Fascioliasis comes into play, but mostly as a metaphor.” More directly, the work he was contemplating “involves water, a Vietnam era Mk2 hand-grenade, a four-gallon Mason, lead drinking cups, and the unfamous (sic) L. columella, an indirect nod to Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, the Roman author of De Re Rustica, including significant early contributions to the field of food preservation.”

Mr. Wentzel added, almost as an afterthought, “My choice of L. columella was no fluke.” Okay, that got me. I sent him a sample of L. columella in the next morning’s “snail mail.”

The exhibition opened in December, under the title “4 Fields: Science and Environmental Health from a Creative Point of View.” [Click the image above to read the flyer.] I have not been to Atlanta to view the works first hand, but my overall impression, judging from the brochure, is that it is complicated. The title was “borrowed from the concept of the four sub-fields of anthropology” which turn out to be (according to Wikipedia) physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. The connection between anthropology, sculpture, and environmental health is obscure to me. As well as many other things.



The figure above shows Mark Wentzel's entire work [click for enlargement]. Our Lymnaea columella shells have been given rubbery little bodies and affixed to the tip of a Pasteur-style swan-necked flask at the far left. The hand grenade appears as a spigot for the 4-gallon mason. A close-up of the most exciting part of the piece is shown below.

The next paragraph is going to be boring and obvious, but bear with me. I’m getting ready to make a point.

Art and Science are two entirely different things. Mark Wentzel works in a world with its own unique language, culture, and set of values that are entirely different from, no better and no worse than, the world in which I live. This does not mean that artists and scientists cannot work together. Our worlds are not incompatible. But neither are our worlds compatible in any sense, either. They are just completely, utterly different.

Now scratch out the word "art" in the paragraph above, an insert the phrase, “law and public policy.” The paragraph will remain just as true. Science is no more compatible with public policy than it is with fine art.

Last month I got a (rather routine) email from a DNR biologist working on a revision of the South Carolina priority conservation invertebrate species. He wanted to know what freshwater gastropods in our state might be “of conservation concern.” So I pointed him to Table 1 on the Freshwater Gastropods of South Carolina website, where all 32 of our species are ranked by their abundances at many hundred sampling sites. My own (completely subjective) opinions regarding which of those species might warrant some conservation concern are to be found under "Recommendations" on that same site.

But in a larger sense, the concept of "conservation concern” in law is no more scientific than the concept of “beauty” in the fine arts. Neither can be measured, and hence science has nothing to say about either.

I was happy to send data to our DNR biologist, just as I was happy to send Mr. Wentzel some shells of L. columella. But I would never dream of pretending that science figures into my interactions with the latter world. Why do we continue to imagine that science can enter into the former?

5 comments:

  1. Rob,
    Mr. Wentzl's creation doesn't make sense to me either, but don't judge the relationship between science and art on this type of stuff. I have studied the history and philosophy of science enough to recognize that science, like art, is a product of the creative imagination. The products of that creative human impulse may be judged by different criteria and involve some differences in accepted methodology. We both know that there has been plenty of stuff created in the sciences that currently make as little sense as Wentzl's piece (I doubt his will survive for very long either). Good science and good art both have aesthetic dimensions that are a significant factor in their acceptance.
    As for conservation - if the general public experienced the aesthetic pleasure we experience when we encounter our favorite invertebrate, we might not have to depend on those big, furry 'charismatic'animals for the preservation of their habitat. As I retire from my 40 years as a professor of zoology, my new career in art is intended to provide the public with some of that aesthetic pleasure.

    -Jim Atkinson, MSU

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Science is no more compatible with public policy than it is with fine art." -- Excellent!


    And yet, academia takes bribes (uhhh…..grants) from bureaucrats that have agendas, thus wittingly or unwittingly compromising scientific integrity. Those holding the purse strings relish and encourage “the publish or perish model”? Or should one say “the bit and bridle” of academia? Political agenda is the power to choose winners (publish) or losers (perish). And the “winners” are "quid pro quo" awarded for providing “cover” for the politician’s politic agenda. Are the pre-ordained findings of “governmental-scientific” bodies ever in doubt? As long as government provides the grants; science will always be the prostitute of politicians.
    Industrial/military complex???
    What about the academic/political complex?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Science, snails, and art can interact in several ways.

    First, there's a well-done scientific illustration of a well-chosen specimen. What if the illustrator uses artistic license, choosing to leave out damage on a particular specimen? In geology, a geologic cross section can be as much art as reality, but the geologist who studied the area is still the best one to do it.

    Then there's an example of " Freshwater molluscan art" from Aleta Karstad. See http://pinicola.ca/drifted.htm.

    And (oh-oh, I feel an analogy coming on!) there's the infinitely rotatable re-arrangeable dichotomous Calder-gram:

    http://s261953682.onlinehome.us/caldergram1.jpg
    or
    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8sB_0UTVJ08/Sb73VUa90pI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/1JpzRmtFINE/

    (The family tree of the Calderoida; phylogeny imitating art.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was excited to discover this site. I want to to thank you
    for your time for this particularly fantastic read!
    ! I definitely really liked every bit of it
    and i also have you book marked to see new things on your site.

    payday loans columbus ga
    Also see my page :: payday loans

    ReplyDelete
  5. I couldn’t resist commenting. Well written!

    http://www.getforexautomoney.net/
    Also see my webpage - million dollar pips review

    ReplyDelete