There are scientists who became big players in a particular discipline but before that they made also more or less successful efforts in an unrelated branch of science. For instance, Kary Mullis, inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reacion (PCR) wrote an early and pretty bizarre cosmological letter entitled Cosmological Significance of Time Reversal published in no other science journal, than Nature. Or there is Robert Lanza, regenerative medicine expert, who had psychological papers in his Harvard youth. Whatever is the value of those early and usually B contributions, they say us something on the nature of specialization in science. I suspect that sometimes multitalent is just by coincidence, but there could be cases, when there is a deeper relation behind the multifaceted energy. In art, multitalent is a well-known phenomenon, think about the drawings and paintings of Goethe, or the violin of Ingres.
Help me collect other recent examples of surprising multitalent in the natural sciences.
Help me to collect the list of art illustrations that are frequently used and overused by scientists on their slides either as background or as an analogy for some biological or other scientific phenomenon! The first one is the “Fons Juventutis” (”Fountain of Youth“) and now quickly switch to wikipedian composed by Cranach, executed by his son, a picture in which hags are seen entering a Renaissance fountain, and are received as they issue from it with all the charms of youth by knights and pages. Scientists are used to illustrate their stem cell and regmed related presentation with the Fountain of Youth and I guess the concept they have in mind in doing so is rejuvenation, or on the cellular level, dedifferentiation.
Pecha Kucha Night was invented four years ago by 2 architects, Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, in Tokyo. During the event each presenter is allowed 20 slides each shown for 20 seconds each giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. According to Wired journalist Daniel H. Pink: The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate clich into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.
Pecha Kucha (Japanese for “chatter”) is practiced by architects and designers but it is easily and naturally transferable to science. It is a usual homework for scientists to make presentations for conferences, Journal Clubs, angel investors or for the public. But the design element is usually not well developed, the information component is overwhelming and scientists have poorly or never been trained in the art of public speaking. Just like laboratory websites, science slideshows are good targets of further education.
Imagine an online Pecha Kucha event/competition for scientists where participants can clap their hands by voting for the performance, information, design, entertainment, humor factor of each presenter/slideshow. Fortunately we already have the services who are able to host these Pecha Kucha events: Bioscreencast, JoVE or SciVee just to mention the ones that first came into my mind.
Of course the real Pecha Kucha event is originally offline, and eventually scientists should prove themselves in front of a flesh and blood audience.
Out of the programming events the free Technebiotics seems the most interesting and topic related:Technebiotics, The California College of the Arts 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco November 2nd 2-5 P.M.
From the intro:
Part science fair, part county fair, this afternoon event will feature multiple live demonstrations and do-it-yourself workshops on a wide range of biological techniques and processes. Artists, scientists and educators will demonstrate cutting edge laboratory equipment alongside traditional horticultural methods and everyday organic reactions. Technebiotics is a place to learn about flora and fauna in an environment that mixes expert knowledge with playful experimentation.
There are scientists who became big players in a particular discipline but before that they made also more or less successful efforts in an unrelated branch of science. For instance, Kary Mullis, inventor of the Polymerase Chain Reacion (PCR) wrote an early and pretty bizarre cosmological letter entitled Cosmological Significance of Time Reversal published in no other science journal, than Nature. Or there is Robert Lanza, regenerative medicine expert, who had psychological papers in his Harvard youth. Whatever is the value of those early and usually B contributions, they say us something on the nature of specialization in science. I suspect that sometimes multitalent is just by coincidence, but there could be cases, when there is a deeper relation behind the multifaceted energy. In art, multitalent is a well-known phenomenon, think about the drawings and paintings of Goethe, or the violin of Ingres.
There must be art times for biotechnologists too! Artists are always interested in the new and strange, and current biotech meets these 2 criteria.