Viewing Science Through a Different Frame
Is it an album cover for a 1980s hair band, or a thin section micrograph of precious minerals? A model of ice streams in glacial lakes, or a 3D laser light show from a dance club? This past week at the third annual Research as Art exhibit at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, scientists traded in lab coats and goggles for artist smocks and easels as they demonstrated that when the line between science and art is allowed to get tenuous, the results are anything but.
Is it an album cover for a 1980s hair band, or a thin section micrograph of precious minerals? A model of ice streams in glacial lakes, or a 3D laser light show from a dance club? This past week at the third annual Research as Art exhibit at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, scientists traded in lab coats and goggles for artist smocks and easels as they demonstrated that when the line between science and art is allowed to get tenuous, the results are anything but.
The artwork displayed the breadth of research conducted at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, spanning from ecology to geology. The works showcased the biological research underway at the observatory by Kali McKee of the Goes Lab: images of the balloon-like microscopic phytoplankton Noctiluca, an organism that belies its innocent, squishy appearance by forming harmful algal blooms around the Indian Ocean.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from biology was an image of seismic traces recorded during earthquakes in Malawi and Tanzania, part of the dissertation research of graduate student Natalie Accardo. The wavy, technicolor lines conjure up imagery of seismologists taking an echocardiogram of the earth, monitoring the blips to diagnose earthquakes.
There were also works created by Lamont’s undergraduate researchers, like Emily Cooperdock, a Columbia College earth science major. Her piece, called Flux Fusion, depicted graphite crucibles glowing an otherworldly orange after being heated to nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
This year's submissions also featured five video installations. One showed a drone's bumbling in-flight recording of lava flows juxtaposed against crystalline blue lakes, part of the research of Lamont volcanologist Einat Lev. Another looked like a simple series of blue rotating lines, until viewed through the 3-D goggles that accompanied the installation. Through the red and blue lenses, the video came alive into a swirling vortex. Though it looked like something that would be at home on the walls of a discotheque, instead Lamont’s Jonny Kingslake uses these videos to model the ebb and flow of glacial lakes.
Similar to last year’s showcase, attendees cast votes for their favorite display of research art. After a tally, two pieces came out as clear front runners. In second place was a collage of figures by a team of researchers from The International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Ashley Curtis, Dannie Dinh, Angel Muñoz and Cathy Vaughan entitled Caribbean Connections. The figures, which look like the groovy illustrations created by retro Spirograph toys, depict a social network analysis of water managers in the Caribbean. Each node is an agency on a different island, and the connecting lines represent how those agencies interact with one another. It's a dizzyingly complex and beautiful representation, and one that the team hopes to use to refine how critical resources are managed on island nations.
Image Carousel with 10 slides
A carousel is a rotating set of images. Use the previous and next buttons to change the displayed slide
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Slide 1: Garnet with calcite-filled cracks, surrounded by reaction rim of mica. (Anna Barth)
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Slide 2: Crenulation cleavage defined by mica orientation, with pockets of recrystallising quartz. (Anna Barth)
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Slide 3: Social network analysis of water managers in the Caribbean region. The analysis would help provide insights to support and build the networks to improve regional water resource management. (Ashley Curtis, Dannie Dinh, Angel Muñoz and Cathy Vaughan
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Slide 4: Social network analysis of water managers in the Caribbean region. The analysis would help provide insights to support and build the networks to improve regional water resource management. (Ashley Curtis, Dannie Dinh, Angel Muñoz and Cathy Vaughan
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Slide 5: This photo shows the effect of putting graphite crucibles into a 1050 C oven. The top "before" image shows when the cold, black graphite crucibles first enter the hot oven. The bottom "after" image shows the graphite crucibles after 15 minutes in the
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Slide 6: This 2-D numerical simulation illustrates the complex feedbacks between mantle flow, lithospheric deformation, and topography that control the evolution of tectonic plate boundaries. (Jean-Arthur Olive)
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Slide 7: Mosaic of satellite imagery from Antarctica. Color maps show how long ago ice in the ice shelves passed over the ice-sheet grounding line and became afloat, assuming present-day surface velocities. (Jonny Kingslake)
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Slide 8: An unusual organism called Noctiluca scintillans has taken over the base of the food chain in the Arabian Sea and is disrupting the lives of people around the Indian Ocean. (Kali McKee)
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Slide 9: This is a section of an infinitely long curve called an attractor. It shows the evolution of a model glacial lake as it fills and drains, chaotically. It is named for the British glaciologist John Nye, who devised the model in 1976. This anaglyph is
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Slide 10: Detail (700 x 300 μm) of a 23 million year old Laurel leaf, stained with a purple dye, revealing anatomical detail of the leaf epidermis. (Tammo Reichgelt)
The grand prize, however, went to Anna Barth, a first-year graduate student in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. What Barth showcased was a thin section micrograph of the precious stone garnet with calcite-filled cracks, surrounded by a periphery of the shiny mineral mica. While this technical description might only pique the interest of a seasoned mineralogist, the large, framed final product had the whole Lamont community captivated. Some described this hard rock geological research as a hard rock album cover, while others likened it to an abstract depiction of J.R.R. Tolkien's Eye of Sauron. Any way you look at it though—and yes, it does look right back at you—the image is a stunning example of the artistry present in science when viewed through a different frame.
The Research as Art exhibit, generously funded by Lamont’s Campus Life Committee and Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, is an annual occurrence, and this year’s works will remain on display in the Lamont Café.