Art & Science
As I was drinking my tea and
flicking through the endless menus on Netflix’s (a common affair
for me) I came across the documentary ‘Chasing Ice’. I had
noticed it before but I’m sorry to say due to ‘Breaking Bad’
taking over all my Netflix time I’ve only just got around to
watching this. I love frozen landscapes, especially after me and a
friend were lucky enough to head up to the Arctic Circle in 2009.
Everything about these places is pure magic. I know that sounds
cheesy, but the stillness, the limited colours, the emptiness of
sound and sense of size is pretty indescribable.
Chasing Ice, in the words of
its synopsis is…
…”the
story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by
gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months
of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer conceived the boldest
expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young
adventurers in tow, Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse
cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of
the world’s changing glaciers’.
The subject of
climate change is a debate that has been bubbling away for years, is
it real?, is it not real? Whatever you believe I do think that we
will be heading
to a point where the balance between us and natural resources &
other living organisms will tip, to our peril. I
can't help but giggle at the way my brain decided to visualise this
conflict, in the style of a
bad 1950’s American sitcoms; maybe
it's my degree in Film that did this.
'Scene
opens (after iconic opening
credits and theme tune) to the earth in the kitchen dressed in her
ozone apron. In walks the human race (to audience applauds of course)
dress in a bow-tie
and proclaiming
'where’s my
dinner?, where’s my slipper’s?, there’s a hole
in my sock'
(audience cheers). The episode follows our poor little earth as
she gets into lots of ‘slapstick humor’
scenarios running around, cleaning, fixing, cooking &
supporting our anti-hero and is left tired
& pin-pricked.
Slowly the apron gets messier and the immaculate hair starts to fall
(me everyday),
but the smile is always on her face’
If you have seen
the film ‘Pleasantville’ you will know where I’m heading. One
day the human race will walk though the door to the same pre-recorded
applause to find
no response to his usual ‘honey I’m
home’. Though
she would not have gone to explore the
amazing life of technicolor as she had in the film. Luckily
our present day sitcoms have moved away from this stereotypical image
but are relationship with our home has not and is stuck in a dated
B&W sitcom. We can’t divorce our
planet, nor can it divorce us (even if it wanted to) so counseling
might be our only option. It’s projects like ’Chasing Ice’ that
can act as these marriage counselors.
We cull species,
we destroy trees for land & we burn our fuel for energy. I’m
not naive enough to not
realise that the
reason I’m living in a world that is so easy to
survive (well western world – the
difference in ease of living across the world is another topic in
itself) is because of the sacrifices the
world (and it's poorer nations)
has taken, and the hard choices made by my ancestors. But I often
find myself imagining that one day a badger might turn up at my home
with a rifle to cull me, or I might find a tree sitting in a
bulldozer about to destroy my home so their roots can spread. (I’m
not crazy, just imaginative). It’s about balance, equal sacrifices
on both sides, but we seem to be making less and less. If this was a
marriage we would have been divorced a long time ago (with the earth
getting a huge payout).
I began writing
this, not just to explore our relationship with our home, but to
share how this documentary used art to reach us and just how cool I
thought that was. If you haven’t already noticed me and Mike come
from opposite sides of the camp –I’m an artist and Mike’s a
scientist. Not only does this make for interesting discussions (and
lots of fun hours explaining, educating & growing on both sides,
while eating Doritos!) it has made me realise how much these two
subjects have in common and complement each other. It seems to me
that they are both ways of interpreting the world. Maybe science is
more to do with understanding the world, while art is more about how
we see the world.
 |
| Monet - House of Parliament Sun |
Chasing Ice
was one man’s idea to use his own language of photography to show
what’s happening to our glaciers. I’m sure it would not have had
the same overall impact if he used figures to demonstrate the
findings. Maybe people react better to art as it speaks easily to
our emotions as opposed to needing to understand the language of
science before it reaches you. Can you image how Monet’s work would
look translated into say a weather forecast followed by a scientific
explanation of the light and colour (actually that would be a really
interesting thing to do – scientist take note!) – but if it was
only explored this way the emotional responses to Monet’s
masterpieces would be lost in translation and numbers. Or
if we only explored life through art we
would not understand the workings of our world. Art does seem to be a
more universal language and using art to interpret science gives art
some power, meaning and presence. I’m not suggesting art does not
already have this, as it does in abundance, but I guess I’m saying
it might give more weight to art in the mind of the scientist.
My time with both
my scientist and artist friends (an amazing group of mates) has made
me think that art and science do not seem to have differencing
objectives, both want to understand the world, challenge current
thoughts & ideas and share new ideas, thoughts and findings. But
what can be different is how they are interrupted by the
viewer/listener and the affect they then have. There has been many
a nights when I’ve watched my friends debate from both camps and
the difference I see is not necessary the ideas, but how each express
them. It used to bother me how I struggled to enter a debate with a
group of my close scientist friends, mainly as I couldn’t translate
my thoughts in the language they used. Silly me, I never had to do
this. Both are equal and even more so with a few beers thrown in.
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