THE
LANCET
April
22, 2000
N01se:
an exhibition about information and transformation showing at
Wellcome Trust Two10 Gallery, London, UK, until May 19, 2000.
At
the boundary between art and science lies . . . the Wellcome Trust. Or at least,
that
organization aims to break down the barriers between the two dominions, notably
through
their groundbreaking art exhibitions. Their latest offering explores ways in
which
information
is abstracted, transmitted, and transformed; an imperfect process in which
the
resultant error or excess—noise—can confuse or obscure the signal. Yet the
noise
itself,
rather than the selected information, can reveal to us the broader context from
which
we have comprehended but a part. These
ideas, can be seen to underpin all of
human
communication, and thus promise to unify science and art.
N01se, which started life as a multisite exhibition,
explores the tension between order and
the chaos
from which that order, or information, arose. Much of the work, however, was
clearly
constructed for scientific or aesthetic purposes and so fails to dispel the
classic
art/science
dichotomy. Given the innovative nature
of the exhibits and the vast expertise
behind
the exhibition, it is easy to see how some can claim that science and art must
be
inherently
separate.
The
skeptic's view is that the supposed common ground between art and science is
actually
a superficial
sharing of subject and form. Thus we see art about science and products of
science
and technology passed off as art, alongside rigorously investigated art and
research
on
artistic processes. For example, Talking Heads (developed by the Sony Computer
Science Laboratory, Paris, France and Brussels University Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, Belgium) could not be mistaken for anything other
than an experiment.
Robotic
agents are launched from site installations around the world or via the internet
to
interact
with other agents in a guessing game that aims to explore the evolution of
artificial
language
(see http://talking_heads.csl.sony.fr/
). While the experiment obviously sits well
with the
exhibition theme, it is unlikely to be mistaken for art.
Fortunately,
one stunning collection of works does belie the skeptic's beliefs.
Electrochemist
Merrill Garnett (State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY,
USA) has spent more
than
30 years investigating the ultra-low-frequency currents of DNA, with the
conclusion that
altering
this DNA “pulse” can reverse the abnormal cell growth that characterizes
cancer.
His
solution is a palladium/lipoic acid complex that acts as a DNA charge donor, without
the
toxic effects of current chemotherapy.
While Garnett clearly uses scientific method to
achieve
scientific goals, he and others have chosen to publicize his work, in part,
through art:
radiant
electromicrographs of his “liquid crystal” compound; captivating paintings of
his cell
cultures
by daughter Joy Garnett; and his
book First
Pulse. The book’s editor Bill
Jones
has
also collaborated with musician Ben
Neill to produce Pulse 4, 6, 7, 8--a light and sound
installation
that harmonically reflects ratios of the frequencies transferred between
Garnett’s
compound
and DNA.
And
Garnett’s work has more fundamental implications for defining the common ground
between
art and science. “If there are harmonics in the organism, its physiology will
recognize
certain signals”, he explains. “This would create the possibility of aesthetic
relation”.
Put another away, certain relations will be naturally pleasing, what James Joyce
called
“the rhythm of beauty.” And, as Joyce explores in Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, if the articulation of these relations is
scientific, this pleasing quality will be called truth,
whereas
if the relations are expressed in an artistic form, we call the product
beautiful. This
insight,
which lies at the heart of N01se,
reveals that just as one person’s noise is another’s
music,
so one group’s truth is another group’s beauty.
Kelly
Morris
The Lancet, London, UK
COPYRIGHT 2000 The Lancet Ltd. in association with The
Gale Group