Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Felice Frankel


Featured in Bruce Mau's book Massive Change, Felice Frankel is concerned with how scientific ideas are visually represented. She works with scientists to develope an image that communicates their scientific research to the general public. She is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Univerisity, where she heads the Envisioning Science program. She also works as a research scientist at MIT. Frankel's images have been published in over 300 journal articles and have been featured as covers and in other various publications. In 1997, she co-authored On the Surface of Things (I saw this at the bookstore not too long ago, and thought it was more recent, I almost bought a copy). Her latest book, Envisoning Science, the Design and Craft of the Science Image, has been deemed "priceless" by Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, and acts as a guide on the production of effective scientific images. Frankel is also a leader of the Picturing to Learn, program, which encourages students to develop their own visual explanations of scientific themes.
She has received grants from both the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
You can see a list of exhibitions on her website.
Frankel has a degree in biology from Brooklyn College.
She's featured by Apple on their website, and has been covered by the New York Times.
In her interview in Massive Change, Frankel talks about how NASA is bringing attention to the earth through satellite images. She states "Chemists and physicists need to do the same for the micro and the subatomic world. It is just as exciting and beautiful as the cosmos."

I've been noticing this for awhile, that most art/science combinations focus on technology, engineering, chemistry and physics. Biology is prevalent in it's own, broad way, since biophilia is rampent among artists. But you don't find much about geology and art. There also doesn't seem to to be any crossovers between geology and the design movement. The science of design seems centered around climate change, sustainability, and advancing technology. All of these things are starting to move forward together and the geosciences seem to be off on their own. Why is this? Is it because we're trying to get to the future by studying the past?
The most publisized science these days revolves around trying to save ourselves and our future. The design movement is all about the future. Is there a way to get to the future though the past? Is there a way to a viable future of our field through our past tradition?

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