How the challenge of depicting biological systems can generate productive questions for artists and scientists.
An artist sketching cell division faces a problem: what is the best way to visually represent a dynamic process? This anthology, edited by an artist and a philosopher of science, explores drawing as a way of inquiring into living processes at the molecular, cellular, and organismal scale. In doing so, drawing emerges as a tool for relaying and uncovering knowledge—a pathway for research, not an end result.
Incorporating drawing studies and contributions from scholars in the humanities and life sciences, Drawing Processes of Life addresses epigenetics, epistemology, and metamorphosis in insects, proteins, and other ever-shifting biological systems. A foreword by Scott F. Gilbert, a renowned evolutionary biologist and historian of science, affirms the promise of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and scientists.
By:
Gemma Anderson-Tempini,
John Dupré
Imprint: Intellect Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 244mm,
Width: 170mm,
ISBN: 9781789387667
ISBN 10: 1789387663
Pages: 362
Publication Date: 01 April 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Figures Acknowledgements Foreword: Symbiotic Perspectives on the Processes of Biology and Art – Scott F. Gilbert Introduction – John Dupré and Gemma Anderson-Tempini 1. Conrad H. Waddington and the Image of Process Biology – K. Lee Chichester 2. Drawing as a Pragmatist Visual Epistemology – Chiara Ambrosio 3. Drawing to Extend Waddington’s Epigenetic Landscape – Gemma Anderson-Tempini, Berta Verd and Johannes Jaeger 4. Drawing the Origami Embryo as a Stratified Space–Time Worm – Gemma Anderson-Tempini and Alessio Corti 5. Drawing the Dynamic Nature of Cell Division – Gemma Anderson-Tempini, James Wakefield and John Dupré 6. Drawing as Intuitive Mode for Representing Protein Dynamics – Gemma Anderson-Tempini, Jonathan ‘J. J.’ Phillips and John Dupré 7. Drawing Out the Superorganism: Artistic Intervention and the Amplification of Processes of Life – Heather Barnett 8. Mimicry, Adaptation, Expression – Wahida Khandker 9. Metamorphosis in Images: Insect Transformation from the End of the Seventeenth to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century – Janina Wellmann 10. Flow, Attend, Flex: Introducing a Process-Oriented Approach to Live Cell Biological Research – James G. Wakefield Process Epistemologies for the Careful Interplay of Art and Biology: An Afterword – Sarah R. Gilbert and Scott F. Gilbert Notes on Contributors Index
Gemma Anderson-Tempini is a Northern Irish artist who has developed a number of collaborative art/science/philosophyprojects including ‘Representing Biology as Process’ (2017-2021) at the University of Exeter, ‘Hidden Geometries’ with the Mathematics Department at Imperial College London; ‘Isomorphology’ and the ‘Cornwall Morphology and Drawing Centre’ at CAST with the Natural History Museum, London; and ‘Portraits: Patients and Psychiatrists’ (Wellcome Trust Arts Award 2009) with the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Her work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Freud Museum and the Wellcome Collection, London. Most recently, her work is part of the exhibition ‘The Botanical Revolution in Contemporary Art’ at the Kroller-Muller Museum, NL; ‘Critical Zones; Observatories for Earthly Politics’ at the Centre for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe, Germany and ‘The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree’ Exhibition at Camden Arts Centre, London. John Dupré is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Egenis centre for the study of life sciences, University of Exeter, UK.
