A couple of years ago, Tom Moody linked to this molecular biology video, "The Inner Life of the Cell." There was a tiny little bit of discussion on Moody's blog about the questionable merits of science porn (I love it, myself).
Right now I am reading a great essay by Natasha Myers called "Animating Mechanism: Animations and the Propagation of Affect in the Lively Arts of Protein Modelling" (available for download here). Myers is an anthropologist with a background in dance and choreography who studies molecular biology. In her work, she applies her experience from dance to advocate for more embodied modes of visualisation in biology. One problem being that living organisms are killed and then studied as static images as if they were alive, exemplifying a level of violence and detachment from nature that is rarely critiqued or questioned within the discipline. Another problem being that scientists as subjective observers are often not implicated as part of the process of generating meaning from scientific images.
But, says Myers, all molecular modeling is an "act of interpretation" that involves analogies between the "scale of human experience and that of molecular life" (p.15). She addresses this video specifically, and here are some of the things she says:
...this 3d fly-through set to ambient, orchestral music does more than just pull mechanical objects into time: these animations also provide glimpses into the scientists' and animators' molecular imaginations. (p.16)
I see these animations as pulling their users' and viewers' bodies into new understandings by entraining them to molecular temporalities and other ways of moving. In this sense, animations may be thought of as narratives that lure their users into new modes of embodiement through their play with time (see Stengers, 1999, on "lures"). I propose that it is through moving images and bodies that protein modellers are able to propagate their tacit knowledge of molecular structures and mechanisms. Entangled with this tacit knowledge is a range of affects that turn out to be central to how researchers learn and communicate molecular knowledge. (p.17)
(see Stengers, 1999, on "lures") refers to Isabelle Stengers' "Whitehead and the laws of nature," in Salzburger Theologische Zeitscrhift, No. 2 (1999) pp.193-207.
I will investigate and if it's good I'll report back.
- sally mckay 10-17-2008 8:33 pm
Okay, I didn't find it but I found something else by Stengers writing about Whitehead using my student priviledge online library magic powers. Isabelle Stengers, "A Constructivist Reading of Process and Reality" inTheory Culture Society Vol. 25, No. 91 (2008).
Here's a bit on "lures" (p.96) .
Abstractions, for Whitehead, are not ‘abstract forms’ that determine what we feel, perceive and think, nor are they ‘abstracted from’ something
more concrete, and, finally, they are not generalizations. Whitehead was a
mathematician, and no mathematician would endorse such definitions. But
most of them would endorse Whitehead’s idea that abstractions act as ‘lures’,
luring attention toward ‘something that matters’, vectorizing concrete experience.
Just think of the difference between the mute perplexity and disarray
of anybody who faces a mathematical proposition or equation as a meaningless
sequence of signs, as opposed to someone who looks at this same
sequence and immediately knows how to deal with it, or is passionately
aware that a new possibility for doing mathematics may be present.
In order to think abstractions in Whitehead’s sense, we need to forget
about nouns like ‘a table’ or ‘a human being’, and to think rather about a
mathematical circle. Such a circle is not abstracted from concrete circular
forms; its mode of abstraction is related to its functioning as a lure for mathematical
thought – it lures mathematicians into adventures which produce
new aspects of what it means to be a circle into a mathematical mode of
existence.
- sally mckay 10-17-2008 10:04 pm
One could make some jokes here about "body-work" and the demonstration of molecular bonds by the mutual gripping of arms higher...higher...higher...OH GOD, but I'll behave.
Perhaps a holistic and/or feminist approach to these 3D fly-throughs with ambient soundtrack will make them less mechanistic. I think my critique was more about graphic conventions (sleek mapping onto polygonal structures that makes everything look like it's made of plastic) than the connection between the images and molecular reality. I did voice some concern about those huge cinematic voids and caverns in which everything seemed to be happening being counterintuitive. I think of organic chemistry more like a tightly packed Swiss watch, only mushy and made of meat. - tom moody 10-19-2008 2:16 pm
A couple of years ago, Tom Moody linked to this molecular biology video, "The Inner Life of the Cell." There was a tiny little bit of discussion on Moody's blog about the questionable merits of science porn (I love it, myself).
Right now I am reading a great essay by Natasha Myers called "Animating Mechanism: Animations and the Propagation of Affect in the Lively Arts of Protein Modelling" (available for download here). Myers is an anthropologist with a background in dance and choreography who studies molecular biology. In her work, she applies her experience from dance to advocate for more embodied modes of visualisation in biology. One problem being that living organisms are killed and then studied as static images as if they were alive, exemplifying a level of violence and detachment from nature that is rarely critiqued or questioned within the discipline. Another problem being that scientists as subjective observers are often not implicated as part of the process of generating meaning from scientific images.
But, says Myers, all molecular modeling is an "act of interpretation" that involves analogies between the "scale of human experience and that of molecular life" (p.15). She addresses this video specifically, and here are some of the things she says:
- sally mckay 10-17-2008 8:27 pm
(see Stengers, 1999, on "lures") refers to Isabelle Stengers' "Whitehead and the laws of nature," in Salzburger Theologische Zeitscrhift, No. 2 (1999) pp.193-207.
I will investigate and if it's good I'll report back.
- sally mckay 10-17-2008 8:33 pm
Okay, I didn't find it but I found something else by Stengers writing about Whitehead using my student priviledge online library magic powers. Isabelle Stengers, "A Constructivist Reading of Process and Reality" inTheory Culture Society Vol. 25, No. 91 (2008). Here's a bit on "lures" (p.96) .
- sally mckay 10-17-2008 10:04 pm
One could make some jokes here about "body-work" and the demonstration of molecular bonds by the mutual gripping of arms higher...higher...higher...OH GOD, but I'll behave.
Perhaps a holistic and/or feminist approach to these 3D fly-throughs with ambient soundtrack will make them less mechanistic. I think my critique was more about graphic conventions (sleek mapping onto polygonal structures that makes everything look like it's made of plastic) than the connection between the images and molecular reality. I did voice some concern about those huge cinematic voids and caverns in which everything seemed to be happening being counterintuitive. I think of organic chemistry more like a tightly packed Swiss watch, only mushy and made of meat.
- tom moody 10-19-2008 2:16 pm