Images of the Sciences and Scientists in Visual Media


Friday, November 21 and Saturday, November 22, 2003 at New York University


Film and electronic media are the most imortant sources of pictures which shape and haunt collective memory. Among the popular images of the present are those of the sciences and scientists. The conference will bring into contact specialists from two areas of expertise: image production and theory and history and sociology of the sciences and makes an attempt to explore techniques of constructing higly ambivalent images that represent scientest as gods of the secular age or demonize them as madmen who are threatening to destroy the world.


We hope you will join us in this thought-provoking event.


For further information, or if you have any questions, please contact

NYU
42 Washington Mews
New York, NY 10003
+1 212 998 8660 or 998 8663
e-mail: ece201@nyu.edu
or visit our website at
https://www.nyu.edu/deutscheshaus/imagesofscienceny/



Participants


Stefan Andriopoulos, Columbia University
Peter Beicken, University of Maryland, College Park
Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University
Eva Flicker, Universität Wien
Peter Galison, Harvard University
Walter Goldstein, New York University
Bernd Hüppauf, New York University
Noah Isenberg, Wesleyan College
Anton Kaes, University of California, Berkeley
Lutz Koepnick, Washington University
Gabriele Leidloff, Artist, Berlin
W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago
Anthony Movshon, New York University
Petra Pansegrau, Universität Bielefeld
Chris Straayer, New York University
Peter Weingart, Universität Bielefeld



Friday, November 21, 2003

8:30 Breakfast

9:00-10:00 Opening with video presentation (Bernd Hüppauf and Peter Weingart)

10:00-1:00
Images of madness and the innovative mind
Anton Kaes: Rotwang's Revenge: Notions of Science in Weimar Cinema
Chris Straayer: Beautifying the Mind. Representation of Madness and Genius of Scientists
Noah Isenberg: Mad Science: A German Tradition?

1:00-2:00 Lunch Break

2:00-3:30
Keynote address, W.J.T. Mitchell: Image Science


3:30-5:30
Calamities of science - experiments and disasters in early and recent films
Peter Beicken: The Specter of Science: Film Freaks in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," "Nosferatu," and "Metropolis"
Bruce Clarke: Teleporting The Fly: Media, Systems, and the Self-Referential Scientist

5:30-7:30
Transforming abstract science in concrete images
Bernd Hüppauf: "...and then movements of the muscular tissue stopped abruptly." - The Scientists' Frog in 19th and 20 century textbook illustrations
Stefan Andriopoulos: Science, Technology, and Magic in Weimar Cinema



Saturday, November 22, 2003

9:00-11:00
The production of knowledge and collective memory in film
Lutz Koepnick: What Good is Life Without Living: Film, Prosthetic Memory, Science
Peter Weingart: Of Lamentable Monsters and Unethical Genius - Science and Scientists in
Fiction Film

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:15
Constructing images through film and verbal discourse
Peter Galison: Filming and Writing Science History: The H-Bomb Dilemma

12:15-1:30 Break

1:30-3:30
Rational and non-rational constructions of images of scientists
Eva Flicker: Women Scientists in Fiction Films 1930-2002
Petra Pansegrau: Stereotypes and images of scientists in fiction films

3:30-3:45 Break

3:45-5:30
Image creation: Artistic Reflections of Neuro Sciences -
presentation by artist Gabriele Leidloff
Imprinting death and resurrecting life through imaging
"Ugly Casting" - and "l o g - i n / l o c k e d o u t"

and Round Table: Walter Goldstein, Bernd Hüppauf, Gabriele Leidloff, Anthony Movshovn

5:30-6:00
General discussion followed by a reception





Bernd Huppauf: 'Images of the Sciences and Scientists in visual Media',
in: NY Arts Magazine, November/December issue 2003, www.nyartsmagazine.com


The visual media are both a reflection of popular images and, at the same time, have the power of constructing influential images of the sciences. Film and other mass media have been highly successful in constructing stereotypes of the scientist and ways of perceiving the sciences. Blurring the dividing line between the human and, on the one side, the animal and, on the other, artificial creations such as robots has in recent years led to growing insecurities and a mixture of great expectations and fear. If it is justified to refer to the popular perception of the sciences as "a mixture of great expectations, fears, utilitarian interests, curiosities, ancient practices, and superstition" (Gerbner), film, TV and comic strips can be interpreted as a major source for these ambivalent attitudes represented in public images. Very little is known about the formation of popular images of science in general and even less in relation to the impact that visual media have on the perception of the sciences.

The relationship between the arts and the sciences has never been a one-way traffic and the arts have never been 'disinterested' observers. They acted as a reflection of the sciences and the scientists and at the same time contributed to the construction of their image. In modernity, the sciences have served as a paradigm for artistic creativity. Visual and literary works of art were often constructed as experiments and experimental art played an innovative role in the history of modernism. Artists have adapted the scientific mind to their work and incorporated scientific methods of dealing with nature into the artistic production process. Artists and writers of naturalism made the attempt to develop artistic practices based on experiments and the extraterritorial space of the laboratory. Photography became one way of bridging the gap between the factuality of the sciences and the fictionality of arts and literature.

Among the prominent contemporary artists who are developing ways for the intercourse between the arts and the sciences is Gabriele Leidloff. For years, she made use of conventional camera work; yet, at the same time, she created images with a virtual surface satirizing the image industry of the new media. Her X-ray images of death masks give a "cold foretaste" (Hajo Schiff) of the other side of the sciences and of cyberspace. By using radiographic imaging, e.g. sonography and CAT scanning, she is now developing a method of producing a creative paradox in which scientific images do not expose the inside of the human body but, on the contrary, create pseudo customary representations of a view from outside.

Her project called l o g - i n / l o c k e d o u t, https://www.locked-in.com, is an experiment with innovative forms of interaction designed to pull down barriers of communication and bring in contact specialists from the neuro sciences, image theory and artists who usually work in isolation from each other.

Locked-in is the medical term for the rare syndrome. Such a defect of the neural system makes it possible not only to gather information about this specific psycho-physiological phenomenon but also offers insight in the construction of the regular processes of active and passive perception and communication. Scientific observation uses the syndrome in analogy to a scientific experimentat without interfering with a natural process. Through the locked-in syndrome nature itself creates an interference with natural processes. l o g - i n / l o c k e d o u t, in turn, creates conditions that make visible the elements of the mental state resulting from interrupted communication. Gabriele Leidloff's installations, built with the most recent medical apparatus, are a unique attempt to integrate scientific technology and artistic ways of image construction. The project develops means for transforming a medical condition in aesthetic experiments, which will be shown in a series of installations later in New York.