By Ever Roberts
Art and science have a way of showing up at each other’s doorstep, and walk the world with their boots caked with the mud of the other. Much of the academic pursuit of science is familiarizing yourself with the nomenclature that is used to navigate complex processes. The mind that traces metabolic pathways is the same that sews sonnets, and manipulates language to make guarded jargon approachable. That is what a teacher and a communicator of science does. It requires a deep knowledge of a subject to make it simple. You must immerse yourself into the raw abstractions of data and scientific literature and emerge with talking points that would pair well with a cup of coffee.
I will state here for caution, that you should not eat paint, but the tongue is a paint brush that lays upon the palate for which the roof of the mouth is named. Art is the way that we speak ideas into the world. We shape sounds into meanings that play and compound in the air, on paper, and on keyboards to invent worlds and invoke emotion. At least this is the case if you are a poet, a writer, a linguist, a teacher, or a scientist; which we are all bound to be in some way, at some point.
I have always been a lover of the thesaurus, and how stories emerge from a scrap metal sculpture of methodical word choice. As a poet, I am phonetically intentional, experimenting with how sounds create resonance or contrast. Plotting if a stanza will swim quickly like a fish to the mouth of a waterfall, or have sharp edges and slips that make your audience regain their footing, and take a moment to reflect. Your audiences’ minds are primed for story and rhyme and the language you use has the power to tie strings their minds like a marionette and guide how information will be received, and what actions or thoughts they will walk away with. In this way, and many others, the science of art can be a capable weapon to the art of science. To translate complex scientific notions is to tell a story, grounded in digestible language, with a rhythm that engages, and graphics that visually stimulate and communicate both the writing’s concepts and the identity of the information and its messenger. Sorry to put so much pressure on your next poster presentation.
Onto something lighter; what does it take to poison a poet? Perhaps it does not require a physical toxic substance but nonetheless traces back to the digestive tract, hoisting sails in the the twisting seas of the stomach’s hydrochloric acid, then seeping through the intestine’s microvilli, taking to the blood where it can find the bruised encapsulation of emotion that is a poet’s heart. The heart of a poet, though encased with angst and fervor, is still made up of four pressurized chambers that contract in coordination. When the poet’s heart is broken, the pacemaker cells still send out action potentials that tell the cardiomyocytes to carry on. Art stems from guttural emotion. When you interact with art that moves you, networks spark in the brain, sending adrenaline to find its targets through the blood that enact responses that feel tangible in the body. A kick to the stomach and a shake to the bones, courtesy of your own perceptions and responses.
The nervous system, like any good playwright, dances between the metaphorical and literal. The natural world has its divas too, and it can make a physiology course feel a little over-involved at times. You listen to a lecture on hunger responses, and you find your mouth pooling with saliva. Discuss the evolution of the fight or flight response and you’ll find your pulse racing. The body and the mind are very impressionable to each other, and this is what can make art feel so visceral. We can feel it in the pits of our stomachs and in the squeeze of our hearts. My recommendation to poets is to meander around mechanisms of the heart to ground the method by which they pull on its strings. Most art institutions have an assignment known as écorché meaning “flayed” where the artist must map the body beneath the skin. This supports the artist’s future creations, as they place their hands on the delicate ways that muscles and skeletons angle to hold up a muse, to convey the subtleties of their body language, and the rules of the form (even if they intend to break them). These creations double as aids to medical students who must understand the same principles for uses that are contrasted in utilization but figuratively paralleled. Both doctors and artists delve into and examine the human form and mind when it has broken, or changed, or defied our expectations.
While I have mainly focused on the interweavings of poetry and physiology, this intertwining can be uncovered throughout a variety of artistic mediums and scientific disciplines. Quantum mechanics has uncovered that matter changes from particles to waves when observed, and I believe that might be one of the most poetic things I’ve ever heard. Art exists down to the smallest elements of our existence, and at the other end of the scale, the beauty of the cosmos and its poetic vastness of darkness, light, and possibilities speaks for itself. Science is an incredible source of mysticism and aesthetics that art is created around, and art is of great necessity to creating innovative solutions and communicating knowledge. I challenge any reader that considers themselves, only an artist or only a scientist, to delve into the other, and investigate how it can inform or improve their work. I urge scientists and artists to communicate with each other, create together, and recognize all of the intrinsic overlaps between their work, and the beauty that lies within that relationship.