Art and science might seem an unlikely pair, but the efforts of two Northwestern faculty members have brought the two together.
“Imaging and Imagining Space: A Collaboration Between Art and Science” opened Jan. 11 and will continue to run through Feb. 18 at the Block Museum of Art.
The exhibition features a series of astronomical images selected by Prof. Farhad Zadeh along with space-inspired photographs by art Lecturer Pam Bannos.
“The whole idea is to bring out this notion that art and science really overlap to some extent,” said Zadeh, who teaches astronomy and physics. “They converge at one point.”
The exhibit, funded by NU’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, explores three different approaches to viewing space: visible, invisible and imagined space.
Visible space refers to the images taken by an optical telescope — the only images the public usually sees. Invisible space can only be seen through a radio telescope. Zadeh said one of his main objectives was to reveal this “invisible universe.”
Zadeh also altered the way space typically is observed by using only black and white images. He said these pictures uncover structures and details that colored ones — used in most text books and magazines — cannot.
“The point is that in both areas, in photography and astronomy, we are going away from the traditional display of astronomical and photographic pictures,” Zadeh said.
Bannos, an art theory and practice lecturer, developed the imagined space aspect of the exhibit. Without the aid of a camera, she manipulated light and various objects in a darkroom to create photographs that resemble astronomical phenomena.
“I have a comet that looks just like a (real) comet made from the carbon from a candle flame,” Bannos said.
Her contrived pictures often seem more believable than the actual space images, she said, because some real-life pictures appear too unusual to have occurred in nature.
“In an art museum, space pictures look like art,” she said. “Counter to that, art images begin to be read as science.”
Bannos said the display is the only one she’s seen that directly combines art and science into one exhibit.
Debora Wood, assistant curator of the Block Museum, said there has been a link between art and science since Renaissance times.
“Think of da Vinci,” she said. “Is he an artist or is he a scientist?”
Zadeh said both disciplines can be appreciated for different aspects, but they share a common goal.
“They’re both trying to converge the artistic creativity of a person (and) the inherent beauty of nature,” he said.
