
Content
2019 | Early version
1. Establishing Quote
This could perhaps be something from the interview you do with Andras. Or if there is a quote that you love, and which illustrate your overall philosophy and the role of visuality and art in it, please share.
2. Short bio
This would be quote short, about 250 words, and very straightforward (academic positions, awards, books, boards, etc.) and would include a picture of you—let me know if there is one you prefer.
3. Foreword
This is about who you are—your background—and how your scientific work and your inclination toward art and visuality have been intertwined throughout your life and career. This text does not overtly state that you are an artist and the world needs to accept you as such. Rather, it makes that point by establishing how visuality is central to your practice. It suggests that the contents of this book function as an invitation to forge a dialogue with the contemporary art world.
4. Projects (working title “Rendering Complexity”)
This is the central and longest portion of the book. It is organized into approximately 6 sections [still a work in progress], each one biting off a part of your overall practice, each one with a short(ish) text and images. It will show the evolution of your work and the visualizations, and will provide a sense of their scope and variation. Most importantly, these sections or mini-chapters are micro0narratives that convey to non-science art people the excitement of these images. Each section advances the narrative of your work, with a combination of text and image — it will belight on the math and science concepts; we can hot-link the articles where appropriate.
To illustrate how this core section works, here are some of the initial sections I am thinking about (I am working my way through our notes to establish them all). Once we have these in place and understand what stories and images go together, and I have condensed texts from our conversations and the publications, I will almost certainly need some help from you to make sure that what we present is accurate:
A. First Attempts: The initial visualization published in the 2000 Nature paper, showing the non-representational models of scale-free vs randomized network theories. This section shows the seeds of what is to come and presents early insights
B. An Iterative Process: This begins with the yeast cell study, leading to the organic form, and beyond … here we see how visualization is leading to transformative insights in cell biology, while at the same time quickly increasing the sophistication in the renderings
C. Finding Flow: Here we get into the period when visualization really starts to take off in your work and claims a central place, when designers are hired into the team and the world is starting to take notice …
More sections to come (to be discussed…)
5. Plates
This section would be pure eye candy. The idea is to present your visualizations as “art”. (Andras has had some interesting conversations with the photography dealer James Danziger who is expert in high-resolution printmaking from digital files — think of this section as a portfolio of images that could, in theory, be printed and framed and thought about as art).
Captions here would be super-minimal since we will have gotten in-depth info in the previous and main section. Let’s think about what your artistic naming system would be. Should it be topical: Food, Conmplexity, Industry, etc.? Or something more conceptual, No. 1, No. 2.? Or some other technical feature of the file that gives it its name, like IHT-45-Q-2017? Perhaps we include the year?
6. Interview
Tying it all together, with Andras (2 spreads)—let’s get this schedule asap. He is finally back from nearly three weeks of travel and (as of tomorrow) home through the rest of the month.
7. Blurbs
Let’s get this from Hans Ulrich (Andras has been in touch), Paola Antonelli (when we have more of the book to show), and an artist like Saraceno (if that is not too complicated, as discussed, or someone else)