Cognitive couplings go one high-tech step beyond the math student looking at Picasso's cubist aesthetic and technique as a veritable textbook of geometrical study. Like modernists with their new perception of the visible world, Robert McDermott's PhD'80 art students are learning to create expository animations with computers, and to create meaningful visuals. Work done by his students last year won a regional Emmy. Zoya Maslak's graphic art is used to illustrate biological research. It appeared on the cover of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Visualization attempts to transform research data into colorful, meaningful pictures.
While the content is practical information, the outcome also can be fit for an art gallery and appreciated without understanding the detail. We work with researchers to hear the concept behind what they are trying to do. Societal definitions have limited what is considered art to anything visual that doesn't have a function, McDermott says. In addition, as early as elementary school, students learn the two disciplines in compartmentalized classes. McDermott's own math professors chided him for taking art classes.