Welcome to the 2007 University of Colorado Art in Science | Science in Art show!
Art in Science | Science in Art is a juried exhibition of images made by University of Colorado-affiliated scientists and artists. Scientists were asked to submit images that they made as part of their everyday work. Artists whose images illustrate or offer insights into scientific principles were also asked to take part. The questions we were asking: How wide is the gulf between Science and Art? Can there be any communication across it? If a scientist makes an image that looks like art, is that a happy accident or are some scientists intentionally making their work more "artistic" than strictly necessary, and if so, why? And why would an artist want to include Plank's Constant in a painting? To answer some of these questions you need some data; hence our Call for Entries, which went out to the broad University of Colorado community, with its thousands of staff and faculty and tens of thousands of students, in mid-2006, with a submission deadline of Friday the Thirteenth of October.
Of the hundreds of files submitted, 66 were chosen by the jury to be placed in this On-line Gallery. Thirty of these 66 were selected to be printed in large format, framed, and hung in a traveling show which opened January 2007 at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and is now traveling (see Traveling Show page.)
The exhibit showcases the extraordinary talents and range of scientists and artists in Colorado, where 4 of the 20 highest concentrations of science and technology workers in the country are located. No state gets so much productivity from such a modest investment in higher education. Although we considered setting up a special category for students, no such protected status turned out to be necessary; in fact some of the most arresting art and scientific images were created by students.
The works were submitted online as electronic files and sent, with the entrants' names removed for impartiality, to a panel of judges including faculty, staff, and students from all CU campuses, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, University of Arizona, and Johns Hopkins University. The very high quality of submissions made the choice difficult and the on-line show's size was doubled from a planned 30 to accommodate more of the superb images.
