In the Grey Zone, With a Hint of Colour: The interplay between art and science in academically-driven careers

A few years ago, I was reading a book entitled This is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel Levitin. The book essentially talked about why we tend to develop fascinations or, more boldly put, obsessions with abstract concepts such as music (the subtitle of the book reading The Science of a Human Obsession). Daniel Levitin is a cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist at McGill University. He also happens to be a musician, and, evidently, a writer. Many of his publications involve his fascination with the psychology of music, and why it seems to affect us to such extent, sometimes even on a physiological level. From the very first page of the book, I was instantly captivated by the way in which he viewed the subjects of music and science – two seemingly mutually exclusive or unrelated themes. He begins the book with an excerpt from American neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky’s book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers — “I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.” This passage alone seemed to stick with me over the years.

Throughout my life, I’ve shaped my academics around wanting to pursue science as a career. Yet, my artistic mind has never failed to be my primary source of energy, inspiration and creativity. I almost constantly have music playing through my head (much to my concentration’s discontent) and have been dancing to that music ever since the day I could walk. At a very young age, I developed a fascination with Vincent van Gogh, and started writing him letters in hope that the ink would somehow seep its way into “The Twilight Zone” so he could read them and feel less lonely. The majority of the friends I had created in my childhood were the characters that I had made up, writing about them on white pages that my mother would later sew together into what I called “my novellas.” As a whole, my life has been governed by art, by a love for story-writing and storytelling, by an obsession with music, by an addiction to sketching all over my school notes. As I saw it, it was nothing but a hobby — something to do in my spare time that perhaps made my life a little bit more colourful, literally and metaphorically speaking.

However, as my time in academia went on, and more serious opportunities started coming my way, I began to feel that perhaps not everybody shared the same opinion. As I started applying for research positions, academic programs, and organizations, etc., I started receiving some unexpected feedback. Since my artistic mind was such a big part of me as an individual, I felt that it was essential to discuss this side of myself when given the opportunity. To my surprise, the amount of higher academics who responded with disinterest when hearing this was astounding. What followed was, of course, rejection. I couldn’t understand — why was I being pushed away for thinking a little bit differently when it came to answering their questions?

As I see it, art is what our brain does when trying to turn our emotions into something tangible. It’s a creation of another world — one that, at times, helps relieve us from the challenges we face in our real world. To me, it’s where my mind goes when I feel elation when I feel pain when I want to feel as much as possible. Those nights of playing music in your ears while drawing or writing whatever comes to mind with trembling adrenaline-surged hands are some of the most cathartic experiences I’ve had. The drawings and words that come out of it are even more intriguing — not in the sense that I am an outstandingly skilled artist or writer — but in the sense that music and that vibration sent throughout my entire body, brings images and ideas to my mind that my day-to-day brain wouldn’t normally see. It’s beautiful, really, to me at least.

Nonetheless, I’m currently studying Microbiology and Mathematics, two subjects that are often viewed as incompatible with anything artistic. When was the last time you associated a lab nerd in goggles with a devastated writer in tortoise-shell glasses and a tweed jacket? What’s often misunderstood is that a knack for one doesn’t instantly imply a deficit or disregard for the other. I don’t see myself as a bad “scientist” because I primarily consider myself an artist, nor do I think I’m a bad artist because of my interest in science. I see myself as lucky to be able to somewhat understand both sides, and fortunate to be able to apply one to the other.

Although the intertwining of arts and science may seem novel to some, the interplay between the subjects has actually been noted over the past hundreds, even thousands of years, frequently in rather intriguing and unexpected situations. In an essay published in Field Notes on Science and Nature, a culmination of hand-written notes and sketches made by numerous scientists in the process of their research, Jonathan Kingdon, an researcher of African mammals at the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology, discusses the importance of his passion for drawing while studying the evolution of these mammals. He claims that in taking the time to allow his hand to learn and feel the exact morphology of the animals, he found himself paying closer and closer attention to details, to the small nuances that shifted between species. Through a desire to translate his intrigue of science into a more instinctual, more humanistic language — that is, his art — he was able to refine his skill in observation, and more importantly, in patience. He argues that something like photography did not have the same impact — contrary to forcing him into delicate observation, the camera did the work of looking for him.

Artistically-developed brains were also put to work during a social experiment attempted by CERN (Europe’s leading particle physics laboratory) in June of 2000. The goal was to assemble 12 contemporary artists and 12 contemporary particle physicists in the hope of redefining the relationship between art and science. The experiment turned out rather successful, as the group ended up creating multiple pieces of art that were displayed in an exhibit entitled Signatures of the Invisible. In an article published in Nature, Ken McMullen, a film director and pioneer of the Signatures of the Invisible project, described the interplay between the two extremes as “the [contrary] to a meeting between opposites,” rather “a correspondence between equal partners from different traditions.” He claimed that although the project enabled a liberated flow of ideas between two very different groups of individuals, both extremes were infatuated with the mysteries that the Universe holds, equally perplexed with the concept of their own existence in this galaxy.