UW Eye Research Institute
Jill Casid, PhD, is associate professor of Visual Culture Studies and director of the UW Visual Culture Center.As a historian, a theorist of visual culture, and a practicing artist in photo-based media, Casid, also a member of the UW Eye Research Institute, is helping to build research and educational collaborations with colleagues in the sciences who are also working on aspects of vision.
As part of this ongoing collaboration among scholars from the sciences, arts and humanities, the February 7-8, 2008 “Visualizing Science” conference, co-sponsored by the UW Eye Research Institute, the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, and the departments of Art, Art History, Medical History and Bioethics, and Sociology, was held to explore issues of visuality and visual technologies in the sciences.
Michael Lynch, professor and director of Graduate Studies and Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, was the guest lecturer on Thursday evening. His talk, “Drawing Attention to Nano: Fantastic Realism and Other Modes of Visual Impression Management in Nanotechnology,” examined science imagery in general, then specifically focused on how science illustrators are representing the otherwise unseen tiny world of “nano.”
Friday’s conference featured two panels of speakers in the morning sessions. The first panel addressed the question “How do issues of audience and communication shape the way science is visualized?” and the second focused on “What are the roles of culture, technology and subjectivity?” Speakers represented the departments of Life Sciences Communication, Genetics and Medical Genetics, Art History, Engineering Physics, and the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.(Next)(Previous)