Rick Nelson

IMEC: Bringing science to life through art
October 22, 2008

I’ve commented previously that an engineering career isn’t an easy sell to students in the US, and I applaud the efforts of organizations that are trying to instill an interest in technology in young people. Those initiatives range from the Lego WeDo platform, which adapts National Instruments’ LabView graphical design environment for the grade-school set, to the US Department of Energy’s EcoCar competition, which provides computer-modeling and hands-on experience for future automotive engineers. Addressing age groups in between is the FIRST program, which brings the excitement of sporting events to robotics competition.

One goal of the Lego WeDo product and FIRST competition is to instill an interest in technology in children to open their minds to engineering careers, while EcoCar aims to enhance the skills of those who have already chosen technical fields. But a significant constituency of people—at all ages—do not and will never pursue scientific careers.

Such people, said Imke Debecker, outreach communication coordinator at the nanotechnology research center IMEC, often find scientific topics too complex to understand or simply irrelevant to their lives. She’s working to change that—converting such people to “friends of nanotechnology” through IMEC outreach efforts. She hopes to instill in them the sentiment expressed by Dr Mark Miodownik, head of the materials research group in the engineering division at King's College, London, in a BBC column titled “So who needs scientists?” “Science is like poetry,” he writes, adding, “It is an expression of something sublime.”

IMEC’s outreach efforts address people of all ages, said Debecker, speaking at IMEC’s Annual Research Review Meeting October 13 in Leuven, Belgium. For youngsters, IMEC sponsored a nanotechnology festival, where students were encouraged to describe their ultimate nanotechnology applications. Their suggestions included nano-earphones that won’t fall out during exercise and dresses that would let you upload different patterns. My favorite: Nanocamera-embedded fabric that would display on the front of clothing the view behind the wearer, rendering the wearer practically invisible.

For adults, IMEC is working with Addict Creative Lab, which draws on the talents of 4000 registrants representing 32 disciplines, including fashion, photography, architecture, cooking, design, textile manufacturing, music, advertising, and branding. Points of focus include algorithm-based emergent behavior, victimless leather grown from embryonic stem cells, biojewelry, and engineered materials. Results of the Addict Creative Lab and IMEC collaboration will be highlighted in the forthcoming book “#29/in.tangible/scape.s.”

IMEC will continue its outreach program with an exhibit at the Creativity World Forum November 19-20 in Antwerp, Belgium, and the organization plans to engage 800 youngsters in nanotechnology work at the Academy of Leuven during 2009.

Artists have of course often found technology an inspiration for their work. For example, last April I commented on an exhibit titled “Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon” at the San Jose Museum of Art, which focused in part on the shortcomings of technology that has failed to deliver friendly humanoid robots that would help us with our homework and chores. The IMEC effort represents a healthy initiative where artists and scientists don’t talk past each other but instead communicate with each other. The collaboration of artists and scientists may not solve all the world’s problems, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Participants in the IMEC outreach events may not come away with a comprehensive understanding of nanotechnology—but they might well obtain a healthy respect for the complexity and possibilities of the field. And a lack of thorough understanding might not be a bad thing, as Debecker suggested by highlighting this quote from Einstein: “The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

Posted by Rick Nelson on October 22, 2008 | Comments (0)