Art of Communicating Science - Seeing (understanding) Through Looking, and Looking through Seeing

Led by Dr. Lucy Spelman, who teaches an interdisciplinary course on this topic at the Rhode Island School of Design

This workshop invites participants to improve their skills in communicating and illustrating science. In the process, they will discover that science communication is more than science education. Delivering the facts through clear and concise infographics for a poster or textbook is indeed an important objective. But science made visual can be used in other ways, too. Art informed by science can be controversial, emotive, entertaining, persuasive, and surprising. Additionally, we explore the difference between looking (observing) and seeing (understanding.) Once we understand (see) what something is, we look at it differently. [Speakers from the symposium or invited local scientists] will present their science. Through a series of exercises, workshop participants will practice making science relevant, meaningful, and interesting to a general audience by making it visual using simple sketches. The focus is on idea generation, not artistic rendering.