How Do Art And Science Visualise Life?

Digital technology has permeated everyday life and filled it with reproducible images. This has affected art and science too and their inter-relation: for example, older illustrations of flora and fauna have been replaced by photography and filmed nature documentaries.

Do different ways of seeing the world and presenting life depend on different, distinct and exclusive interpretations? How far can artistic practice advance science through image-work under these new conditions?

Rob Kesseler is Professor of Ceramic Art and Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. His books, Fruit, Pollen: the hidden sexuality of flowers and Seeds: times capsules of life, came out of a long-running collaboration with The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and its Millennium Seed Project. He is currently working with molecular biologists at the Gulbenkian Science Institute in Portugal.