This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Creatology is an experiment in blogging about creativity and science. Welcome to our first post on the Scientific American Blog Network, which is crammed with brilliant science writers. We’re fascinated by the intersection between science and art, and we hope you are too.
The science/art overlap creates some interesting memes. Take science tattoos, for example, or anatomically-inspired baking or pretty much anything made in the likeness of the DNA double-helix. We will be flagging up trends in cool science-themed art, and even attempting to make some ourselves.
We also want to explore how the marriage of science and art can propagate emotional impacts beyond the bald facts – and perhaps even change society. We want to answer questions such as: How can art help us engage with scientific issues? And how can it turn us on to living sustainably and healthily? Whether the challenge is climate change, biodiversity at breaking point or global health, how can art communicate complex issues?
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We also want to celebrate the sheer aesthetic beauty of science. Petri dish art, anyone?
But we would like to do this in a way which is creative itself, and fun and quirky. We’re going to play with different formats, different styles of presentation, multimedia, cartoons, poetry, origami, recipes – anything goes.
Some things might work brilliantly. Some things might fail to hit the mark. But hopefully it will be an interesting ride over the course of the year.
Feed it back
Some people think that doing what you love actually makes you less likely to succeed as you are too close to your work, and less likely to accept constructive criticism. We all love science journalism, so the most important thing for us is your feedback on how we can improve our posts and what you enjoy.
Please also contact us and confess what fires you up with inspiration so we can address your artistic passions in future posts.
Introducing…
Who are we? We are three graduates from City University London’s science journalism masters programme, which we joined in its inaugural year (2009-2010). Between us, we’ve worked at some of the finest media institutions in the UK, including Nature, New Scientist, the Guardian, and the Financial Times.
We are: Joseph Milton, Christine Ottery and Gozde Zorlu.
- Joseph Milton is an evolutionary biologist who gradually mutated into a journalist over time.
- Christine Ottery a science and environment journalist who likes to make things.
- Gozde Zorlu is a science journalist who has worked on an award-winning investigation, and has a special interest in global health.
To find out more about us, please read our profiles.
We will occasionally be joined by other friends and collaborators from the course or anyone we can rope in to help.
We hope you enjoy our blog posts. If you want to be super connected you can also find us on Twitter @creatologyblog or Facebook.
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