Histochemical Seeing: Scientific Visualization and Art Education

Overview & Synopsis

What are the capacities of visual arts curricula to engage learning within narrow frameworks of overly "scientistic" standards (Lather, 2007)? With growing emphasis in schools under STEM initiatives and evidence-based standards, the possible cross-pollination of effects that art education may have on a science-centric education may be a lifeline to budgets and relevancy. Yet, focal points to ponder these possibilities illuminate not only what art education has to offer, but also, what contradictions in scientific visualization and representation offer to art educators. Seeing in science can be just as much a cultural practice as seeing in art. The potential insights that art educators may gain from investigating the tensions in representation in scientific visualization and the temptations of digital image manipulation may allow them to look anew at their own relationship to non-digital visualizations, such as observational drawing.