ABSTRACT The author describes his experiences as first a scientist and later an early digital artist, which led him to recognize both similarities and contrasts in the thinking and practice of art and science.

ABSTRACT This article outlines the roles of art theory and empirical psychology in understanding a work of art in its experience. Art theory sets the criteria of what the experience should be, and psychologists examine whether the predicted experience matches the observed experience of the recipient. An important issue is the role of knowledge in artistic evaluation, with resulting demand characteristics and concerns for self-presentation. With the help of recently developed implicit measures, both behavioral and biological, researchers are able to distinguish between explicitly reported knowledge and genuinely felt experience. The author presents examples of how art theory and empirical psychology might interact and how psychology can be used to examine a work's artistic value.

ABSTRACT The author, both a composer and a physician, chronicles his development as a musician—from his childhood fascination with improvising on the piano to the eventual performance of one of his compositions in the church of Saint Stefan in Vienna—and his career as a medical doctor studying heart disease and researching new cures. He finds that the common denominator in composing music and doing medical research is the creative impulse. In his life, music and medicine have never been in competition. Rather, when frustrated by difficulties in medical research, the author has found renewal in composing music.

ABSTRACT The author discusses her use of ink in water to create three-dimensional radial spreads (outward movements of liquid about a central point). The radial spreads form patterns as the ink moves across and in the water. The patterns have both scientific and aesthetic aspects and form the basis for speculation in both areas. They also provide an exciting new dimension to the artist's work relating to fluid flow: Unique patterns, often seen only by the eye of the camera, can be generated and preserved within one photograph or a photographic sequence.

ABSTRACT The author introduces an outstanding master of graphic design and photography, Anton Stankowski, as a fractal artist. Stankowski saw his challenge as inventing a visual graphic language capable of depicting natural and technological processes and abstract notions in an aesthetic and comprehensible way. Many of Stankowski's works demonstrate fractal-like characteristics. Analysis of his theory of design provides convincing evidence that this is not accidental. Stankowski used these features consciously. He devised and applied a principle of organizing forms in pictures by means of two components, branching and regeneration, both of which are properties of self-similarity and the underlying bases of fractals.

ABSTRACT Evidence from language, history and form suggest an analogy between the cinema and the genome. The author describes some of the relationships between cinema and the genome and points to opportunities for discovering unmarked categories within the genome and new methods of representation. This is accomplished by evaluating existing metaphors presented for the understanding of genetics and revealing how current scientific understanding and social concerns suggest a cinematic alternative. The formal principles of function, difference and development mediate discussion and serve as heuristics for investigating creative opportunities.

ABSTRACT The author has studied natural patterns both by drawing them and by finding analogs for them in crafts materials and processes, including batik, shibori, wrinkled paper painting, paper marbling, moiré, painting and engraving on Plexiglas. She discusses the generation of patterns in nature and how scientists' understanding of them has expanded during the period of her own explorations. She recommends this study for enhancing one's connection to the natural world and the cosmos. The author also explains how she has found patterns useful as metaphors for philosophical ideas.

ABSTRACT The author recounts his quest to design an alternative plasma fusion device that could generate limitless energy through nuclear fusion. The proposed Fractal Reactor is based on fractal geometry rather than the Euclidean geometry used in the designs for the containment systems of plasma fusion devices. Fusion energy systems might become more effective if they more closely embody the geometry and physics of stars, nature's “fractal reactors.” The author aims to work with nature and not against it in controlling the forces that govern burning plasmas. Instead of jamming the square peg of Euclidean geometry into the round hole of fractal geometry, the author considers exerting intense forces on plasmas that approximate the gravitational forces in a star.

ABSTRACT The worlds of animation and anatomy have a long-standing connection based on both direct and indirect collaboration. The author surveys a number of projects in which anatomists have consulted on animation projects or animation techniques have been used for data gathering and analysis. The author describes his own work in light of this connection.

ABSTRACT The author discusses the wide-ranging correspondence of renowned geometer H.S.M. (Donald) Coxeter with George Odom, an artist who has made several geometric discoveries while living in seclusion. Coxeter was responsible for bringing these insights to wider attention

ABSTRACT The increasing use of computer enhancement and simulation to reveal the unseen human body brings with it challenges, opportunities and responsibilities at the interface of art and science. Here they are presented and discussed in the context of efforts to understand the role of blood-flow dynamics in vascular disease.