Conversations Across the Creek has been running for several years to provide a space for continuing dialogue among ANU scientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. It recognises that despite the physical separation of the sciences from the humanities on our campus (separated by Sullivan’s Creek), shared intellectual spaces and communities of practice continue to grow apace, and with great results.

In 2022, the series is convened by Kylie Message (HRC), Anna-Sophie Jurgens (Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science), Elisa de Courcy (Centre for Art History and Art Theory), Alison Behie (School of Archaeology and Anthropology), and Ruth Morgan (Centre for Environmental History).

October 2022 Conversations Across the Creek: Visualising Research

Public discourse is visually mediated. Google Images, for example, aggregates over 10 billion photographs all tagged and sequenced according to various algorithms and engagement, which orders and determines their significance. Despite this contemporary context of image profusion, and the ethical questions it inspires, the visual remains a key conduit for the communication and representation of data and scientific principles. The scientific tradition of empirical observation is itself visually bound. Images produced within the scientific disciplines often are used to illustrate method and give authority to results, while scientific data, has a long history of being visually translated, interpreted and communicated, though demonstration, tabulation; graphs; maps, and photographs. However, science images, for example, also give rise to images of science that play an important role in how we perceive science in the public imagination.

How do we visualise our research and translate our research findings into visual images - and thus into the human imagination - in different disciplines at the ANU? What techniques and media do we use and how do we actually define 'image' - as a visualisation or representation of research? The speakers in this panel consider this aggregation, illumination and interpretation of raw data in both contemporary and historic visual contexts and mediums. Their research and research products use the visual to engage with complex ideas and data sets; they all meditate on the historic tradition of the visualisation of science and scientific knowledge for public audiences.

Speakers:

Dr Anna Madeleine Raupach (School of Art and Design)

Dr Mathieu Leclerc (School of Archaeology and Anthropology)

Dr Martyn Jolly (School of Art and Design)

Chairs:

Dr Anna-Sophie Jurgens (Australian National Centre for the Public Communication of Science)

Dr Elisa de Courcy (Centre for Art History and Art Theory)