The colorful, abstract image on Jennifer David’s computer screen looks more like a tie-dyed creation and less like the bone marrow sample that it actually is.

After her high school biology teacher, who was also a photographer, suggested she try combining science and photography, David, Hays freshman, used a microscope and digital camera to take photos of bone marrow, plant and skin cells and other organisms. She then enhanced these images by adding color filters and exaggerations with the computer program Adobe Illustrator.

Seeing photography and science as similar in the way they showcase the “natural” side of things, David transformed the way she viewed art and science by using both in an unusual way.  The results were interesting, beautiful pieces of art that gave David a better appreciation of science, a topic she didn’t always understand.

“I was able to make something so scientific into something beautiful as well,” she says.

And with that beauty came a new perspective.

For scientists and artists alike at the University, crafting a greater public understanding of their respective fields is crucial. Robert Hagen, lecturer in ecology and evolutionary biology, says scientists have failed to communicate science because of the ways in which scientists have taught and approached these ideas. Working with artists, then, provides a crucial opportunity to remedy these miscommunications; new visual representations of ideas such as evolution, for instance, can help change people’s perceptions on this sometimes controversial topic. Though certain challenges may arise — art and science are two very different experiences with very different ways of communicating — collaborations between art and science are essential in creating larger connections.

Looking at these broader implications is a main focus of The Commons, a partnership between the Spencer Museum of Art, the Biodiversity Institute and the Hall Center for the Humanities that looks at the relationship between natural and cultural systems. Aimed at making interdisciplinary approaches “part and parcel” to education at the University, The Commons presented a series of difficult dialogues — many of which addressed issues such as climate change — last year and provided seed grants to three research teams made up of faculty members from various academic departments.

“Artists are wonderful at reframing the world,” says Jordan Yochim, associate director of The Commons. “But artists can also benefit from the understandings uncovered by scientists.”

The relationship Yochim speaks of provides students with new learning tools. By training them to work across fields such as art and science, they become better prepared to face issues such as climate change, healthcare reform and the depletion of natural resources, all of which have cultural as well as natural implications.

Students, faculty members and organizations across campus have used what Hagen and Yochim both consider essential collaborations between science and art to find new perspectives for themselves as well as for others. Here’s a look at a few of these collaborations.

Finding connections

During one of those dreaded organic chemistry exams that human biology majors are always complaining about, Ali Ainsworth, St. Louis senior, is calmer than most. Rather than thinking about the purely chemical nature of the compounds she’s supposed to be connecting, Ainsworth looks at the structures in terms of movement and pattern, like learning a dance combination. If one structure has a certain function, it will always have that function, just like the dance moves in a combination will always follow a pattern.

Though she hasn’t always noticed this relationship between art and science in her studies, Ainsworth, a double major in human biology and dance, realized after completing a research project on ballet and neurobiology that, like on her organic chemistry tests, she subconsciously uses one field to reinforce the other.

A dancer from a young age, Ainsworth originally came to the University thinking she would dance professionally. Her interest in science, a field she enjoys because it seems to “explain” things, led to her dual studies. She recognized the connections between the two when she received an Undergraduate Research Award from the Honors Program to study the relationship between ballet and neurobiology.

Ultimately, Ainsworth found that several different brain functions are at work during dance. When she draws her leg up and spins around gracefully in a pirouette, Ainsworth employs the movement function of her brain. Likewise, when she memorizes the eight-counts of a new combination, she uses her cognitive, or memory, function. Seeing these connections between science and art, Ainsworth now looks at the two in relation to each other, noticing how dance can be used in more ways than performance.

As a dancer in last spring’s Tree of Life performance at the Lied Center, for example, Ainsworth combined dance and science in a multimedia performance aimed at educating and entertaining audiences about evolution.

Two unusual performances

The auditorium is pitch black, and the only glimmer of light comes from a neon speck beginning to form on the stage up ahead. A scientist, fashioned from glow-in-the-dark lights, enters the stage and begins building some sort of animal. The scientist’s name is Dr. Henslow and his latest creation is a neon-lit dinosaur named Darwin. New to the world, Darwin at first appears shy but soon succumbs to his “predatory nature” and attacks Dr. Henslow.

To save himself from an untimely eating, Dr. Henslow gives Darwin a heart, sparking a tender exchange between two unlikely friends. Encouraged by Dr. Henslow, Darwin sets out into the night, accompanied by brightly lit fireflies, to explore the world and encounters many new creatures, including a gangly ostrich named Verla and a beautiful fish named Peche, who all give Darwin a new perspective on the world.

This story will unfold at the Lied Center when Darwin the Dinosaur, presented by CORBIAN Visual Arts and Dance, comes to Lawrence on Oct. 3.

The production uses electroluminescent lights and puppetry to explore the relationships between humans and creatures. This performance, says Karen Christilles, associate director of the Lied Center, carries on the aims started with the Creative Campus Project, a campaign to promote interdisciplinary learning that included last year’s Tree of Life performance.

Darwin the Dinosaur combines topics of evolution and creation; exploration and discovery; and art and emotion to look at how humans interact with nature.

The bond formed between Darwin and Dr. Henslow, which is most touching in the final moments when Darwin battles the menacing red dinosaur Brutus to save Dr. Henslow’s life, teaches audiences to treat their environments with mutual respect, promoting ideas of sustainability.

A giant screen projection in the middle of the stage shows a scientist making a simple statement: “How do I ask a question?”

A jazzy piano riff begins playing as male and female dancers — one at a time, at first, and then in small groups — take the stage dressed in organic-looking costumes that accentuate their fast-paced movements.

More images fill the large screen behind them and two smaller screens on stage, displaying a mix of dancers and scientists asking more questions.

“How is our body able to react to changes as we grow and get older?”

The dancers move fluidly across the stage, interacting with each other through lifts and synchronized movements, but the performance ends with a single dancer in the middle of the stage, twirling along with the piano’s tune before she exits the stage.

The opening act of Liz Lerman’s Ferocious Beauty: Genome begins an interesting exchange between art and science.

When Lerman began working on Ferocious Beauty, which will be performed by the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Nov. 7 at the Lied Center, she realized she had the challenge of communicating both genetics and modern dance, two fields that are often misunderstood, to people in a way that both would be understandable.

Collaborating with more than 30 scientists, Lerman choreographed the human genome — the map of all human genes — creating a dance that is both humorous and graceful. Using dance and video, Lerman created a literal dialogue on stage: Portions of the interviews she did with scientists play during the performances, raising questions and ideas such as, “Science is neutral. It always has been; it always will be,” that performers and audiences alike can reflect on as they see the human genome presented in a new light.

Events such as these and others, including last month’s Amanda Shaw performance, which combined the singer’s musical talents with her environmental efforts, and the upcoming performance by the Kronos Quartet, embody the Lied Center’s overarching goal of promoting interdisciplinary ways of thinking about art.

“With performances like Ferocious Beauty and Darwin the Dinosaur, we see art in a much broader sense,” Christilles says. “These ideas allow artists and audiences to question what art is and where it’s going.”

The power of objects

A gateway of sorts frames the entrance to the Spencer Museum of Art. Two banners illustrating the lower bodies of two men — more affectionately known by many of the Spencer staff as “the guys in Speedos” — both greet and shock museum visitors.

These images, part of the xy exhibition, which runs till Oct. 4, takes a scientific idea — male sexuality is determined by the X and Y chromosomes — and uses art to ask what it means to be a man and how visual representations affect our view of male sexuality.

The xy exhibition is one example of the many recent collaborations between art and science happening at the Spencer.

“We are in the unique position to use objects — and relatively interesting objects — to investigate issues related to and involving art,” says Kate Meyer, print room curatorial assistant at the museum.

Last spring, the Spencer used the power of objects to explore issues like climate change and environmental sustainability with three innovative partnerships. Climate Change at the Poles, A Greenland Glacier and Trees and Other Ramifications all illustrated how different approaches to subjects create new ways of looking at ideas for both artists and scientists.

For example, with A Greenland Glacier, the Spencer commissioned photographer Terry Evans to work with the on-campus Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) during its research on the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland. Evans’ photographs of ice fjords leading into the glacier are equally breathtaking and haunting; virtually no human presence is documented and yet the human threat on these disappearing landscapes is apparent. Her photographs, like the images compiled by CReSIS on the same trip, examine the effects humans have on fragile ecosystems. Her artistic rendering attempts to question how art can be used to communicate these ideas.

With works like Evans’ photographs, says Steve Goddard, senior curator of prints and drawings, the Spencer wants to move away from the idea that art only illustrates things.

“Today, the questions are so big that no one discipline can answer them,” Goddard says.  Because we learn so naturally from images, collaborations between science and art enable us to work toward finding solutions for these questions as well to ask others. For instance, The Graphic Imperative: International Posters for Peace, Social Justice and the Environment, 1965-2005, on display till Nov. 29, addresses a multitude of themes and concerns, including health, AIDS and the environment.

Ultimately, as the Spencer plans future collaborations with scientists and becomes more of an integral part of campus, the power and beauty of objects is what makes science and art so well-matched.

“Art adds a sort of dignity and emotion to the objects that scientists also look at,” Meyer says. “By using these objects to address functional ideas like climate change and trees, we can look at them from different angles and ask, ‘How do we feel about them?’”