Art is Science is Art: Strengthening Connections Between Entomology and the Arts

In an effort to indentify the insect, this Noctua pronuba was sketched by Bethann Garramon Merkle during her science communication residency in Grand Teton National Park. You can find more information at www.commnatural.com Bethann Garramon Merkle, © 2024. Art and insects have had a long alliance, ranging from early depictions of insects by Indigenous cultures to taxonomic illustrations and including the use of whole bodies, parts, or products of insects to create art, fibers, and pigments (Anelli and Prischmann-Voldseth 2009, Floyd 2009, Prendergast et al. 2021, Klein 2022). The integration of entomology and art creates imaginative, emotional, and creative experiences to help people better understand our world, enhances research and education, and promotes a broader appreciation of insects and science. Through observation, inquiry, research, and interpretation, both artists and scientists develop approaches that aim to understand the world and our role in nature (Nichols and Stephens 2013, Ellison et al. 2018). Given these synergies, it is no surprise that there is increasing recognition of and openness to art-science education and professional collaborations that are enriching for both disciplines (Davidson 2013, Ellison et al. 2018, Zaelzer 2020). As part of the “Entomology as Inspiration” theme of the 2022 Joint Annual Meeting with the Entomological Societies of America, Canada and British Columbia, the Art is Science is Art symposium highlighted art-science collaborations between entomological research, education, and a variety of art forms through presentations and a hands-on workshop. The symposium emphasized the benefits of art and entomology integration to promote more accessible research communication, stimulate emotional responses, and enhance science and public education. Both entomologists and artists can find inspiration in examples of how integrated art-science programming can promote different viewpoints and modalities for understanding our place in the ecosystem. The insect world is relatively small compared to the scales at which humans interact, causing most people to overlook the intricate workings and lives of insects. When entomologists take steps to communicate their research in novel ways, they can help remedy the general unfamiliarity with these creatures, help more people understand and appreciate the importance of insects, and disseminate research findings to wider audiences. Artists may represent and communicate entomological research through different media, while some researchers use art to interpret their own research findings and make research more accessible. For example, music, sounds, and performances are effective ways to disseminate and share scientific research with a broader audience (Pollard 2016). A soundscape refers to the auditory environment in a given place, including human-made noises, sounds made by organisms, and other ambient sounds (Schafer 1977). The act of listening to sounds in the environment can lead to “unexpected complexities of thoughts, sensations, and emotions that are not quantifiable or measurable” (Westerkamp 2017). Even though most ant sounds are beyond the limits of human sensing, ants themselves sense substrate vibrations and possibly airborne sounds (Hickling and Brown 2000, Roces and Tautz 2001). Ant acoustic communications recorded with contact microphones (Fig. 1) are incorporated into musical compositions by Lisa Schonberg as part of the interdisciplinary ATTA (Amplifying the Tropical Ants) project, which has investigated ant acoustic communication and soundscapes in the Brazilian Amazon since 2017. ATTA brings attention to ants and their hidden sound-worlds, incorporating ant stridulation, locomotion, and other distinct sound-making behaviors in musical compositions. A four-speaker square setup allowed attendees at our symposium to experience these recordings in an immersive soundscape, in which listeners walk between the speakers and take in insect sounds from different listening perspectives and notice new details in insect sounds. The same field recordings are used in research and publications (currently in review) to further our understanding of ant communications. This collaborative partnership demonstrates the great potential of artistic communication to enhance science research itself while also broadening the reach of scientific studies. ATTA activates this potential through artistic knowledge communication, bringing attention to ants both through scientific and artistic research methods. Image of contact microphones a) clipped to vegetation to record the sounds of ant (Camponotus sp.) locomotion (Federal University of Amazonas forest fragment, Manaus, Brazil) and b) underneath bait paper to record Ectatomma sp. ants (Adolfo Ducke Reserve) in Manaus, Brazil. (Photos by Hunter Lee Daniel and Lisa Schonberg.) THE COMBINATION OF ART AND ENTOMOLOGY HAS THE POWER TO SHARE AN ENTOMOLOGIST’S WONDER, HUMOR, AND FASCINATION WITH A BROADER AUDIENCE Music and sound also capitalize on our human ability to perceive auditory patterns. Music can be applied in insect research with the transformation of data into sounds, or sonification. The Edgerly lab uses sonification to understand the shelter-building patterns of embiopterans, or webspinners, a small order of insects with the unique ability to spin silk into protective tunnels throughout their lives. Their complex spinning behaviors include 28 distinct spin-step positions as an individual insect presses its front feet against a foundation, displaying repetitive motifs to create the framework and reinforcement of the silk structure. Visual analyses of spin-step behaviors are complex and do not capture nuances in spin-step choreography. When the Edgerly lab displayed sonification data in time-event plots, the patterns resembled musical compositions with repeating motifs and discernable themes. Sonification techniques were then used to code the spin-steps as musical notes, leading to a series of musical compositions created by a transdisciplinary team of students. These compositions deepened the Edgerly lab’s understanding of species-specific behavioral patterns and behavioral diversification in Embioptera. When these musical pieces are performed, audience members express their appreciation of the beauty of the music, the creative interplay between science and music, and their excitement about the potential for more interdisciplinary projects for students (Edgerly et al. 2020, Jonasson 2023; Fig. 2). A webspinner with silk galleries, and the musical composition created from analyzing spin-steps. The webspinner is an adult female Haploembia solieri (Oligotomidae), approximately 1.0 cm in length. The silk galleries were photographed from a laboratory colony of Antipaluria urichi (Clothodidae) at Santa Clara University. The right image is a page from a musical score composed by Elizabeth Jonasson based on silk-spinning routines of H. solieri. (Photos by Janice S. Edgerly.) Researchers in many disciplines also use direct visual inspections to quantify various characteristics in the natural world. Most insect collections serve as a permanent record of visual and morphological data (Decker et al. 2020). New species, host associations, and behavioral patterns can be investigated within entomology collections. While much of this research tends to stay within the scientific community, a combination of visual data and auditory storytelling brings audiences closer to the importance of entomological research collections. Anna Lindemann’s opera-theater work The Colony is inspired by the Carl W. and Marian E. Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection. The Rettenmeyer collection comprises more than 2 million specimens with accompanying field notes, 7,000 microscope slides, and 6,200 Kodachrome slides. The Colony (Fig. 3) transforms this museum collection into an art-science performance about sisterhood and the evolution of communication in both ants and humans (Lindemann 2022). One Kodachrome slide of an army ant queen, whose abdomen had swelled with somewhere between 20,000 to 200,000 eggs, inspired The Colony’s operatic aria from the perspective of an ant queen (UConn Biodiversity Research Collections 2020, Lindemann 2021). Related research on ant evolution and development, pheromone communication and genetics are incorporated into the hour-long musical performance, which also features animation and storytelling. The integration of rigorous scientific research, music, and theater presents an opportunity to engage audiences and entomologists alike: when Lindemann had the opportunity to share the performance with Waring Trible, author of the paper on caste development and evolution in ants that inspired a climactic scene in The Colony (Trible and Kronauer 2017), Trible responded: Still image from the theatrical performance of The Colony. Copyright Anna Lindemann. I think a lot of us become entomologists because insects naturally have a surreal, dream-like quality; entomology feels like the place where natural selection found the freedom to be its most funny and absurd. I absolutely love seeing a piece of art that captures this feeling. I found The Colony hilarious, poignant, and weird, and—somehow!?—entirely accurate and educational. Exposure to art that incorporates science and research findings has been shown to increase viewer’s knowledge about conservation and insects (Ricci et al. 2023, Brosius et al. 2014). Multidisciplinary teams that combine artists and entomologists create a more holistic understanding and interpretation of insects and habitats and challenge individuals to discover novel ways to present findings while enticing a broader audience to explore science through more accessible and engaging communication (e.g. Morrison and Lemke 2022). By building on people’s curiosity about insects, art-science integration can build relationships with the community and with nature and even provoke powerful and lasting experiences above and beyond traditional knowledge acquisition. The unfamiliarity of insects and negative depictions in popular culture may spur dislike and distrust of insects (Sumner et al. 2018). Pervasive negative connotations can lead to debilitating fear reactions towards insects (Shahriari-Namadi et al. 2018). Exposure to science-based art exhibits can develop the participant’s cognitive knowledge in a way similar to reading scientific literature (Ricci et al. 2023), but it may also contribute to affective learning, acquisition of knowledge, and development of attitudes through emotional engagement (Trussel 2020). Artists who challenge audiences to explore the beauty of insects provide a means to spark emotional responses, evaluate our relationship with the environment, and reconnect with nature. Jennifer Angus creates elaborate immersive installations with real insects pinned directly to gallery walls to create patterns mimicking wallpaper. A museum audience may not expect the large, immersive environment of an art gallery to be filled with insects, and visitor responses to insect-covered walls often fluctuate from fear to awe to distaste to wonder. Indeed, Angus’s exhibits stimulate the viewer to consider insects as remarkable creatures of adaptation and beauty, but also provoke increasingly urgent reflection on “ecological grief” in the age of climate change. As Angus emphasizes, “a world without periodical cicadas, monarch migration, or fireflies is a world without magic.” In the Midnight Garden (2015), exhibited at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, presented visitors with pink walls created by a wash of cochineal scale insects, over which hundreds of beetles and cicadas formed skull and floral motifs (Fig. 4). Viewed by more than half a million people during its six-month run, the exhibition demonstrated the potential for art to reach people who may never have given insects more than a passing thought. With whole ecosystems facing collapse as insects are threatened by pesticides, loss of habitat, and climate change, art can encourage discourse on their importance (Klein and Brosius 2022) and leave visitors contemplating, and perhaps interested in, the wonder and ingenuity of insects for the first time. This kind of emotional response may help audiences realize what we stand to lose if insects are not protected. Portions of In The Midnight Garden exhibition at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. in 2015: a) a full-room image showcasing the wasp nest centered within the room; and b) a wall detail showing skull and flower motifs designed from pinned insects against the pink cochineal-dyed walls. Copyright 2015 Jennifer Angus. Other examples of insect art involve direct “collaboration” with live insects to create a narrative and to help bridge the ever-increasing rift between humanity and the ecosystem. Catherine Chlamers works at the intersection of art, science, and nature with exhibits and multimedia projects supported by extensive research and long-term direct engagement with the natural world. Every winter for nearly ten years, she has returned to the same spot on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica to film, photograph, and follow the fates of more than a dozen colonies of leafcutter ants. The resulting Leafcutters project is an exchange between the artist and millions of wild ants (Fig. 5). Chalmers confronts and challenges our anthropocentric point of view using a variety of visual media to represent the richness, brutality, and indifference that often characterize our relationship with animals. Viewers of these artworks are compelled to reconsider the conventional line between humanity and “other” lifeforms, and instead begin to recognize the links and connections between all life on Earth. Antworks, 2017. Pigment print. Copyright 2017 Catherine Chalmers. On a different scale and medium, Ted Snyder explores how historical entomological texts give insight into the evolving trends and thinking in the field of entomology. He uses erasure poetry to highlight existing words to create new text, working within the limitations and presentation of original manuscripts (Fig. 6). In this way, erasure poetry allows readers to consider entomology’s past through unspoken connotations, dilemmas, and mixed legacies that come with being an entomologist. The backdrop of the original text continues to exist in communication with the new poem, and allows the poet to challenge the traditions and cultural context of a historical document while evoking feelings and emotions that may not have been apparent in the primary source. Using this technique, even scientific papers and species descriptions from entomology’s pioneers give glimpses into the prevailing ideas that dominated the field of entomology, one that was historically the domain of White cisgender men. As represented in Snyder’s erasure poem in Fig. 6, the original text that characterizes the insect as “evil” speaks volumes about the ideology of the time, and the erasure poem calls into question the dogma of human domination over nature. Erasure poetry, Plate 34. Gryllus, a Locust. Copyright 2021 Ted Snyder. (Originally published in The Banyan Review, Issue 6: Summer 2021, Modern Bestiary. http://www.thebanyanreview.com/past-issues/issue6-summer-2021-a/) The combination of art and entomology has the power to share the experiences that entice many entomologists to the field—wonder, humor, and fascination—with a broader audience, many of whom seldom give insects much thought. Visual art, music, theater, and poetry all stimulate sensory responses, creating imaginative experiences that can generate feelings and emotions that are intense and memorable (Eisner 2008). Art can generate positive emotional experiences, including feeling more to nature which creates and about and species loss with on conservation 2009, and 2018, et al. 2020). Art to experiences that are not by cognitive knowledge or scientific These present an opportunity for people to reach beyond their patterns of thinking of themselves as from nature et al. is to the whole about our connections with and to nature. A framework that more information and in better and as a of science communication, is shown to be et al. et al. Merkle et al. 2022). In the the and appreciation of science has Research et al. 2022). is also increasing the of scientists to promote scientific in our 2013, et al. 2018, and The integration of art and entomology research has the potential to engage a wider audience and the hidden of insects and role in nature. This to explore historical that conventional research and with of historical entomological texts example, from the Biodiversity and to with the original the but also the and historical With different and can a poem using words from the existing the and the new and that have been as part of entomology or insect promotes and as a data collection 2016). One way to people to field is to use a natural on a or and to place their where the paper is not directly in their line of to of without at their This on the not on a et al. 2020, Fig. the a then allows more freedom to include to encourage to a and techniques as the or and for in nature without and can be found at of during the 2022 Art is Science is Art hands-on a) a to illustrations from b) insect forms created from natural and various musical for insect sounds and behavioral patterns. (Photos by This to represent insect forms and think about insect a variety of natural as and think about the forms and that make different insect and the natural to represent or insects. of designed by can be found at as as Fig. which examples created by symposium This to the cultural and historical importance of insect products in and for creating an interdisciplinary art project with silk and cochineal can be found in and Prischmann-Voldseth for cochineal and more on natural techniques from A created from the at the 2022 symposium was during the to The for science education (Fig. the 2022 Art is Science is Art one allowed to use a) and insects to silk and These were then made into b) a that was during the in National with to the to science education. The in the University (Photos by This allows to insect sounds and consider the behavioral patterns and morphological features that in a of insect like the in or ants (Fig. the made by as and various the of insects sound as in the et al. 2021). integration can have on how scientists do their research, engage with and promote science and positive behavioral in Brosius et al. et al. 2017). these in to to art has been part of knowledge for et al. and can be both and to science in and et al. 2018). from the creative act of artistic and to communicate their work and find more effective and ways to reach while many the of art and science many do not interdisciplinary is often to for these of if they in research One is to art-science to a wider of and a integration of and for collaborative may creative and with science communication or interested art may be from as the for the in Research inspiration may be from at as the in Science and and for science in and 2023, Merkle 2023, Ellison et al. 2018). approaches that the potential of art-science all of which can be used for entomology, are being and by Bethann Garramon In these and are into the scientific work than using art to science Merkle and are in research to the of these approaches et al. 2020, Merkle transdisciplinary and research provide for and into the of art-science integration in The examples of integration presented and as part of the symposium encourage readers to explore the in the scientific new and create for students and to do the which can be applied to or education to information about insects while audiences to engage and more to nature and the examples help the consider how information and from insect research can help promote connections with enhance and education, and promote science in a way that speaks to a wider take inspiration from these illustrations of how scientists create art and how artists inspiration from the insect world, and discover ways to these within own research, art, and education. information and links for more author can be found in of the

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.