Panel to discuss Darwin, the arts

Artists, poets, scientists and IU professors will examine the connection between evolutionary science and the arts during ArtsWeek at the discussion “Darwin, the arts, and the aesthetics of the ordinary” to see how Darwin’s principles of natural selection relate to art and how humans view beauty.

The two-hour discussion from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday at The Stone Age Institute is part of a 10-day residency, running until Feb. 27. The residency is put on by The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, a professional company of dance artists that was founded in Washington.

It will include a performance of the company’s production “Ferocious Beauty: Genome” on Feb. 26 at the IU Auditorium.

“The performance raises issues about evolution, genetics, biotechnology and the ethical and moral responses to that,” said Anya Royce, director of the Library/Laboratory in Performing Arts.

“Her notion always is to create conversations across the sciences and arts, and across universities and communities,” she said of Lerman. “Biologists usually don’t talk a lot to dancers.”

But they will have the opportunity on Thursday as printmaker Rudy Pozzatti; artist Betsy Stirratt; scientists Rudy Raff, John Colbourne and Michael Muehlenbein; surgeon and photographer Mark Pescovitz; biologist Roger Hangarter and choreographer Liz Lerman will be present. Anthropology professor Jeanne Sept will moderate.

The artists will also be presenting some of their material. Pescovitz, who will be presenting some photographs, said the topic is new for him and in many ways out of his normal comfort zone.

“When I take my sensibilities to photography, I tend to focus on linear elements frequently,” he said, noting as well that the double helix structure of DNA follows a linear pattern.

Pescovitz is also interested in the study of biomimicry, or how human structures imitate designs of nature.

“The beehive is a very beautifully designed structure that is very strong,” he said. “That structure, that hexagonal form, has been used in construction – for example, geodesic domes,” he said, comparing the structure to the dome at Epcot.

As this year marks Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of his historic publication “On the Origin of Species,” the event is also part of the year-long celebration of Darwin.

Biology professor Rudy Raff said Darwin has become so prominent because of the controversy surrounding his studies.

“He sent a shockwave through society,” Raff said. “What was once a comfortable view that humans were the peak of all creation suddenly is drawn into question. The only other people who changed humanity’s view of themselves so dramatically were Galileo and Copernicus, the pioneer physicists and astronomers.”

Raff also pointed to the sheer volume of Darwin’s work – 25 books – and its content.
“He did all this writing, and the stuff he wrote was so interesting, it’s almost like you know him,” he said. “If you read his letters back and forth with his sisters and his cousins, it reads like Jane Austen. It’s a picture of the 19th century.”