September events and books at the intersection of science and art. BOOK
'Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future.' Edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer. Preface by Neal Stephenson. William Morrow. $27.99. 560 pages.
The science fiction author Neal Stephenson has proposed that our civilization has recently suffered from a lack of ambition when it comes to engineering. In this anthology, which he calls a 'conscious throwback to the practical techno-optimism of the Golden Age,' he pushes his fellow writers to 'start pulling their weight and supplying big visions' like Isaac Asimov's robots or Robert A. Heinlein's rocket ships. The hefty volume opens with a bold story by Mr. Stephenson himself, about a man who sets out to build a 12-mile-tall steel structure in the desert, exploring real questions about how such a tower would survive in the cold, windy, electrically charged upper atmosphere. In a playful response, Bruce Sterling closes the book with a story that flashes forward to a time when most of humanity has been launched into orbit from the tower.
PAPER
'Outbreak,' by Rogan Brown. Entered in the National Open Art Exhibition, Somerset House, London. Opens Sept. 18. Free.
If you look closely at this array of white, spindly forms, you'll see that one of the petri dishlike domes that holds them is cracked, its contents spreading out like a weed. If you look even closer, you'll see that every last tendril has been hand-sliced from paper with a scalpel. The piece, 'Outbreak,' shortlisted for a competition in London, was inspired by a chance encounter with a medical researcher who told the artist, Rogan Brown, that it was not uncommon for pathogens to escape the lab. At the time, Mr. Brown had recently moved to an isolated French forest. Impressed by the tenacity of the woods around him, he began to look at leaves and wings under a microscope. 'I spent a long time looking at images of bacteria' and found them to be 'sublimely beautiful but actually quite frightening as well,' he said.
ART
Vesalius Continuum and Fabrica Vitae. Sept. 4-8. Zakynthos, Greece.
Andreas Vesalius, whose innovative dissections led to woodcuts showing human bodies with sinews and entrails exposed, is considered the grandfather of modern anatomy. Among the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of his birth are a conference and exhibition on the Greek island of Zakynthos. In a twist that Vesalius would probably have appreciated, the organizers want to dig up his skeleton and cast a bronze reconstruction of his face. In a traveling art show inspired by Vesalius's vision of the human body, one of the more allegorical works, by the Spanish painter Dino Valls, shows a divided woman, her spine and guts exposed, trying to wrap her arms around her other half.
Third International NanoArt Festival. AIC University, Iasi, Romania. Sept. 22-28. Free.
Alongside the International Conference on Physics of Advanced Materials will be this festival of NanoArt. The organizers distinguish between nanolandscapes, which offer views of natural materials at the molecular level, and nanosculptures, tiny human-made objects that are posed for an electron microscope. In one entry from Romania, an extreme close-up of a sunflower takes on the appearance of a pouting, bloodthirsty scorpion. In another, a bundle of carbon nanotubes looks like a cross between a jellyfish and a mushroom cloud. Some artists use gratuitous digital tricks, but the plainest images speak for themselves.
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