Designs for Life. (360G-Wellcome-079323_Z_06_Z)

'Designs for Life' Exploring the visualisation of developments in genetic research through analysis of a series of controlled production collaborations and integrated public engagement. Genetic scientists have often indicated difficulty in presenting and interpreting their research to an extended scientific community and the wider public. As developments in science and technology progress at an ever-increasing rate it is essential to understand how new knowledge is to be visually interpreted and communicated. This problem has particular significance at a time when public debate and anxiety is widespread around issues raised by gene and cell research. The proposed activity is based upon the potential of visual art to communicate often complex ideas to a general audience. Effective ways by which this expertise can be used to mediate between the scientific specialist and a wider community will be explored. Debate will be initiated around methodologies in the processing of visual information in a scientific context. It will harness expertise within the Biomedical Research Centre and the Visual Research Centre at the University of Dundee. This will be achieved through a series of publicly accessible collaborations between the artist Paul Harrison and twelve individual scientists working in specific yet related areas of cell research. The research will establish productive methodologies for collaboration, tested through public exhibition of visual outcomes, debated in an academic symposium and disseminated through a dedicated website and publication. The aim of the project is to bring together a spectrum audience including scientists, artists, academics, students, general public/visitors to DCA and school and community groups, located primarily, but by no means exclusively, in the environs of Dundee.