The Science of Art | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

The Science of Art | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Divya Goyal |Published: January 13, 2019 7:52:21 am

The Science of Art

The 106th Indian Science Congress in Punjab saw the melding of aesthetic fervour and scientific temper.

The 3D sculpture of APJ Abdul Kalam.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed towards ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom’, wrote the great scientist Albert Einstein in Out of My Later Years’. The book is a collection of his words and essays, in which are reflections on aspects beyond science, including the fascinating connect between art and science.

At the 106th Indian Science Congress that was held at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Phagwara, Punjab, last week, visitors were further introduced to the idea when they saw 3D sculptures of Albert Einstein and Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, on campus. Einstein and Kalam, sitting on two benches outside the administration block, attracted almost every visitor especially children, who posed for photographs.

Behind these two works created by faculty and students of the Department of Fine Arts of LPU was the strong hand of science. As great biochemist and writer Isaac Asimov said, “There is an art to science, and science in art; the two are not enemies, but different aspects of the whole.”

Manavpreet Kaur Arora, Assistant Professor and Head of Fine Arts Department, LPU, says that art and science cannot be separated from each other for both involve logic, exploration, processes, methodology, exploration and finally implementation of an idea. “So, with our university hosting the country’s largest scientists meet, our fine arts students and faculty also contributed to it in their way. The process behind creating the statues of Kalam and Einstein was scientific and involved technical processes to make them look real,” says Arora.

Einstein’s face moulded in clay.

Since both Kalam and Einstein were not very tall, the sculptures were created in a way that when other tall people share the bench with them for a photograph, the personalities of the scientists were not suppressed. A process of scaling, explains Arora, ensured correct measurements. A number of photographs were referenced to see that even minute details such as the direction of strands of hair and distance between the eyes were correct.