GRAPHIC SCIENCE

The link between art and science has a very long history. In many respects, scientific development is tied to our ability to visualise theories and empirical discoveries. From Galileo’s watercolours of the moon, to Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, scientific discovery and artistic representation have gone hand-in-hand. Graphic Science explicitly draws on this history to consider new ways to tell scientific stories and engage new audiences. It also works with the principles of science communication around relationship building, community engagement and effective storytelling. Many people might assume that science and storytelling are polar opposites, that one is dedicated to fact where the other has a tendency to fiction, but all scientific research whether it be the search for funding or the dissemination of findings is absolutely dependent on a capacity for telling good stories. Graphic Science uses the multi-modal nature of comics—the use of written text, speech, images, gesture, facial expression, sound (effects), colour, proxemics and spatial dynamics—to develop rich and textured communication that other forms of mono-modal (text) or bi-modal (text and pictures) media cannot match.