La vida en imágenes: las ciencias biológicas entre el dibujo tradicional y la visualización computacional

Resumen

Life in images: Biological sciences between traditional drawing and computational imagery.

Modern biology is a highly visual science. Some bioscience imagery jumped out of the research arena and now is part of the collective visual memory. A case study on research papers published in Science and Nature shows that also in peer reviewed scientific communication, the visual component is very important. We can argue that visuals are seen as a privileged resource by the authors as they use specific strategies to densify, compact and gather information in order to counteract the limit of figures imposed by editorial politics. In the digital age, new visual representations with recovered aesthetic features arise. The future will bring even more visuality. Simulation and the possibility to interact with computational models in real time, as well as interaction with virtual organisms developed by synthetic biology, makes us think that they will not be only images of life, but also images that are alive.

Key words. Biology, biological sciences, scientific illustration, scientific imaging, scientific communication, visuality, visibility