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Poetic science: evoking wonder through transmedia discovery of science

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Poetic science: evoking wonder through transmedia discovery of science

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POETIC SCIENCE:
EVOKING WONDER THROUGH TRANSMEDIA DISCOVERY OF SCIENCE

by
Amanda Tasse

A Dissertation Presented to the

FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(MEDIA ARTS AND PRACTICE)

August 2016

Dissertation Committee
Steve Anderson, PhD (Chair)
Henry Jenkins, PhD
Holly Willis, PhD
Scott Fisher, M.S.
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 ii
ABSTRACT
This dissertation presents a transmedia approach to poetic science as a beneficial
methodology for communicating popular science that bridges traditional divides between the
humanities and sciences. Within this methodological approach, both arts-driven and conventional
forms of scientific experimentation and communication exist alongside one-another to enhance,
inform, and promote dialogue across disciplinary divides, and to provide multiple points of entry
into a shared and diverse knowledge community. Though this discussion centers on scientific
communication, these theories and practices can be extended to any field whereby both factual and
fiction based storytelling contribute to greater understanding and engagement of the central
themes. This theory is primarily informed by and related to particular media arts practices that,
combined with this written document, encompass the larger project of this Media Arts + Practice
dissertation. This document supports the practice based projects by describing them in more detail
and outlining the theory that informed and emerged from them. This written form is best viewed
as an extended artist statement and theoretical support for practice based research in media arts.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project was made possible through the encouragement and efforts of a great network
of collaborators and supporters. In addition to being integral to the process and products, they
helped me maintain the vision and persistence to see it through. I am deeply grateful for the unique
opportunities, conversations, connections, and pathways opened up through pursuing a PhD in
Media Arts + Practice (iMAP, MA+P) within the USC School of Cinematic Arts, which was only
in its early stages when I joined. I feel blessed to have found a route to explore both art and research
within such a sane, inspired, and supportive graduate program.
I received support and encouragement from the faculty, staff members, and fellow graduate
students in the Media Arts + Practice department, who helped me to improve my skills, advance
my research, learn what it means to be a theory and practice based academic, and navigate the
process and system at USC. I’d like to thank the current Director of MA+P, Holly Willis, who
balances a strong scholarly career with a powerhouse administrative one. Holly shepherded
MA+P’s precursor the Institute for Multimedia Literacy and the MA+P undergraduate program
and department into existence, while guiding the PhD program and educating the wider school
about practice and theory based research. I am grateful for Elizabeth Ramsey, Assistant MA+P
Director, similarly a hybrid scholar and administrator who patiently helped us navigate and
complete the program with enthusiastic kindness and intelligence.
Since my early days as an art undergrad, I’ve worked in an interdisciplinary transmedial
way, eventually finding my home in the Animation & Digital Arts (DADA) program at USC out
of a desire to design varied media expressions within mixed reality frameworks. Mentor and
department chair, Kathy Smith, exposed us to expanded and interdisciplinary frameworks beyond
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 iv
traditional ideas of animation and encouraged us to consider the research potentials of cinematic
media, music to my ears. She was the first to suggest and encourage my interest in pursuing a PhD.
Soon after, Steve Anderson, former Director and a co-founder of the MA+P PhD program
was the first to welcome and encourage my participation. Most recently, as chair of my dissertation
committee, Steve has been a dedicated mentor, enthusiastically supporting the development of
both my research and career aspirations. He guided me to find the form and voice of what a hybrid
practice and theory based dissertation would look like, especially as I struggled with this written
component. He helped me navigate an academic job search, demystifying the process through
practical guidance, thoughtful feedback, and encouragement. Steve’s approach is holistic. He
mentored us to cultivate our passions and directions alongside a healthy work-life balance and
attitude towards the field in general. I admire Steve for his honesty, transparency, intelligent and
timely research, humor, and engagement with both research and teaching. As a champion for our
program and its students, Steve has contributed to the development of a new generation of scholars
that are both makers and theorists. Though we are sad to see him move on to UCLA, I am grateful
for his mentorship and am confident that he will make great things happen at UCLA.
Committee member Henry Jenkins inspired me continuously with generous and insightful
feedback, which opened new doors in my thought processes and helped me refine the foundation
of how I approach the intersections of theory and practice, which will undoubtedly impact my
approach going forward. Prior to his mentorship, his scholarship within the fields of participatory
cultures, transmedia, and world-building inspired me. I continue to be encouraged by his depth
and breadth of leadership, productivity, and insight within media studies, which he balances with
dedicated mentorship to his students.
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 v
At the Mobile & Environmental Media Lab (MEML), I had the privilege of working
closely with mentor and committee mentor Scott Fisher on a number of innovative industry
sponsored research projects. Each project inspired me to think about the contribution of cinematic
arts research to interdisciplinary teams that combine scientists, engineers, business thinkers, and
communications researchers and laid a conceptual and skill-based foundation for my dissertation
work. I appreciate having gotten to know both Scott and other colleagues more closely through
hands on practice-based research. I want to acknowledge these multi-talented and inspiring
MEML colleagues: former and current iMAP students Jen Stein, Jeff Watson, Josh McVeigh-
Schultz, Karl Baumann, Behnaz Farahi, interactive media students Scott Stephan, Sunil Kalwani,
Avimaan Syam, McKensie Carlile, Thomas Cross, Jacob Boyle, Hyung Gyu Oh, Simon
Wiscombe, Michael Annetta, and Emily Duff.
I am grateful for Dr. Leslie Saxon and the Center for Body Computing, whom I
collaborated with on a MEML project designing an application for Boston Scientific patients with
implantable cardiac defibrillators. Though my dissertation was not centered on healthcare, my
research interests continue to be strongly influenced by intersections between media and health. I
also appreciate the opportunity to have also worked with Marientina Gotsis at the USC Creative
Media & Behavioral Health Center (CM&BHC). Marientina productively navigates the
intersection between interactive media and health with strong creativity and sensitivity. Both Dr.
Saxon and Marientina have pioneered groundbreaking work in this area, and continue to inspire
me. I also want to acknowledge my other collaborators at CM&BHC, who have gone on to do
innovative work: Vangelis Lympouridis, David Turpin, and Diane Tucker.
I am grateful to Pia Tikka and Dr. Riita Haari who hosted me for a Fulbright Fellowship to
Finland at the Aalto University aivoAALTO neurocinematics research project, and for Tapio
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 vi
Takala and Rasmos Vuori who hosted me within their interactive media research groups. It was
an honor to participate with esteemed researchers in institutionally well supported interdisciplinary
research where both art and science had a strong seat at the table. I learned so much from my
exposure to Finnish culture and their academic environment, including attending events hosted by
their practice based PhD program that has been around since 1981.
I’d also like to acknowledge the dedicated work of USC Graduate School administrators
Meredith Drake Reitan and Kate Tegemeyer, who amongst many other responsibilities, facilitate
interdisciplinary collaboration and intersections amongst students and faculty at the School of
Cinematic Arts, Viterbi School of Engineering, and Annenberg School for Communication. I’d
like to thank the USC Graduate School for the fellowships it provided: the Annenberg Fellowship
and the Research Enhancement Award.
Throughout the dissertation projects, I collaborated with talented students, advisors, and
staff. These individuals are too many to name here, so they are listed in a separate credits section.
However, I’ll call attention to a few who were particular pivotal to the design and implementation
process. Each project had strong science advisors including immortal jellyfish expert Dr. Maria
Pia Miglietta, epilepsy expert Dr. Christianne Heck, Cabrillo Marine Aquarium director Mike
Schaadt, Wrigley Institute for Environmental Science Director Dr. Ann Close, Wrigley researcher
Dr. Karla Heidleberg and staff Sean Conner, Juan Carlos Aguilar, Gordon Boivin, Lauren
Czarnecki Oudin, and Karen Erickson, and USC Sloan Film Advisor Tom Miller. They reviewed
the work for scientific accuracy, answered many of my questions along the way with patience and
clarity, and provided access to their facilities and support for production work. Computer science
PhD students Suvil Singh and Harshvardhan Vathsangam contributed aspects of their dissertation
work to MiraViz and MiraFlux. Professors Tracy Fullerton and Laird Malamed were inspiring
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 vii
advisors on Miralab, and Alex McDowell’s work with 5D and world-building has been highly
influential, Perry Hoberman provided invaluable stereoscopic 3D and camera projection work on
earlier projects, as did Mike Patterson and Candace Reckinger. Some student collaborators were
especially integral to particular projects, including Matt Kane, Kate Wong, Bryan Devore, Brian
Nahigian, Nick Covey, and Laura Cechanowicz on Miralab, and Xing-Mai Deng, Yihong Ding,
and David Aristizabal on MIRA, and Charles Haskins, Soren Massoumi, Qiasong Wei, Xiao Yang,
Suvil Deora on MiraViz, and Anton Hand and Jen Stein on MiraFlux.
This list would not be complete without including shout-outs to my impressive and
inspiring iMAP colleagues: Karl Baumann, Biayna Bogosian, Brian Cantrell, Misha Cárdenas,
Laura Cechanowicz, Diego Costa, Rosemary Comella, Behnaz Farahi, Lauren Fenton, Todd
Furmanski, Aroussiak Gabrielian, Samantha Gorman, Catherine Griffiths, Hao Gu, Juri Hwang,
Jeanne Jo, Adam Liszkiewicz, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Veronica Paredes, Nonny de la Peña,
Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, Geoffrey Long, Susana Ruiz, Laila Shereen Sakr, Jen Stein, Clea von
Chamier-Waite, Jeff Watson, and Emilia Yang Rappaccioli.
I’m deeply grateful to my parents and to David Aristizabal for the continued emotional
support and inspiration throughout each challenging project. Though my father passed away a
week before starting MA+P, his intellectual curiosity, ambition, storytelling, and rigorous mind,
encouraged me to believe in myself and pursue my passions throughout my upbringing. My mother
has continually supported me in pursuing my goals, even when the topics seemed esoteric and
impractical. And finally, to my meditation teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and his
predecessor Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, whose teachings and practices continually help me to
have perspective. Each of these supporters has helped tremendously and I would not be who I am
today without them.
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 viii
CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii

CONTENTS .................................................................................................................... viii

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... x

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION - POETIC SCIENCE ................................................. 1
A METHODOLOGY FOR DISCOVERING SCIENCE THROUGH MEDIA ART PRACTICES ........ 1
Poetic ............................................................................................................................ 7
Poetical Science ......................................................................................................... 13
FORMS, CONTEXTS, CREATORS ....................................................................................... 15
INTERDISCIPLINARY THINKING ...................................................................................... 20
POPULAR SCIENCE COMMUNICATION MODELS ............................................................... 22
POETIC SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ............................................................................... 27

CHAPTER 2: HISTORY OF POETIC SCIENCE ......................................................... 29
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ART-SCI ........................................................................................ 29
New Frontiers and ‘Third Culture’ ............................................................................ 32
ART-SCI OPPORTUNITY .................................................................................................. 36
PUBLIC RECEPTION OF ART-SCI AND MEDIA ARTS LITERACY ....................................... 44

CHAPTER 3: TRANSMEDIA POETIC SCIENCE ...................................................... 46
TRANSMEDIA POETIC SCIENCE ....................................................................................... 46
Logics and Locations ................................................................................................. 48
Cultural Translation ................................................................................................... 52
Multimodality and Multiple Intelligences .................................................................. 54
TRANSMEDIA POETIC SCIENCE LEARNING ...................................................................... 57

CHAPTER 4: WORLD-MAKING .................................................................................. 63
THE LIFECYCLE OF THE IMMORTAL JELLYFISH ............................................................... 63
BUILDING THE MIRAWORLD ...................................................................................... 67
Non-Fiction Storytelling ............................................................................................. 68

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Amanda Tasse © 2016 ix
CONTENTS

CHAPTER 5: POETIC LAYERING ............................................................................... 73
AFFECT AND EMBODIMENT ............................................................................................ 73

CHAPTER 6: CASE STUDY - MIRALAB ..................................................................... 84
MIRALAB AND POETIC SCIENCE ..................................................................................... 84
Poetic Science Learning ............................................................................................. 92
Poetic Science Design ................................................................................................ 94
Environmental Storytelling ...................................................................................... 102
World-Building Strategies ........................................................................................ 105
THE ROLE OF ART ........................................................................................................ 108

CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 112
TEAM CREDITS ........................................................................................................... 114
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 118

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 x
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Ottesen. 2014. Science Visualization of Tracked Genetic Activity in Ocean Bacteria
across Several Days. ............................................................................................................... 8
Figure 2: Grumm, Richard “Dick.” 1965. The First TV Image of Mars. Illustration. .................... 9
Figure 3: Grumm, Richard “Dick.” 1965. The First TV Image of Mars. Illustration. .................... 9
Figure 4: Oeggerli, Martin. 2016. Velvet Underground– Fine Structures of a Rose Petal (upper
Surface). Photograph. ............................................................................................................ 11
Figure 5: Noorduin, Wim L. False-color SEM images reveal microscopic flower structures
created by manipulating a chemical gradient to control crystalline self-assembly. ............. 11
Figure 6: Goods, Dan. 2008. Beneath the Surface. Installation. ................................................... 17
Figure 7: Goods, Dan. 2008. Beneath the Surface. Installation. ................................................... 18
Figure 8: Interpretation of model by Rowe and Frewer (2005)..…. ............................................. 24
Figure 9: Interpretation of model by Bucchi (2008) .…………………………………………... 24
Figure 10: Model from UK Report ‘Science for All’ (2010) ........................................................ 25
Figure 11: Bucchi’s framework for Science Communication (adapted from Tench 2006) ......... 26
Figure 12: Serpentine Gallery "Extinction Marathon" (2014). Pictured: Jesse Darling, Frederico
Campagna, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi. ......................................................................................... 35
Figure 13: Scientist stereotypes (2008) ......................................................................................... 39
Figure 14: Film Still, The Imitation Game (2014) ....................................................................... 40
Figure 15: Film Still, The Theory of Everything (2014) .............................................................. 40
Figure 16: Film Still, I Origins (2014) .......................................................................................... 41
Figure 17: Film Still, Another Earth, (2011). ............................................................................... 42
Figure 18: Film Still, Primer (2004) …….. ..................................................... ……………….... 43
Figure 19: Film Still, Upstream Color (2013) .............................................................................. 43
Figure 20: MIRAWORLD artist, Jessie Jordan (2015). Illustration of Turritopsis lifecycle. .... 63
Figure 21: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong (2014). Illustration. .............................................. 64
Figure 22: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong (2014). Illustration. .............................................. 64
Figure 23: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong (2014). Illustration. .............................................. 64
Figure 24: MIRAWORLD artist Jesse Jordan (2015). Illustration. .............................................. 65
Figure 25: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong (2014). Illustration. .............................................. 65
Figure 26: photographic representation of the life-cycle with MiraVIZ CG model in the center 66
Figure 27: Scientific Illustration of Turritopsis Transdifferentiation ........................................... 66
Figure 28: MIRAWORLD Logo .................................................................................................. 67
Figure 29: Plutchik "wheel of emotions" ...................................................................................... 81
Figure 30: early concept design for MIRALAB by Ryan Gillis ................................................... 85
Figure 31 & 32: Photography Representation of Turritopsis Life-Cycle with MiraViz CG model
in the center ........................................................................................................................... 87
Figure 33: Miralab. Start of the game. Screenshot…….. ............................................................. 88
Figure 34: Miralab. After eating food particles. Screenshot. ........................................................ 88
Figure 35: Miralab. World appears more fully formed. Screenshot. ............................................ 88
Figure 36: Miralab. Eating a food particle. Screenshot. ............................................................... 88
Figure 37: : Life-cycle by MIRA artist, Jessie Jordan. Illustration. ............................................. 89
Figure 38: Illustration detail of polyp formation .......................................................................... 89
Figure 39: reversal concept by MIRALAB artist, Kate Wong ..................................................... 90
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 xi
Figure 40: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. ............................................................. 91
Figure 41: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. .............................................................. 91
Figure 42: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot… ........................................................... 91
Figure 43: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. .............................................................. 91
Figure 44: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. .............................................................. 92
Figure 45: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. .............................................................. 92
Figure 46: Miralab.:Level 0 Kelp forest. ...................................................................................... 94
Figure 47: Miralab. Level 1. Pillow Anemone releasing food particles. Screenshot. .................. 95
Figure 48: Miralab. Aquatic Retro Futurism concept. Kate Wong. .............................................. 96
Figure 49: Encyclopedia Britannica. Atoll. 2012. Illustration. ..................................................... 97
Figure 50: Atoll. Early world design sketch. Amanda Tasse. ...................................................... 98
Figure 51: Hub concept. Kate Wong. ........................................................................................... 98
Figure 52: Miralab, Level 0, entering a current. Screenshot. ....................................................... 99
Figure 53: Miralab, Level 0, entering the hub. Screenshot. .......................................................... 99
Figure 54: Ostracian cubicus, aka yellow box fish….….. .......................................................... 100
Figure 55: Final game box fish. Screenshot. ………. … ............................................................ 100
Figure 56 - Keeltail Needlefish, Platybelone argalus ................................................................. 100
Figure 57: Keeltail Needlefish, Platybelone argalus, concept drawing by Miralab artist, Miranda
Crowell ................................................................................................................................ 100
Figure 58: Miralab. Keeltail Needlefish, Platybelone argalus. Screenshot. ............................... 101
Figure 59: Tubastraea coccinea, Orange Cup Coral. …. ............................................................ 101
Figure 60: Miralab.Tubastraea coccinea. Screenshot. ……. ...................................................... 101
Figure 61: Miralab. Engineer and Game Designer concept map of Artificial Intelligence Patterns
............................................................................................................................................. 102
Figure 62: World-Mapping. Pictured: Will Hellworth, Matt Kane. ........................................ 106
Figure 63: Digital world layout mapping. Amanda Tasse. ......................................................... 106
Figure 64: Early behavior storyboarding. Chris Muriel….. ....................................................... 106
Figure 65: Craft materials for rapid prototyping. ……….. ......................................................... 106
Figure 66: Miralab’s pinterest board. Screenshot. ..................................................................... 107

Amanda Tasse 1 © 2016

CHAPTER 1: Introduction - Poetic Science

We thank NASA for its sense of poetry.
1

For Kracauer, the telling similarity between certain aspects of cinema
and scientific inquiry was located in the cinema’s power to reveal
unexpected worlds and to effect profound transformations of habitual
perception.
2

A Methodology for Discovering Science Through Media Art Practices

This dissertation presents a transmedia approach to poetic science as a beneficial
methodology for communicating popular science that bridges traditional divides between the
humanities and sciences. Within this methodological approach, both arts-driven and conventional
forms of scientific experimentation and communication exist alongside one-another to enhance,
inform, and promote dialogue across disciplinary divides, and to provide multiple points of entry
into a shared and diverse knowledge community. Though this discussion centers on scientific
communication, these theories and practices can be extended to any field whereby both factual and
fiction based storytelling contribute to greater understanding and engagement of the central
themes.
I coined the term poetic science to describe and define a particular arena of practice and
theory that crosses disciplinary divides between the arts and sciences. Though “arts” includes both
art and design in a broad sense, this theory is primarily informed by and related to particular media
arts practices that, combined with this written document, encompass the larger project of this
Media Arts + Practice dissertation. These projects, which will be described in greater depth,
include the videogame Miralab, the short film MIRA, and visualizations MiraFlux and MiraViz.

1
End Credits. Herzog, Werner. 2005. Wild Blue Yonder, The.
2
Gaycken, Oliver. 2012. “Beauty of Chance.” Journal of Visual Culture 11 (3): 307–27.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 2
This document supports the practice based projects by describing them in more detail and outlining
the theory that informed and emerged from them. This written form is best viewed as an extended
artist statement and theoretical support for practice based research in media arts.
In shaping a theory of poetic science, my driving curiosity has been to investigate how
poetics make content resonate or “sing” with viewers in layered ways. I explore the poetics of
resonance through both through practical experimentation and critical reflection. Guided by the
compass of my own resonance, I create contexts whereby an experience of singing might occur
for others. This coincides with an attempt to describe the contours of this singing: both the felt
resonance of it, and how this stirring informs both the creative design and viewing processes.
Through forming a rubric of poetic science, I suggest best practice design methodologies and ways
of thinking that contribute to more effective ways of communicating science based insights. This
can be a useful model for engaging audiences, including students in educational contexts, in
addition to clarifying best practices for interdisciplinary design and collaboration when meeting
science through art.
Those engaged in the pursuit and preservation of scientific knowledge are
part of a great and lasting enterprise… It is unfortunate that the
uninitiated cannot fully perceive the beauty of the structure, the intricacy
and subtlety with which it is tied together, or the solidity of the foundations
on which it is built. (…) The key element in the building and preservation
of this marvelous edifice is communication. Without communication there
would be no science.
3

Since the early 20
th
century, traditional modes of science communication have emphasized
the one-way transfer of content from scientific specialists to passive non-scientist lay audiences
through communication mediators that may or may not have scientific expertise, operating on the

3
Abelson, P.H. 1980. “Scientific Communication.” Science 209 (4452): 60–62.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 3
false assumption that a transfer of content leads to a transfer of knowledge. Though communication
efforts are often undertaken with the goal of encouraging greater and deeper public engagement
with science, content that has been ineffectively translated between modes (expert to non-expert,
scientific to non-scientific) often fails to engage or impact the public in meaningful ways. As a
result, scientific research often has limited impact beyond the discourse of narrow domains and
the communication mediators, rather than the scientists or policy contexts, get blamed for not
employing stronger methods. Researchers continue to explore methods to encourage stronger
scientific literacy and participation, some of which have been highly effective. Despite the
introduction of new models that encourage greater public participation in scientific dialogue and
activity, the traditional framework still dominates and persists, particularly within funding
institutions.
The chief purposes of the visual arts are, by means of artifacts, to stimulate
and satisfy human emotions, to help the human mind to comprehend the
knowledge and conceptions of the universe and of the world of man, and
to widen and deepen emotional perception of selected portions of man’s
environment.
4

Scientists and artists share a common goal: “to help the human mind to comprehend the
knowledge and conceptions of the universe and the world of man”, however their means and
methods for doing so are different. Just as scientists are experts as employing the scientific method,
cinematic media artists are experts at cinematic methods.
Cinema is not only about telling a story; it’s about creating an affect, an
event, a moment which lodges itself under the skin of the spectator.
5

4
Malina, Frank J. 1968. “Some Reflections on the Differences Between Science and Art.” In DATA: Directions in
Art Theory and Aesthetics, edited by Anthony Hill, 134–49. London: Faber.
5
Rutherford, Anne. 2003. “Cinema and Embodied Affect.” Senses of Cinema, no. 25 (March).
http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-articles/embodied_affect/.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 4
“A moment which lodges itself under the skin of the spectator” is indeed an impressionable
event! Cinematic arts methods, such as ambient and narrative storytelling, interactive design,
experience design, and art direction to name a few, reach audiences in impactful ways that
prioritize participatory, emotional, narrative, and visceral expression, often the very factors that
are dismissed or deemphasized in scientific communications. Despite their domain expertise,
artist-scientist collaborations often fail to integrate the strengths of each field. This project is
partially motivated by the need for deep exploration of the benefits that art and story-based inquiry
can contribute to the communication of scientific insights and a structured investigation of best
practices for interdisciplinary science-art collaboration.
To explore these issues, I examined aspects of science and data through the lens of
cinematic arts practices to research and develop an emerging interdisciplinary mode for
approaching science communication, which I call Poetic Science. I investigated transmedia as a
new paradigm for interdisciplinary research and presentation of information. Poetic science
encourages artists (and other non-science experts) to explore a scientific prompt through their own
practice’s lens, thus enabling them to connect to the material in a way that accesses and integrates
their primary practice and its associated intelligence’s means of knowing. This allows the creator
of the visualization or form of communication to process and come to know its content more
intimately and thoroughly, to embrace their discovery of it more holistically, and potentially more
enthusiastically. Through this engaged means of processing, the creator may translate textures and
layers of insight that might otherwise have been dismissed, never found, or extricated if deemed
irrelevant. When the poetic layers of a project are removed or discounted, it constitutes a lost
opportunity, considering that these multi-layered accoutrements might be the very elements that
most engage a non-expert audience.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 5
By entering this process of discovery, rather than aestheticizing information in a detached,
removed, cautious, or hesitant way, the artist and in turn the audience can find greater relevance,
resonance, and connection to the work. Unfortunately, the potential benefit of the artist or creative
expression within communications of popular science and interdisciplinary research environments
is often mistrusted, dismissed, or worse. For example, artists are sometimes brought in at the tail
end of a project to help beautify its presentation in some way. Beauty is not in and of itself a bad
thing. However, artistic contribution can do so much more than merely beautify the surface of
work that has already been completed. As science film scholar Oliver Gaycken describes: ‘The
unexpected, the unusual, the lyrical – all have vanished, replaced, I would argue, by “beautiful
photography”’
6
A poetic science approach considers what the unexpected, the unusual, the lyrical
can contribute to the exploration, discovery, and communication of science.
The poetic contribution is not always an afterthought. There are exemplary celebrations of
interdisciplinary art-science at institutions like the Exploratorium, and conferences such as Ars
Electronica, and many more to be discussed later in this document. Similarly, entire genres such
as science fiction literature and films have emerged which play in the boundary space between
these two fields. However, these are institutions and forms whose explicit mission is to promote
the integration of art and science. Whereas in the wider community that is not explicitly intended
to be art-science, the natively creative voice within popular science communications and research
environments is frequently dampened. This is unfortunate, considering the great role that artists
can play within research contexts.
Skeptics sometimes wonder what possible contribution artists can make to
serious research and development. Artists can augment the research
process in several ways. They can define new kinds of research questions,
provide unorthodox interpretations of results, point out missed

6
Gaycken, Oliver. 2012. “Beauty of Chance.” Journal of Visual Culture 11 (3): 307–27.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 6
opportunities for development, explore and articulate wide ranging
implications of the research, represent potential user perspectives, and
help communicate research findings in effective and provocative ways.
They can bring centuries of artistic experience to bear on the
technological future. They often approach problems in ways quite
different than those of scientists and engineers. The critical role of
designers and artists in computer human interface research over the last
years demonstrates this new model of interdisciplinary research.
7

The scientific method atomizes and focuses a question and problem in order to isolate and
test it in a replicable way, distilling and eliminating variables, preferably creating a closed and
contained system to sanitize and preserve it. Poetic science can also focus on an atomized question,
and promote its replication. However, in this case, the replication takes on vastly different forms,
mutating as it explodes and extends a central thesis. As such, it expands upon its variables and
viewpoints, which can be extremely useful for communicating and popularizing information with
diverse audiences. This methodology won’t work for all contexts. Sometimes, the simple and
direct presentation of the scientific method and its findings, using a traditional format for
communication, is most appropriate.
However, my discussion centers on the poetic, the layers of fictive and inventive
permutation that might surround, enhance, or otherwise color and influence a form of
communication and take it to an unexpected place beyond conventional infographics, charts,
journalism, and documentary. These aforementioned forms are well developed and effective. My
intention is not to criticize or devalue them. Instead, my efforts concentrate on illuminating the
underexplored insights, benefits, and new forms generated by highly engaged arts practice focused
on discovering science in its own ways using its own means. As the artist engages more fully, their
discovery of the problem translates through artistic modes which might allow for expressions of

7
Wilson, Stephen. 1996. “Art as Research.” White Paper. San Francisco State University.
userwww.sfsu.edu/swilson/papers/artist.researcher.html.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 7
emotion and subjectivity that are generally avoided in traditional scientific discourse. In a sense,
the art gives permission for audiences to feel something for the science.
To be both poetic and science, Poetic Science requires meaningful communication of both
art and science, with truth and a certain degree of clarity. It should be engaging on both scientific
and artistic levels, even as it emphasizes one or the other to varying degrees. As a result, artworks
that are inspired by science, but render it opaque or transform it to such a degree that there is no
relationship with scientific insight or truth, would not fall within this paradigm. Neither would
beautified presentations of science. Rather than classify works as poetic science or not-poetic
science, my intention is to encourage a deeper examination of the poetics in poetic science and to
encourage the inclusion of poetics as a methodological approach to communicating and learning
about science.
Through poetic science, I hope to inspire curiosity and a sense of wonder about science
and technology by inserting information into an overriding immersive experience, rather than
foregrounding information transfer, which can lead to didactic Edutainment, which I will discuss
more in following chapters. I experiment with varied formats and mediums to see how a story or
information can be best communicated with that technology and its affordances.
Poetic
The poetic in Poetic Science refers to a way of connecting with science using an arts practice
and theory based mode as the lens through which science is discovered, explored, analyzed,
reflected, and celebrated. In this framework, poetic does not refer to a literary practice or theory.
Instead, it is expanded to include any processes or outcomes that engage with artistic forms of
inquiry and discovery that might be evaluated or appreciated based on their artistic merit. Whether
intended for arts contexts or to communicate science to broad audiences, the work can be
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 8
considered poetic when it prioritizes modes of process, communication and expression that are
arts based. It is not considered poetic just for using techniques associated with the arts, such as
graphical displays of information, even if visually compelling, as in the example below (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Ottesen. 2014. Science Visualization of Tracked Genetic Activity in Ocean Bacteria across Several Days
8
.
Instead, a process or an outcome might be described as poetic when its primary mode for
approaching the problem or communication of content is poetic. Either a creator or a viewer can
engage in poetic modes of thinking and experiencing. For example, a new context might reframe
a scientific work as poetic, even if it wasn’t originally created with poetic intent.

8
Ottesen. 2014. Science Visualization of Tracked Genetic Activity in Ocean Bacteria across Several Days.
Illustration. http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/sci/emb_scipak/pdf/ottesen140711.pdf.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 9

Figure 2: Grumm, Richard “Dick.” 1965. The First TV Image of Mars. Illustration.
9

The First TV Image of Mars, (Figure 2 above) is one such example. Aerospace scientist,
Richard “Dick” Grumm, created the pastel image to visualize the first computational image of
Mars in 1965. NASA-JPL Visual Strategist, Dan Goods, an artist whose work engages in
exemplary poetic science communication, re-presented this image as part of an Data+Art
exhibition he co-curated with David Delgado at the Pasadena Museum of California Art in 2009.

Figure 3: Grumm, Richard “Dick.” 1965. The First TV Image of Mars. Illustration
10
.
Through new contextualization, the work is engaged for its poetic qualities or those related

9
Grumm, Richard “Dick.” 1965. The First TV Image of Mars. Illustration. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California
Institute of Technology. http://www.directedplay.com/first-tv-image-of-mars.
10
Grumm, Richard “Dick.” 1965. The First TV Image of Mars. Illustration. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California
Institute of Technology. http://www.directedplay.com/first-tv-image-of-mars.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 10
processes that it inspires in the viewer. The First TV Image of Mars can be viewed and appreciated
on multiple levels: as abstract painting, a conceptual art piece that riffs on the low brow technique
of paint-by-numbers, as computational art generated by complex data patterns, and as science
visualization. This reframing within an art context highlights its poetic qualities, which might
otherwise be ignored. Though its creator did not intend for the work to function on a poetic level,
it became poetic science when recognized as such by its viewers.
Poetic science, then, is a mode that is available to viewers as well as creators when
encountering scientific material. By this rationale, any form of science or scientific document
might be interpreted through a poetic lens. Appreciating the poetics of a scientific work does not
diminish or devalue its scientific intent, nor exclude appreciating it for its scientific qualities or
content. The strongest poetic science work is engaging and valuable for both its poetic and
scientific qualities and content. The First TV Image of Mars is fascinating primarily because it
arose out of a historical scientific context which related to the imaging technology of its day. This
scientific knowledge is fundamental to the work, and informs its poetics. That is why the term
“poetic science” represents a meeting of both modes.
The poetic sometimes emerges intentionally out of scientific practice. Scientist, Dr. Martin
Oeggerli initially created colorized Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) photographs (Figure 4
below) as part of his work for a Swiss life science company in 2005. To his surprise, microscopy
eventually became his primary practice, enabling him to combine his fascination with microscopic
technology with a love for creating fine art prints to “highlight invisible mysteries of planet earth.
Every detail miraculously painted, thereby inviting you to think – or dream? An unconventional
dance between science and art scientific practice.”
11

11
Oeggerli, Martin. 2016. “The Full Story About Micronaut.” Portfolio. Micronaut - the Art of Microscopy.
Accessed January 21. http://www.micronaut.ch/the-full-story-about-micronaut/.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 11

Figure 4: Oeggerli, Martin. 2016. Velvet Underground– Fine Structures of a Rose Petal (upper Surface).Photograph
12
.
During his post-doctorate work at Harvard, Dr. Wim L. Noorduin playfully created
microscopic sculptures (Figure 5 below) as a byproduct and then deliberate demonstration of the
properties of his biomineralization research. His work has been appreciated for both its scientific
and artistic experimentation, though Noorduin self-identifies primarily as a scientist.

Figure 5: Noorduin, Wim L. False-color SEM images reveal microscopic flower structures created by manipulating
a chemical gradient to control crystalline self-assembly.
13

12
Oeggerli, Martin. 2016. Velvet Underground – Fine Structures of a Rose Petal (upper Surface). Photography.
Accessed January 21. http://www.micronaut.ch/shop/velvet-underground-fine-structures-of-a-rose-petal-upper-
surface/.
13
Perry, Caroline. 2013. “Beautiful ‘Flowers’ Self-Assemble in a Beaker.” Harvard School of Engineering and
Applied Sciences. News & Events. May 16. https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2013/05/beautiful-flowers-self-
assemble-beaker.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 12
Noorduin received a 2013 “Science As Art” award from the Materials Research Society
(MRS) for this work. MRS describes this annual competition’s purpose as follows: “Occasionally,
scientific images transcend their role as a medium for transmitting information, and contain the
aesthetic qualities that transform them into objects of beauty and art.”
14

When scientists choose to search for and recognize the poetic - qualities of experience that
“transcend the communication of information” – they beneficially acknowledge the overlapping
contributions and value that both modes of practice contribute to our understanding and
appreciation of scientific material and art. Competitions such as the MRS award popularize
practices that can be appreciated on multiple levels, both poetic and scientific, and can beneficially
increase public awareness and appreciation for work being done at this overlap. Just as some artists
practice science with varying degrees of expertise, scientists do the same with their art. It is a
central conceit of this dissertation that the cross-pollination of art and science is mutually
beneficial and should be recognized and validated.
Singer, artist, and science writer Claire L. Evans describes the interconnected processes of
artists and scientists:
Science, like art, is a process by which we study the behavior of the
physical world through observation and experimentation. There are no
strictures in this definition that absolve science from needing to be
creative, or playful; in fact a creative approach to science often breeds
important results unachievable through strictly empirical means. At the
same time, artistic practice often benefits from a systematic process
borrowed from the scientific method; many artists create constraints for
themselves, with the aim of circling around an idea until its essence is
reached. Search, discovery, wonder, creativity, trial, error, none are
reserved solely for either art or science. Simply, the “Eureka!” moment
happens to everyone.
15

14
“Science as Art Winners.” n.d. MRS: Materials Research Society. http://www.mrs.org/fall-2015-science-as-art/.

15
Evans, Claire L. 2012. “Beautiful Evidence: Science Cinema.” Science Blogs: Universe. July 27.
http://scienceblogs.com/universe/2012/07/27/beautiful-evidence-science-cinema/.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 13

As Evans aptly describes, both disciplines benefit from recognizing the balance of the arts
and sciences in their methodologies and process, especially as their insights coalescence into
transcendent moments of Eureka, moments which move their work forward in catalytic and
paradigm shifting ways. These moments rarely emerge from singular and regimented disciplines
that don’t include both creative and systemic thinking or as is often the case, non-linear mental
frameworks.
Poetical Science
As mentioned, poetic also refers to a mode of looking, inquiry, examination, and discovery.
It can be a way of approaching science using a poetic frame of mind, even if the final outcome of
this experimentation ends up being more scientific than artistic in nature. This definition of poetic
science itself is inspired by hybrid scholar-practitioner, Ada Lovelace. Lovelace, often credited as
being the first computer programmer for her inventive design thinking on Charles Babbage’s
Analytic Engine in the 1840s, described her practice as “poetical science”
16
. As the daughter of
romantic poet Lord Byron, she was raised with a romantic sensibility. This outlook, combined with
training in math, primed her to see “great beauty” in mathematical computation. She envisioned
future-thinking possibilities beyond pure equations, often described as early design thinking, for
modern graphical computers.
Lovelace’s reflections on the Analytic Engine were informed by both artistic and scientific
technologies and processes, and had implications for both. For example, her discoveries of the
Analytic Engine were informed by the loom and then fed back into the processes of weaving itself.

16
Isaacson, Walter. 2014. “The Intersection of the Humanities and the Sciences.” Jefferson Lecture, National
Endowment for the Humanities. http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/walter-isaacson-lecture.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 14
Lovelace wrote:
It has been proposed to use it for the reciprocal benefit of that art, which,
while it has itself no apparent connexion with the domains of abstract
science, has yet proved so valuable to the latter, in suggesting the
principles which, in their new and singular field of application, seem likely
to place algebraical combinations not less completely within the province
of mechanism, than are all those varied intricacies of which intersecting
threads are susceptible. (Morrison and Morrison, 1961).
17

Her fluidity with both modes, the poetic and mathematical, and desire to look for the
interweaving of both, increased her capacity for creative problem solving, and led her to visionary
solutions that were nearly a century and a half ahead of their time. Ada Lovelace was an exemplary
science communicator, often remembered as Charles Babbage’s voice, expressing his ideas with
levels of clarity, efficiency and accuracy that he could not do himself.
18
Were it not for Lovelace’s
notes, Babbage’s work and the contribution of the Analytic Engine would be forgotten.
Lovelace’s influence also extended into humanities discourse, as she considered
philosophical and ethical implications of the relationship between human and machine. She
proposed that machines would not “think” in and of themselves, but instead work best in a
symbiotic relationship with humans, who would supply the creativity. Lovelace’s interdisciplinary
sensibility makes her an exemplary poetic science scholar. As a woman practitioner in the 1800s,
she unfortunately didn’t receive institutional support or recognition for her work. Within scientific
fields, her acclaim is celebrated retroactively.
Science
Traditional definitions of science focus on its capacity to “build and organize knowledge in

17
Plant, Sadie. 1995. “Weaving Women and Cybernetics.” In Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of
Technological Embodiment, edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows. London: SAGE Publications Inc.
18
Plant, Sadie. 1995. “Weaving Women and Cybernetics.” In Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of
Technological Embodiment, edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows. London: SAGE Publications Inc.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 15
the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”
19
As a qualifier, the poetic
in poetic science expands upon this definition of science to include forms of knowledge production
that may not have testable explanations and predictions about the universe. However, poetic
science does also involve itself with investigating and testing explanations and formulating related
stories about the universe. It is both a science (study, testing, explaining, predicting, systemic
inquiry) of cinematic poetics and a poetics (theoretical, philosophical, artistic, and practical
inquiry) of science. Poetic science can address both factual and fictional science. In this
dissertation, I will develop this concept in order to explore the ways cinematic expression works
across media: cinematic language, forms, methodologies, modes, and research practices.
Forms, Contexts, Creators
In forming a theory and practice of poetic science, I draw upon artists, scientists, and
theorists who have been effectively practicing aspects of poetic science for centuries. Here, I
present a few examples of contemporary and historic figures who intentionally approach their work
in a way that falls within the rubric of poetic science. I also briefly touch on some of the benefits
and challenges associated with particular media, and will later discuss how transmedia approaches
can address some of these challenges. As an entire dissertation could be devoted to this
presentation alone, these examples provide a taste of the great work being done at the intersection
of the arts and sciences to further elucidate specific aspects of poetic science across a few different
art contexts.
Installation art works well for poetic science because it is by nature, multi-sensory and
layered, and exists in shared physical spaces requiring participants to be fully immersed in a

19
“Science.” 2011. Merriam-Webster Online. Merriam-Webster, Inc. Accessed October 16.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 16
designed experience. As such, different types of learners can engage with the felt experience of
what is communicated using varied means: intellectual, kinesthetic, visual, auditory, spatial, social,
and more. This multi-layered approach increases the likelihood that one, if not more, of the modes
will resonate with a participant.
These types of works are often showcased at museums, galleries, festivals, commercial
spaces, or theme parks. Whether guided or ambient, they must often be navigated non-linearly.
This requires full attention and activates decision centers in the brain. Once complete, participants
can feel a sense of accomplishment for having figured out the experience. This can encourage
deeper engagement and appreciation for the content. These experiences are often full of secondary
educational potential, meaning that they might spark a participant to dive deeper into a particular
area of interest within the experience itself, or to engage with a different platform, such as going
online to learn more, later.
The highly sensory, tactile, and unique nature of these experiences is both their benefit and
detriment. Their singular quality makes them expensive to create, replicate, and maintain. They
are destination experiences, often requiring an admission fee or at least prior knowledge of their
existence, which suggests previous involvement with their associated cultural institution. This isn’t
a problem in and of itself. However, installation art is probably not the ideal medium for creators
who want to engage with audiences from diverse locations or backgrounds that are not primed to
attend museums, gallery shows, or special exhibits. Though the impact of the experiences can be
high, their overall audience reach outside of documentation and marketing, is often low.
Installation art emerges from museum, gallery, world trade show, exhibition, festival, fair,
carnival, cabinets of curiosity, magic shows, and other types of environmental spectacles. It can
mimic science lab conditions, integrate instrumentation, simulate related procedural experiences,
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 17
or engage the participant’s body in an art based experiment. Installations often use environmental
sensory clues to guide participants through the experience. They might utilize embedded
storytelling techniques which are often associated with game design. These environmental mini-
narratives, either narrated or experienced as stories in process, can be instructive in and of
themselves.
Dan Goods, visual strategist at NASA JPL for over 10 years, exemplifies a model example
of what an artist, practicing through their native lens, can contribute to the field of science
communication. “Beneath the Surface” is an interactive piece that uses fog and special lighting to
draw viewers into the experience of exploring a giant gas planet through layers of cloud, simulating
the process that the Juno spacecraft used to view Jupiter, using infrared light.

Figure 6: Goods, Dan. 2008. Beneath the Surface. Installation.
20

By using a cell phone camera, viewers can see flashes of infrared “lightning” beneath the surface
of a water vapor cloud.

20
Goods, Dan. 2008. Beneath the Surface. Installation. http://www.directedplay.com/beneath-the-surface.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 18

Figure 7: Goods, Dan. 2008. Beneath the Surface. Installation.
21

The installation gives participants a taste of the ways in which scientists explore and collect
information using instruments to design new ways of seeing and recording phenomena.
NASA JPL’s website describes Goods’ role as:
Goods makes scientific information intuitively comprehensible to the
public. He translates the complex and abstract work of NASA JPL
scientists into real-world forms, experiences and sounds. Using a
multitude of platforms and media, Goods makes new and complex
scientific concepts tangible and understandable. Goods is able to let his
audience see, touch, and experience abstract ideas. He is able to inspire
us in a profound and meaningful way. His work opens our eyes to our
surroundings, and lets us find beauty in the revealed mysteries of
science.
22

This poetic science installation connected participants to a scientific process by engaging
them personally in a related process of discovery, using everyday technology. It scaled massive,

21
Goods, Dan. 2008. Beneath the Surface. Installation. http://www.directedplay.com/beneath-the-surface.
22
“Dan Goods, NASA Visual Strategist.” 2016. NASA ArtSpace. Accessed January 25.
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/artspace/creative_works/feature-dan-goods-video.html.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 19
sophisticated, and technologically complex processes to a human scale by substituting NASA
JPL’s complex infrared photographic instruments with everyday camera phone technology, and
the massiveness of space to the confines of a room. It connected participants to a poetics of
scientific activity: exploring the unknown, curiosity, discovery, surprise, and possibly wonder
within a sensory rich multi-layered experience of fog, dimmed color lights, bright cell phone
shimmers, and sound.
The environment of the room, activity, and shared social interactions would be evocative
and memorable in and of themselves. Situated within a scientific research facility, participants are
primed to look for, and probably enjoy, the scientific content. When participants with heightened
scientific awareness encounter an artfully designed experience that allows them to connect with
the science experientially on their own level, the entire situation is elevated beyond what the
science or art alone could provide. Art and science blend into an experience that is both poetic and
conceptually compelling. The science resonates and becomes relevant because it has been lived
and touched on multiple levels. This project was also exhibited as part of the Data + Art: Science
and Art in the Age of Information exhibition curated by Dan Goods and David Delgado at the
Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) in 2009. This context showcased innovative work
being done at the overlap of the arts and sciences.
The domination of visual culture within our society, and in recent literary
and cultural studies, has started to be challenged by those who rightly
demand that we pay attention to the impact that*/to quote Teresa Brennan
herself */‘all the senses, as vehicles of attention, connect the supposedly
higher cognitive faculty of linguistic thought with the fleshly knowledge or
codes of the body’ (136)
23

23
James, Susan, Mary Hamer, Kate Flint, Amber Jacobs, and Gillian Beer. 2006. “Perspectives on Teresa Brennan’s
Transmission of Affect.” Women: A Cultural Review, Forum, 17 (1): 103–17. doi:10.1080/09574040600628724.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 20
Once could certainly read about the Juno expedition, see photos, and engage it
conceptually. This would be a straightforward and potentially compelling intellectual experience.
However, the poetics of Beneath the Surface communicate beyond the purely conceptual. The
scientific information unfolds through a sensory rich environment. It is presented in a way that
layers audio-visual and tactile experience with conceptual scientific content. These multiple layers
of experience enrich the information by providing a context for experiencing it in unexpected and
memorable ways. As the title suggests, beneath the surface of the content, in the lived human
experience, the poetics are what make us care.
Perception here is neither a cognitive process, nor a biological process,
as this distinction becomes non-sensical. It involves the positing of oneself
as an embodied entity in a meaningful way in relation to the environment
and what the environment offers. The philosopher, Sue Cataldi, describes
this as the perceiver actually” ‘inhabiting’ a spectacle” (Cataldi, 96). My
own metaphorical understanding of this ecological perception is that it is
more akin to a millipede than to a camera or camera obscura—a thousand
tentacles feeling their way through a space rather than a single lens taking
it in view.
24

In this case, the sensory rich installation provides a context where the participant can sense
and feel it in multiple ways, feeling their way through the space and concepts as the space is
inseparable from the information. The space is the concept. If the concept were presented in a dry,
jargon filled, analytic scientific journal or textbook, it would be communicating through a single
lens, rather than providing multiple tentacles for both feeling and thinking the concepts.
Interdisciplinary Thinking
Poetic science engages both its practitioners and audiences in interdisciplinary thinking
processes which can be extended to other arenas. For example, creative technologists, such as

24
Rutherford, Anne. 2003. “Cinema and Embodied Affect.” Senses of Cinema, no. 25 (March).
http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/feature-articles/embodied_affect/.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 21
Steve Jobs, cite interdisciplinary thinking as central to the success of the Apple corporation. At his
last public product launch for apple, the iPad2 in March 2011, Jobs declared:
"…Technology alone is not enough...It’s technology married with liberal
arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our
hearts sing."
25

Jobs eloquently describes how interdisciplinary approaches can best contribute to
outcomes that make our hearts sing, or as I would describe, resonate in such a way that elevates
the experience to art, rather than merely aestheticizing information. The experience of resonance
happens in a multi-layered way: intellectual, emotional, spiritual and visceral.
Out of the experience of resonance, singing occurs. Singing is the active form of, or
expression of resonance. Song is an outcome that emerges from singing, but is different than the
experience of singing itself. Singing is active exploring, discovering, wondering, creating,
questioning, and appreciating – activities that are integral to both the arts and sciences. It’s the
heart’s drive and urge to connect, cultivated by an experience of resonance: moments of
wonderment, curiosity, discovery, surprise, awe, inspiration, and appreciation. There can be
spontaneous moments of inspired singing or extended cultivated discipline, practiced over time to
hone and support the moments of inspiration that give one substance and motivation for arduous
work.
Science does not always need to make our heart’s sing. However, given the mounting
problems of the world such as climate change and environmental destruction, the need for
scientific understanding has never been greater. Ideally, works of poetic science provide contexts
for non-scientists’ hearts to have a possibility of singing when encountering science and
technology, rather than shutting down or speeding up anxiously. They can provide openings for

25
Isaacson, Walter. 2014. “The Intersection of the Humanities and the Sciences.” Jefferson Lecture, National
Endowment for the Humanities. http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/walter-isaacson-lecture.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 22
further learning and exploration through laying a groundwork of resonance. It is crucial to the
survival of our species and planet to get some hearts singing fast.
Being that the human experience is inherently interdisciplinary and multi-layered, products
and projects that engage or synchronize more closely with our natural experience of reality come
closer to feeling integrated and connected with our lives. They have a greater possibility of
touching and connecting audiences in memorable ways that transcend the superficial, and thereby
have stronger impact.
An artist’s or designer’s expert hand can often make the story of scientific
discovery more compelling, results more broadly understandable, and
complex choices actionable…Given the unconventional nature and scale
of the problems we face today, there is real value to be gained from
collaborations that bridge the best talents we have in both the quantitative
and qualitative domains.
26

In the arts economy, cinematic forms, whether television, film, video games, media arts,
creative technologies, or the internet, have mastered the ability to move minds, hearts, and pocket
books, and to dominate the cultural capital of the world in profound ways. In the current day, it is
essential that communicators fundamentally understand how to resonate with audiences in
impactful ways to make true progress in the world.

Popular Science Communication Models

The development of current communication practices in science developed in relation to
two broad processes: the institutionalization of research as a profession with higher social status
and increasing specialization; and the growth and spread of mass media, largely since the early

26
Maeda, John. 2013. “Artists and Scientists: More Alike Than Different.” Magazine. Scientific American. July 11.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/artists-and-scientists-more-alike-than-different/.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 23
1900s (Bucchi 2008).
27

A ‘diffusionist’ approach, a tendency first described by social scientists in the 1980s, still
predominates within popular science communication, despite the introduction of other models.
Diffusionist suggests that factual scientific information need only be transported from a specialist
context to a popular one, thereby validating the role of the mediator, excusing scientists from
communication activities themselves, neglecting possible pre-existing public interest, capacity,
and knowledge about science, and overemphasizing the influence and benefit of information for
information’s sake. Traditional diffusionist approaches emphasize 1-way directionality (specialist
elaboration to popular discourse), audience passivity, and suggest that knowledge can be
transferable without significant alternations from one context to another.
28

Alternative models have emerged that are multimodal and participatory (to be described in
more detail in subsequent chapters), and can co-exist alongside more traditional diffusionist
approaches. For example, Rowe and Frewer (Figure 8) describe a 3-pronged approach with the
traditional model as Communication (information flow from the ‘sponsor’ funding or intellectual
organization to public representatives), and also includes Consultation (information that travels
from public representatives to sponsor), and Participation (2-6 way flow of information). Rowe
and Frewer’s model emphasizes bi-directional information gathering, collaboration and
participation amongst scientists, communicators, and non-scientist public participants as public
engagement goals equal to the dissemination of information.

27
Bucchi, Massimiano. 2008. “Of Deficits, Deviations and Dialogues: Theories of Public Communication of
Science.” In Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, edited by Massimiano Bucchi and
Brian Trench. London and New York: Routledge.
28
Bucchi, Massimiano. 2008. “Of Deficits, Deviations and Dialogues: Theories of Public Communication of
Science.” In Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, edited by Massimiano Bucchi and
Brian Trench. London and New York: Routledge.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 24

Figure 8: Interpretation of model by Rowe and Frewer (2005)
29
Figure 9: Interpretation of model by Bucchi (2008)
30

Bucchi (Figure 9) proposes a similar multi-model framework involving Transfer, Consultation
and Knowledge Co-Production.
31
The UK commissioned a report outlining best practices for
public engagement with science (Figure 10) that described a similar framework: the transmission
and reception of content, and collaborative practices to co-create knowledge.

29
Rowe, Gene, and Lynn J. Frewer. 2005. “A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms.” Science Technology
Human Values 30 (2): 251–90.
30
Bucchi, Massimiano. 2008. “Of Deficits, Deviations and Dialogues: Theories of Public Communication of
Science.” In Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, edited by Massimiano Bucchi and
Brian Trench. London and New York: Routledge.
31
Bucchi, Massimiano. 2008. “Of Deficits, Deviations and Dialogues: Theories of Public Communication of
Science.” In Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, edited by Massimiano Bucchi and
Brian Trench. London and New York: Routledge.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 25

Figure 10: Model from UK Report ‘Science for All’ (2010)
32

While some scholars have suggested that a change in keywords can sometimes be a
reappearance of the deficit model in a new guise (Stilgoe et al. 2005; Trench 2006), nonetheless it
is useful to consider how different models emerge and relate to different contexts. Over time,
public/expert interaction with regard to a certain issue may move across models and their
combinations. The inclination for scientists to open up their communicative boundaries to non-
experts could be described in terms of alternating cycles of openness and closure, rather than a
new or steadily rising phenomena (Bucchi 2008, Hirschman 1982).
In Bucchi’s framework for science communication (Figure 9, Figure 11), Transfer refers
to the popularization of science, and is generally a one-time and one-way operation that flows
directionally from the scientific expert or specialist, through the communications mediator, to the

32
“Science For All.” 2010. UK: Department for Business Innovation and Skills.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121212135622/http://bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/science
-for-all-report.pdf.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 26
popular audience. The transfer model suggests that the public has a deficit of knowledge that can
be remedied by a proper transfer of content or information to them. Transfer equates the transfer
of content with the transfer of knowledge, which can be highly problematic considering that
knowledge and meaning formation are much more complex and nuanced processes that have been
explored in depth by learning scholars, some of which will be discussed in later chapters.
Consultation involves two-way communication between scientist experts and communicators or
the general public that encourages dialogue. Knowledge co-production is multi-directional.
Scientist experts, public audiences, and communicators participate in shaping not only the content
that is communicated, but the context of creation. Public audiences can influence and shape the
agenda of the scientific research.

Figure 11: Bucchi’s framework for Science Communication (adapted from Tench 2006)
33

33
Bucchi, Massimiano. 2008. “Of Deficits, Deviations and Dialogues: Theories of Public Communication of
Science.” In Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, edited by Massimiano Bucchi and
Brian Trench. London and New York: Routledge.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 27
Different communication modes are appropriate for different contexts. Scientific research
that is complex, esoteric, novel, unrelated to everyday culture or presented for the first time is often
most effectively communicated through traditional transfer models like science documentaries,
news shows, and science journalism. Audiences and media communicators are unlikely to dialogue
about this research if they are unfamiliar with it, don’t have context for it, and don’t have an
emotional or social reason to engage with it. In contrast, popular audiences and communicators
are more likely to engage with highly controversial or socially pressing scientific research and
content, such as climate change, disease outbreaks, food science, genetics and topics that
individuals can relate to within their everyday lives and culture. When public audiences and non-
scientists communicators engage in dialogue and communication efforts surrounding scientific
topics they care about, their efforts can profoundly impact the shape of scientific research and
funding.
Poetic Science Communication
Poetic Science communications make both poetic and scientific contributions to the
conversation surrounding the content, and can be appreciated according to both scientific and
artistic modes. These types of projects are not solely art in service of scientific goals but rather
stand on their own as substantial artistic works. “Art in service of scientific goals” refers to projects
initiated for scientific purposes that do not include art in substantive ways. For example, non-
poetic science communications often hire artists at the end of a project to decorate or beautify
scientific information, to make it more presentable. Sometimes these projects are visually stunning
and compelling to such an extent that they might be described as Poetic Science in the viewing
process. However, in most cases, despite the sometimes pleasing look or feel of the end product,
non-Poetic Science communications are generally significantly more interesting and engaging for
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 28
their scientific than poetic elements. In contrast, compelling Poetic Science works achieve a closer
balance in weight between the two fields.
In describing Poetic Science, I consider both the outcomes or products of a process, and
the process itself. Poetic Science processes refer to a mode of working that is motivated by the
intent to fully engage in artistic ways of working as a method of translating scientific content. In
the example whereby an artist is brought in to decorate a scientific visualization, a translation
between the scientific to artistic mode, and thereby a translation to the poetic science mode, has
not occurred. Engagement with a poetic mode of working might include such dynamic processes
as storytelling, character development, the design of emotional arcs, gameplay dynamics, world-
building, or the development of a strong sense of mood and atmosphere, to name a few. The
methods often change depending on the medium used and its associated affordances.
Through engaging with Poetic Science works, the audience also enters into the artistic
mode, which generates a different kind of reception and processing than modes more traditionally
associated with scientific thought. Through developing the MIRAWORLD projects, I emphasized
knowledge co-production through participation in media arts practices as a maker-driven
methodology for informal learning and communicating about science.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 29

CHAPTER 2: History of Poetic Science
This chapter contextualized Poetic Science within broader Art-Science practices, while
discussing some of the unique concerns facing interdisciplinary practitioners.
A Brief History of Art-Sci
Theorists and practitioners have been working in the overlapping space of art and science
for centuries. As science historian Arthur I. Miller points out, “Leonardo was both artist and
scientist, because in his day there was no distinction.”
34
This is not to suggest that all Renaissance
era artists used scientific processes, nor that all scientists concerned themselves with art. Rather,
both modes were considered to be connected to observational studies of the natural world,
technologies of the day, and inquiries into human nature. It was not unusual for researchers to use
both scientific and artistic processes, and to communicate about their work through writing,
illustration, and demonstration.
Stefan Collini, in his forward to the new edition of scientist C.P. Snow’s influential Two
Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
35
text based on his 1959 Cambridge lecture Two Cultures,
describes how “the interpretation of nature was generally regarded as but one element in the all-
embracing enterprise of ‘philosophy’ [during the Middle Ages and Renaissance]. Only in the
seventeenth century, in the course of what historians were much later to dub ‘the scientific
revolution’, did achievements in the study of the natural world come to be widely regarded as
setting new standards for what could count as genuine knowledge, and thereafter the methods

34
Miller, Arthur I. 2014. Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-Edge Science Is Redefining Contemporary Art. 1 edition.
W. W. Norton & Company.
35
Snow, C. P. 2013. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Mansfield Center, CT: Martino Fine Books.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 30
employed by the ‘natural philosophers’ (as they were still termed) enjoyed a special cultural
authority.”
36

To Miller, it was only with Newton and the first developments of classical physics that a
division began to be made between the arts and sciences. At that point, science concentrated on
technological development while art focused on representing life, storytelling, decoration, and
beauty. It was not until the first decade of the twentieth century that the two disciplines began to
converge again.
In the early 19
th
century, science and scientists increasingly defined the boundaries of their
discipline in opposition to the humanities, in large part so that they could legitimize their field in
the eyes of the academy and thereby receive equal cultural and institutional support. Two key
moments severed scientific inquiry’s previous designation as a subset of philosophy and
contributed to its legitimization as a distinct intellectual pursuit: the first use of the term “scientist”
in print
37
, and Snow’s 1959 ‘Two Cultures’
38
lecture that first described an intellectual divide
between the humanities and sciences. As Snow laments:
This polarization is sheer loss to us all. To us as people, and to our society.
It is at the same time practical and intellectual and creative loss, and I
repeat that it is false to imagine that those three considerations are clearly
separable.
39
Snow’s lecture and Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution
40
follow-up, ignited critique of educational system divides
between the humanities and sciences. Snow primarily critiqued his
perceived view that the ancient Greek derived humanities were valued
more than the sciences within the British educational system of that time,
and sought to rectify that. Snow believed that public intellectuals looked
down upon and did not consider the work of the sciences to be worthy of
examination. At the same time, scientists often devalue the work of the arts
and fail to understand its functions beyond beauty. Often, even within

36
Snow, C. P., and Stefan Collini. 2002. The Two Cultures. Reissue edition. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York:
Cambridge University Press.
37
The first published use of the term, “scientist” was in Wehwell, William. Review of Mary Somerville’s “On the
Connexion of the Physical Sciences” (1834).
38
Snow, C. P. 2002. The Two Cultures. Reissue edition. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
39
Snow, C. P. 2002. The Two Cultures. Reissue edition. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
40
Snow, C. P. 2013. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Mansfield Center, CT: Martino Fine Books.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 31
interdisciplinary contexts, each discipline appreciates the other for how it
can benefit their own discipline, rather than meeting on equal ground.

The Two Cultures debate originated from a perceived neglect and devaluing of scientific
modes of thought as not being considered intellectual. It ignited discussion which has subsequently
given all the sciences, not just the theoretical ones, their rightful places within the academy and
intellectual spheres. Unfortunately, the arts and humanities have been left in their wake. The
sciences, both applied and theoretical, have since flourished, and now greatly outpace the
humanities in terms of public and private funding. In our current age, it is hard to imagine a time
when scientific thought and practice was of secondary importance to the humanities culturally or
institutionally. Though these developments have been of great benefit to scientific progress, the
unfortunate legacy of increased attention to the debate surrounding two supposedly vastly different
forms of intellectual practice, is a widened gulf between the humanities and sciences.
Five years prior to C. P. Snow’s infamous 1959 lecture, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer,
lectured on a similar theme,
41
describing both scientists and artists as having become highly
specialized, isolated, and to some extent irrelevant to society. Like Snow, he suggested that both
groups expose themselves to other people - both to teach and to learn from those around them -
not to dilute their own efforts, or to take orders from those who do not understand what they are
doing. As Oppenheimer poetically describes:
" …love of man and freedom of thought are winning. The arts and sciences
blossom, and our vision into the workshop of nature goes deep.”
42

According to Phillip Griffiths, “he [Oppenheimer] said that both scientists and artists have

41
Oppenheimer, J. Robert. 1953. “Science and the Common Understanding.” MP3. The Reith Lectures. BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hg2dr.
42
Oppenheimer, J. Robert. 1954. “Science and Common Understanding.” Theoria: An International Journal for
Theory, History and Foundations of Science 2 (7/8): 225–32.
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 32
a special gift for us, if they can only bring themselves to share it. Both groups live always at what
he called the "edge of mystery" - the boundary of the unknown. But they also live here on Earth
among the rest of us. These visionaries must struggle constantly to integrate what they see "out
there" with what they see "down here"; to integrate what is new with what is familiar; to find
partial order amid the chaos of experience. Thus they are well prepared to help the rest of us, if
they will, find our balance in a world which confronts us daily with new challenges and new
invitations.”
43

Snow and Oppenheimer were responding to a post WWII climate in which the gap between
the disciplines of art and science were largely more divided than they are today. Their critiques
fueled increased discussion and visibility about the two cultures divide. Nonetheless, financial and
institutional support is still greatly divided, with the sciences receiving the vast majority of public
funding for their research. Until both modes of practice are more equally supported, there is still a
lot more room for growth.

New Frontiers and ‘third culture’
Snow’s 1963 follow-up, The Two Cultures: And a Second Look: An Expanded Version of
the Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
44
, forecasted that an interdisciplinary “Third
Culture” would emerge to close the communication gap between literary intellectuals and
scientists. In his 1996 treatise, “Third Culture”
45
, publisher John Brockman proposed that the
emergent third culture had arrived, described as a space where thinkers express their deepest
thoughts directly to intelligent masses, addressing topics of relevance and novelty to all audiences.

43
Griffiths, Phillip. 1995. “Phillip Griffiths Looks at ‘Two Cultures’ Today.” Rice University. http://www-
history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Griffiths_two_cultures.html.
44
Snow, C. P. 1963. Two Cultures & A Second Look: An Expanded Version of The Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution. NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY.
45
Brockman, John. 1996. “Introduction.” The Third Culture. January 1. http://edge.org/conversation/the-emerging.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 33
“The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the
empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are
taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the
deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.”
46

Brockman is a literary agent who has been a heavy advocate for science communication.
He publishes extensive interviews with scientists and other “thinkers” so that audiences can learn
about their ideas directly from the source, rather than having everything be interpreted by a
journalist, literary critic or other intermediary. He operates based on the premise that an intelligent
public would prefer to learn about science, art, philosophy, and other subjects, from the experts
themselves. He sees his role as one of curating these information sources and contexts, creating
opportunities for the work to be transmitted and shared. If the experts are less skilled at
communications, then expert curators such as himself can make their content more accessible and
available based on format, types of questions, etc.
From 1981 to 1996, Brockman led The Reality Club, described on the Edge.org website he
runs as “an informal gathering of intellectuals in Chinese Restaurants, artist lofts, investment
banking firms, ballrooms, museums, living rooms, and elsewhere. The hallmark of The Reality
Club has been rigorous and sometimes impolite (but not ad hominem) discourse. The motto of the
Club was inspired by the late artist-philosopher James Lee Byars: "To arrive at the edge of the
world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room
together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.”… Edge.org was
launched in 1996 as the online version of The Reality Club and as a living document on the Web
to display the activities of "The Third Culture".”
47
The Reality Club gatherings evolved into master
classes, larger dinners, seminars, written and video interviews, special events, and a yearly book

46
Brockman, John. 1996. “Introduction.” The Third Culture. January 1. http://edge.org/conversation/the-emerging.
47
Brockman, John. 2016. “About Edge.org.” https://www.edge.org/about-edgeorg.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 34
publishes based on a question prompt. Examples of yearly contemplations are: “What do you
consider the most interesting recent [scientific] news? What makes it important? (2016); What do
you think about machines that think? (2015); What scientific idea is ready for retirement? (2014);
What should we be worried about? (2013); What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful
explanation? (2012); through to the original prompt: What questions are you asking yourself?
(1998).” The Edge.org website topics are organized by categories: mind, life, culture, universe,
and technology.
Brockman approaches the curation of intellectual thought similar to the curation of a
gallery exhibition. He frames the discourse around a question as contemplation and prompt and
then chooses which intellectuals to include within this particular “group show”. He shapes the
form of the process, the context, and the medium of delivery. In similar fashion, since 2006, he has
curated events called Marathons at the Serpentine Museum in London with Hans Ulrich Obrist
(HUO). Brockman curates the scientists and HUO the artists. These 24 hour happenings include
informal presentations, gatherings, and discussion, around a critical topic such as 2014’s Extinction
Marathon described as: “Both a reflexive overview and a call to action, the two-day event invited
us to respond, together, to a changing world, addressing visions of the future in all their scientific,
artistic and literary ramifications.”
48

48
“Marathons.” n.d. Serpentine Galleries. http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 35

Figure 12: Serpentine Gallery "Extinction Marathon" (2014). Pictured: Jesse Darling, Frederico Campagna, Franco
'Bifo' Berardi.
Interdisciplinary initiatives like the Marathons, and the dissemination of discussions and
interviews by intellectuals are a great step forward in promoting cultural awareness of art-sci work
and bridging disciplinary cultural divides. However, moving forward this work could be improved
upon by bridging more fundamental cultural divides, thereby including more racial, ethnic, socio-
economic, gender, and world diversity in the “experts”. For example, the majority of featured
experts on Edge.org and in the Serpentine Gallery Marathons are non-Hispanic white men. This is
disconcerting, as it doesn’t promote or model inclusion, and therefore doesn’t reflect the public or
culture at large or make a greater effort to bridge cultures. It promotes an elitist class of intellectuals
that disseminate information in a top-down way to the masses, which is an outdated model for
communication that I will discuss in more depth as I present other models. From my perspective,
a contemporary ‘Third Culture’ should integrate multi-layered ways of knowing across the arts,
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 36
technology, and sciences, that extend beyond the purely literary and intellectual, and beyond the
dissemination of top-down expert thought and practice by an elitist few.
Contemporary interdisciplinary communicators largely focus on curating attention and
contexts for experiencing knowledge. It is within this space that communication and visualization
techniques are more critical than ever before. And it is largely the role of the artist to help make
sense of all of the overwhelming information surrounding us, whether that sense translates as
intellectual understanding or expressive affect.
Through close collaboration with scientists, artists will largely be the ones to help make
sense and find meaning and even poetry within ever expanding information streams. An updated
3
rd
culture bridges the humanities and sciences through including both poetic and scientific ways
of knowing. It goes beyond the purely intellectual, analytic, and conceptual to include for example,
the affective, embodied, and kinesthetic, forms that align well with artistic modes of expression.
Multi-layered forms of knowledge production and communication that include both scientific and
humanistic approaches, are most likely to resonate and find relevance with public audiences.
Within this space, transmedia poetic science can truly flourish.
Art-Sci Opportunity
On the positive side, greater awareness and discussion about perceived communication
gaps between the humanities and sciences have inspired efforts to investigate and bridge the divide.
Since the 1960s, whether called a “Third Culture” or not, there has been a renaissance in
interdisciplinary art and science thinking, and cultural institutions to support it. Notable
publications and associations include: Leonardo journal, founded in Paris in 1968 by kinetic artist
and astronautical pioneer, Frank Malina, Leonardo’s International Society for the Arts, Sciences
and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) founded in 1982, Art Electronica founded in 1979 to explore
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 37
intersections between art, technology, and society, the European Digital Art and Science Network,
Arts @ CERN, the ubiquitous Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conferences founded
in 1984, new college departments and majors focused on interdisciplinary art and science, the
emergence of new fields such as the medical humanities and science and technology studies,
celebrated museums such as the Exploratorium, brainchild of Frank Oppenheimer, founded in
1969, science discovery programs such as NOVA (PBS, founded 1973), and many more.
A number of scientific funding sources now dedicate a portion of their funds to
interdisciplinary communications efforts, such as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which instituted
a film program in 1997 to support filmmakers in developing narrative films that include real
science and technology
49
, and interdisciplinary grants from the National Science Foundation
(NSF), which explicitly describes its ideology in interdisciplinary terms. “NSF has long recognized
the value of interdisciplinary research in pushing fields forward and accelerating scientific
discovery.”
50

Both Sloan Science and Film grants and the NSF’s interdisciplinary grants can be sources
of funding support for artists, however these organizations primarily serve scientific rather than
artistic aims, which is reflected in their funding allocations.
Since the beginning of the NSF’s work in Antarctica, AAW program manager Valentine
Kass, says that they’ve been focused on funding both scientists and artists,
“so that artists and writers can bring back their interpretation of the
continent and the science being done there. We think that the artists and
writers have a unique way of reaching the public, and Antarctica is
obviously a place that most people never get to. Education has always
been a big part of the mission of the NSF and the artists and writers are

49
“About the Sloan Film Program.” 2014. Http://scienceandfilm.org/film.
50
“Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research.” 2015. National Science Foundation. Accessed December 23.
http://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/additional_resources/interdisciplinary_research/index.jsp.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 38
part of a way to interpret and get the general public interested and
engaged with what’s happening on the ice.
51
”

A number of fascinating projects have been completed as part of the AAW program.
However, it is worth noting that the program does not provide any funding to artist participants
whatsoever except for travel and basic lodging
52
. Essentially, the humanities scholars are given
access to the scientific location, but their work there is completely volunteer. As Kass describes,
the artists and writers are critical to the translation and transmission of the scientific research in
Anarctica. They have the ability to pique interest, a core communication objectives competency
identified by Dudo and Besley’s research, and yet this labor, if performed by communications and
engagement experts, is unsupported financially. Instead, artists are expected to self-fund their
work, most likely through humanities based grants, despite the fact that the NSF lays claim to this
work as critical science communications effort.
Sloan seeks to improve the accuracy of the representation of science and scientists in the
public view. Though it is not a formalized Sloan mandate, a majority of Sloan funded films portray
scientists and science as heroic historical figures, despite the stated desire to avoid scientist
stereotypes. Science film scholar David Kirby describes the evolution of scientist stereotypes in

51
Furino, Giaco. 2016. “The Artists’ Residency at the End of the World.” Creators Project, The. May 18.
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/artist-residency-program-antarctica?utm_source=tcpfbus.
52
“Antarctic Artists and Writers Program.” n.d. National Science Foundation.
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503518&org=PLR&from=home.

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Amanda Tasse © 2016 39
the figure below, with “Heroic Scientists” being a common trope since 1991.

Figure 13: Scientist stereotypes (2008)
53

Recent Sloan funded films that fall within this trope include science biopics, drama thriller
The Imitation Game (2014) and romantic drama Theory of Everything (2014). Both embed the
scientific content within traditional Hollywood narrative 3-Act structures, emphasizing the non-
scientific struggles of the scientists within everyday life as equally heroically as their scientific
pursuits. In The Imitation Game, hacker Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) works to crack Nazi
encryption codes, including the Enigma, considered to be fool proof, while being simultaneously
persecuted for his sexual orientation within restrictive WWII era England.

53
Kirby, David. 2008. “Cinematic Science.” In Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology,
edited by Massimiano Bucchi and Brian Trench. London and New York: Routledge.
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 40

Figure 14: Film Still, The Imitation Game (2014) Figure 15: Film Still, The Theory of Everything (2014)
The Theory of Everything chronicles Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne)’s scientific
ambition and success against all odds: a heroic overcoming of a progressive motor neuron disease,
told within the context of a romantic drama between him and his wife, Jane (Felicity Jones).
Both films employ traditional narrative storytelling techniques to reflect on scientific
discovery and accomplishment within the dramatic and sometimes metaphorical unfolding of their
extraordinary lives. Though the interweaving of the science and art is primarily biographic: to
dramatize and characterize the lives of scientists and to tell their stories in a dramatized way, they
nonetheless incorporate a number of poetic strategies. Original music, cinematography, production
design, and nuanced character portrayal evoke sensory and emotional connection with the content.
Other non-biopic Sloan funded films, such as director Mike Cahill’s Another Earth (2011)
and I Origins (2014) employ more lyrical and overtly poetic approaches. They are speculative in
nature. Vivian Sobchack (1980) recounts Judith Merril’s identification of three basic SF stories:
The Teaching Story, whose function is the popularization of science and technology; the Preaching
Story, which warns and prophesizes; and Speculative Fiction, described as
54
:
“I use the term “speculative fiction” here specifically to describe the mode
which makes use of the traditional “scientific method” (observation,
hypothesis, experimentation) to examine some postulated approximation
of reality, by introducing a given set of changes – imaginary or inventive

54
Sobchack, Vivian. 1980. Screening Space. 2nd ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 41
– into the common background of “known facts,” creating an environment
in which the responses and perceptions of the characters will reveal
something about the inventions, the characters, or both.
55

Science Fiction also has a long history of having poetic science and science communication
aims.
I Origin tells the fictive story of Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), a molecular biologist studying
the unique signatures of the human eye. He falls in love with a young woman, Sofi (Àstrid Bergès-
Frisbey) who later dies in a tragic elevator accident. Gray, convinced that the unique iris signatures
can be reincarnated, goes on a search for her.

Figure 16: Film Still, I Origins (2014)
I Origins is not a heroic scientist story. Instead it is a tragic romance that leads one scientist
from a rational perspective to a more speculative and metaphysical approach to his study of reality.

55
Merril, Judith. 1971. “What Do You Mean: Science? Fiction?” In The Other Side of Realism, by Thomas D.
Clareson. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Popular Press.

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Amanda Tasse © 2016 42
While the scientific context and depiction of scientific characters within everyday life is nuanced,
the scientific content itself is quite speculative. The characters themselves embody different
approaches to scientific inquiry. Sofi is an innocent child archetype, afraid of and uncomfortable
with Gray’s scientific research. Gray judges these qualities in her until he himself goes looking for
them.
Another Earth operates along similar speculative premises. Mankind has discovered a
parallel universe of sorts, a second earth rotating around the sun. This serves as the backdrop for
Rhoda (Brit Marling)’s imagining of a different life for herself, after she kills an entire family in a
reckless drunk driving incident.

Figure 17: Film Still, Another Earth, (2011).
Cahill describes his relationship to the scientific content as metaphor:

It’s one of those things that is difficult because you’re ultimately using
science as metaphor. You do want it to work in some ways but if you ask
an astrophysicist straight-up “Would it work like this?” the answer is no.
However, we tried to create rules that we followed. Ideally, I can only
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 43
hope that the audience recognizes that it’s only for metaphor and let it
wash over you in a way.
56

Shane Carruth’s films Primer (2004) and Upstream Color (2013) are similarly speculative
and fantastical, but inspired by science, and also funded by Sloan Science & Film grants.

Figure 18: Film Still, Primer (2004) Figure 19: Film Still, Upstream Color (2013)
Primer is a time travel fantasy that was famously made on a micro budget. Upstream Color
is a non-linear, lyrical, and poetic film that intertwines speculative human and animal cognition
with a drug induced psychosis of Kris (Amy Seimetz). The Sloan Science & Film’s stated aim is
“to influence the next generation of filmmakers to tackle science and technology themes and
characters, to increase visibility for feature films that depict this subject matter and to produce new
films about science and technology and about scientists, engineers and mathematicians.”
57
By
including brief descriptions of a few traditional and non-traditional feature films, I hope to
demonstrate that despite Sloan’s stated mission to promote science, it openly funds projects that
also have strong poetic goals along a wide spectrum from traditional narratives to speculative
lyrical and experimental films. Two of my films, which are lyrical and experimental narratives,
The Reality Clock (2012), and MIRA (2016), were funded by Sloan Science & Film grants.

56
Cahill, Mike. 2011. Mike Cahill Discusses Intertwining Science Fiction and Drama in Another Earth Roundtable.
http://cinedork.com/2011/07/25/interview-mike-cahill-discusses-intertwing-science-fiction-and-drama-in-another-
earth/.
57
“About the Sloan Film Program.” 2014. Http://scienceandfilm.org/film.
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Amanda Tasse © 2016 44
The cinematic apparatus itself emerged out of the scientific research of Edwaerd
Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey who were looking for technological means to study animal
movement. Since then, moving pictures have remained an integral part of scientific research.
(Cartwright 1995; Gaycken 2002; Ostherr 2005; Landecker 2006). As science cinema historian
David Kirby points out, “fiction cinema’s impacts on science move far beyond being a research
tool through promoting research agendas, influencing public controversies, and playing a role in
intra-specialist communication. Films can have significant impact on policy debates as politicians
and members of the general public often use fictional stories to frame their concerns about science
and technology (Mulkay 1996; Huxford 2000; Nerlich et al. 2001).”
58

Public Reception of Art-Sci and Media Arts Literacy
Though practitioners of art and science see clear overlaps between the two fields, public
culture is not yet widely aware of the connections. As such, despite increasing institutional support
– new interdisciplinary degree programs, festivals, and funding opportunities – art-sci is still more
of a marginal than widespread movement. Though tempting to romanticize the idea of a
Renaissance man or woman who worked fluidly across disciplines, Arthur I. Miller reminds us
that in that period – roughly the fourteenth to the late seventeenth centuries, when the
Enlightenment, Age of Rationalism, began – there might have been less to know, and what was
known was often vague. In contrast, today’s sheer volume of knowledge is huge, with highly
specialized and complex subjects that are taught within a highly divided education system. It is
there that an emphasis on interdisciplinary [practices & thinking] would be of great benefit.
59

58
Kirby, David. 2008. “Cinematic Science.” In Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology,
edited by Massimiano Bucchi and Brian Trench. London and New York: Routledge.
59
Miller, Arthur I. 2014. Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-Edge Science Is Redefining Contemporary Art. 1 edition.
W. W. Norton & Company.

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Amanda Tasse © 2016 45
Continued support for arts education is vital to ensure that public understanding of the field
extends beyond narrow definitions of beautification and decoration to an appreciation of the wide
scope of art and design’s functions within society. As art, science, and technology become more
intertwined, public appreciation of and participation in media arts processes increases. Despite
this, critical examination of the field hasn’t necessarily increased. Therefore, it’s crucial that strong
media arts education continues to be supported and promoted at all levels. This dissertation will
discuss strategies by which a transmedia approach to poetic science can create beneficial learning
contexts, not only for science, but also for media arts literacy and art-sci.

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CHAPTER 3: Transmedia Poetic Science
This chapter expands the discussion of poetic science to describe how transmedia can be a
beneficial framework for arts based research, communication, and learning of science.

Transmedia Poetic Science
Transmedia refers to a story or other product or project that emerges across multiple media
in such a way that each medium contributes something unique to the greater whole. Henry Jenkins’
description, which has been central to scholarship and production activity for the past decade,
describes transmedia storytelling as such:
Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of
a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for
the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment
experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to
the unfolding of the story.
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Though this definition hones in on storytelling, a transmedia approach to media production
and distribution can be applied to many different types of content and contexts. Jenkins emphasizes
that the word transmedia itself modifies what it describes. Transmedia suggests a particular logic
that emphasizes multimodality, intertextuality, and dispersion across media formats, practices that
predate recent definitions. For example, in Playing with Power (Kinder 1991), Marsha Kinder
described Hollywood franchise development practices, such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
animated TV shows, features, toys, games, trading cards and comics as transmedia intertextuality.
Scholars point to the intertextuality of anime practices as early as the 1960s in Japan, often called

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Jenkins, Henry. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Confessions of an AcaFan . N.p., 22 Mar. 2007. Web. 14 Apr.
2011.
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media mix (Jenkins 2006, Steinberg 2012). Jenkins describes the world-building and mythology-
modeled story structures of L. Frank Baum (world-building across media), Walt Disney
(transmedia branding), and J.R.R. Tolkien (intertextuality) as further examples of historical
antecedents for transmedia practices.
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Though transmedia practices and theory have especially flourished with the rise of
networked digital culture, transmedia practices hold many roots and continued practicing in both
digital and analog formats. Transmedia logics have been applied to a wide variety of content and
contexts, both fiction and non-fiction such as transmedia activism, learning, storytelling, branding,
ritual, and performance.
With MIRAWORLD, I applied a transmedia approach to the development of a
comprehensive world built around a theme from science to explore how transmedia might support
a poetic science approach to informal learning and science communication. In transmedia poetic
science, integral elements of a scientific prompt are explored and communicated through multi-
faceted formats and channels, thus providing many access points for audience engagement across
a spectrum from hard science to poetic science. Each format maximizes its own affordances for
highest impact, while encouraging exploration across multiple formats.
I found that working with a transmedia framework was a beneficial methodological
approach to poetic science communication for a number of reasons, which I will describe in more
detail as I discuss each MIRAWORLD project. In brief, transmedia supports and encourages multi-
modal thinking and processes, which are central to poetic science, which by nature already includes
multiple modes: artistic and scientific. Working multi-modally through different medium types
enhances interdisciplinary thinking through encouraging a maker or player to approach the content

61
Jenkins, Henry. 2011. “Defining Transmedia Further.” Blog. Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of
Henry Jenkins. August 1. http://henryjenkins.org/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html.
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in multiple ways. The multi-modality leads into intertextuality. As makers and players move across
project media formats, they consider the relationships and connections between both the formats
and the presentation of the content across formats. As players and makers actively search for and
experience different media extensions, they make connections between them. This active
engagement and layering of experience provides opportunities for players and makers to get to
know the content in new ways. This layered multi-modal approach requires the use of different
types of thinking and skills, and thereby supports and encourages the use of multiple media
literacies and intelligences. Finally, a transmedia science communication world allows for both
scientific and artistic modes to co-exist. This framework supports artists and scientists working
alongside one another while informing each-other’s practices. It does not require a single outcome,
but can preserve and showcase how different practices respond to a central theme.

Logics and Locations
To paraphrase Jenkins recent extended examination of developments in transmedia
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, the
word transmedia itself is an adjective that modifies something else. It implies a structured or
systemic relationship between multiple media platforms and practices but in and of itself, tells us
little about the media involved, the relationship between producers and consumers, the functions
being served, and the economic models supporting the production and distribution of its elements.
A discussion of transmedia forms cannot be separated from an examination of their logics and
locations. Logics describes the goals which transmedia production is intended to serve and the
assumptions made about the desired relationships among transmedia consumers, producers, and

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Jenkins, Henry. 2016. “Draft.” In Work in Progress. TBD.

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texts. Locations relates to the context from which transmedia productions emerge, are developed,
distributed, and experienced. (Jenkins 2015; Ibrus and Maarja 2014).
Ibrus and Maarja extend this analysis further to examine transmedia logics and locations
in smaller European countries and to consider how these formations relate to cultural dynamics
more generally. European, Canadian, and some South American transmedia productions are
majority funded by government public programs, a largely different context for development,
distribution, and reception than commercially driven systems like the Hollywood entertainment
industry, responsible for generating a significant amount of transmedia content associated with
pre-existing commercial properties (Ibrus and Maarja 2014, Jenkins 2006, Phillips 2012).
Transmedia production that originates in a public service media economy
or comes from nonprofit organizations might stress the value of
transmedia for the purposes of learning (Fleming 2013), religion (Wagner
2011), diplomacy (Pamment 2015), activism and mobilization (Srivastava
n.d.; Costanza-Chock 2010), or documentary and journalism (Clarke
2009).
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The government is the primary funding source for scientific research and its associated
public engagement, communication, and educational efforts in the U.S., South America, Europe,
and many other countries. In the U.S., transmedia poetic science production is most likely to be
funded either as an extension of this scientific research, such as through the broader impacts section
required by U.S. National Science Foundation NSF grants, or through non-profit education or
STEM communication oriented programming.
Every NSF grant has the potential to not only advance knowledge, but
benefit society -- what we call broader impacts. Just like the kaleidoscopic
nature of science, broader impacts come in many forms. No matter the
method, however, broader impacts ensure all NSF-funded science works
to better our world.
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63
Jenkins, Henry. Transmedia Logics & Locations. White Paper. 2015.?
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“Broader Impacts: Improving Society.” 2016. National Science Foundation. Accessed May 20.
http://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/special/broaderimpacts/.
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Transmedia poetic science production shares similar transmedia locations and logics as
other public service media and non-profit originated projects, most notably learning, documentary,
and journalism.
However, poetic science projects in particular have the locational challenge to serve
humanistic interests while being largely funded by scientific interests. In bridging these two
cultures, it is crucial that the humanities remain valued and preserved. Within a climate where
scientific research funding grossly outweighs that of humanistic, it is often challenging to negotiate
weighted value for the poetics within interdisciplinary collaborations. Bruce Mackh’s recent
comprehensive review of higher education funding revealed that the 15 research universities with
the greatest expenditures for research and development spend 10 cents of each $100 on the Visual
and Performing Arts overall
65
. Unfortunately, poetic or arts based research is grossly underfunded
within university research systems. This reflects similar inequalities within government
organization funding in the U.S. As poetic science efforts are most likely to find their funding as
offshoots of scientific research communication efforts, the poetic science producers are likely to
face fundamental locational and logistical challenges throughout their efforts.
Nonetheless, given gross inequalities in existing funding between the humanities and
sciences, artists with an affinity for science can greatly benefit from the resources associated with
larger scientific grants. However, working within such interdisciplinary environments often
requires a process of cross-cultural education and translation. Through defining, describing,
articulating, and examining the benefits of poetic science as a mode of working and form of
expressive communication, I hope to provide artists with ways of educating scientific colleagues

65
Mackh, Bruce. 2016. “Research and Arts Practice.” White Paper.
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and negotiating for greater influence, creative control, support, and resources within art-science
contexts.
Within interdisciplinary projects, a transmedia framework can beneficially allow both
artistic and scientific forms to emerge and coexist. Rather than forcing hybridity within each form,
the artists and scientists have the space to contribute forms that are co-created or created separately.
The larger world can hold both types of research practice so long as they are integrally related to
a larger theme.
Ibrus and Maarja describe transmedia production and forms as meaningful catalysts for
cultural innovation.
We propose a case for understanding transmedia practices as part of the
broader dynamics that provide culture with innovations and generate
cultural heterogeneity and pluralism—important preconditions for the
sustainable evolution of societies.
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The production and reading of transmedia works require active navigation across diverse
formats with their own associated contexts and logics, thus activating processes of translation and
interpretation, and promoting communication across domains.
Inter-semiotic translations between media and modalities are the core
mechanisms of (semantic) innovations. The outcomes of such translations
are never trivial; they bring about changes in what is revealed to
interpreters and, as a result, effectively broaden the possible variety of
perceptions, meanings, and texts/representations available in a culture.
Transmedia as an emergent practice may be interpreted as valuable for
advancing societal dialogues and enriching the culture with new socially
pertinent representations.
67

66
Ibrus, Indrek, and Maarja Ojamaa. 2014. “What Is the Cultural Function and Value of European Transmedia
Independents?” International Journal of Communication 8: 2283–2300.
67
Ibrus, Indrek, and Maarja Ojamaa. 2014. “What Is the Cultural Function and Value of European Transmedia
Independents?” International Journal of Communication 8: 2283–2300.
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Transmedia play experiences require participants to read them broadly (across multiple
media) and deeply (digging into details of the narrative)
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. “Transmedia navigation” or “the ability
to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities” encourages new media
literacies (Jenkins et al., 2006).
Poetic science practitioners actively translate and interpret scientific questions and content
into artistic forms using artistic modes of inquiry and production. As a form of cross-cultural
translation, poetic science similarly broadens the possible variety of perceptions, meanings, and
texts/representations of science available in the greater culture. The process of engaging in active
boundary crossing can contribute to a diverse plurality of cultural expression and encourage the
development of literacies in and support for interdisciplinary and cross-cultural communication.
Cultural Translation
Transmedia can be a way of crossing cultural divides, geographical but also disciplinary.
COMPASS is a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting relevant scientific research results
to key audiences
69
. According to COMPASS executive director Brooke Smith, the problem lies
not only in the scientist’s ability to share their knowledge with the public, but having the support
and resources to do so. She acknowledges that scientists are often not the best experts for the
communication job, and yet funding processes themselves post obstacles to adequately funding
outreach projects with the flexibility and agile processes that would make them most effective.
One of the reasons most existing funding mechanisms do not bolster the
science/public engagement many seek is because we force
communications processes into a scientific research model at the proposal
stage when and where they just don’t fit… At COMPASS we talk a lot

68
Herr-Stephenson, Becky, Meryl Alper, Erin Reilly, and Henry Jenkins. 2013. “T Is for Transmedia: Learning
Through Transmedia Play.” Los Angeles and New York: USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and The Joan Ganz
Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. http://www.annenberglab. com/viewresearch/46.
69
Smith, Brooke. 2012. “At Odds: Science Funding And Science Communications.” COMPASSBLOGS: Answering
“So What?” In Science Communication. August 27. http://compassblogs.org/blog/2012/08/27/at-odds-science-
funding-and-science-communications/.
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about culture clashes – approaches, timelines, worldviews – as these are
often the biggest obstacles to effective science engagement.
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Smith explains that the scientific funding proposal model requires elaborate written
descriptions of scientific research that are methodically planned with extreme specificity and
minimal flexibility, ensuring that scientific methods are vetted in detail in advance. However, she
acknowledges that effective communications efforts require vastly different methods and
environments for development. For communications, timing and relevance reign requiring
maximum flexibility to produce and distribute at the most relevant time and using different means.
These efforts are extremely difficult to prescribe in detail for a funding proposal, especially given
that proposals are often written for projects that last anywhere from months to five or more years,
and outcomes are often uncertain. The scientists writing the proposals are often unaware of the
vast array of communications and outreach processes they might engage in, or that could be most
appropriate for their work.
Social scientists John Besley and Anthony Dudo recently published research
71
examining
the dynamics of how often, in what ways, and for what perceived effects, scientists engage with
lay audiences. Through so doing, they established guidelines for identifying how science
communication might be improved. One particularly crucial need they identified is for scientists
to think more strategically about their communication efforts through better articulating their
communication goals and objectives, thereby moving beyond a focus on information sharing
alone.
Even more straightforward than the objective of providing information, is
the communication objective of piquing interest in science. Educating and

70
Smith, Brooke. 2012. “At Odds: Science Funding And Science Communications.” COMPASSBLOGS: Answering
“So What?” In Science Communication. August 27. http://compassblogs.org/blog/2012/08/27/at-odds-science-
funding-and-science-communications/.
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Dudo, Anthony, and John C. Besley. 2016. “Scientists’ Prioritization of Communication Objectives for Public
Engagement.” PLoS ONE 11 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148867.
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building interest are traditionally considered two sides of the same coin
when it comes to public engagement with science, however these
objectives are identified as distinct “strands” of science learning within
the influential Learning Science in Informal Environments report
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. The
report specifically discusses the unique role that sparking interest and
excitement can play in spurring public motivations to seek future
opportunities to learn about and engage with science. We therefore
included building excitement as a specific communication objective.

COMPASS identifies getting scientists “to know their audience” as a core science communication
competency
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.
The current research suggests that, for science communication, ‘knowing
your audience’ may mean being thoughtful about what types of impacts
we are hoping or expecting to have on those with whom we are
communicating and the logic of how we think those impacts are most likely
to occur. Our findings thus speak to the potential value of ensuring that
communication trainers consider scientists’ communication objectives
and ensure that training helps scientists select communication objectives
for particular contexts and audiences
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.

Communications experts are rarely brought in at this early proposal stage. Even if they are,
it can be difficult for them to know exactly what would be the best forms to engage in without
knowing what will be discovered. For five year projects, new media might have emerged that
would be most relevant, but the opportunity will be missed.
Multimodality and Multiple Intelligences
Multimodality is a theory that examines how people communicate and interact with each
other using different modes, a mode being a communication channel that a culture recognizes.
Examples of modes for communication and expression are writing, speaking, gesture, gaze, and

72
Bell, Philip, Bruce Lewenstein, Andrew W. Shouse, and Michael A. Feder. 2009. “Learning Science in Informal
Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits.” Learning Science in Informal Environments, National Research
Council. National Academies Press. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12190.
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“GradSciComm Workshop Summary.” 2013. Workshop Summary, COMPASSonline.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/191901955/GradSciComm-Workshop-Summary.
74
Dudo, Anthony, and John C. Besley. 2016. “Scientists’ Prioritization of Communication Objectives for Public
Engagement.” PLoS ONE 11 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148867.
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visual forms (ex. font choice, color, images, video, interactions between them), etc.
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. With the
rise of new technologies and a rapidly evolving media landscape in the 20
th
and 21
st
centuries,
studies of multimodality have become increasingly relevant to communications, learning theory,
and media literacy.
Creators and theorists who work with multi-media and transmedia formats can greatly
benefit from a critical reflection on the interplay of various modalities within their works. The
designers (and participant creators, if applicable) of a transmedia world choose which media
formats to develop for. Each medium carries its own design affordances and constraints, and
communicates using different modes. The choice of mode has profound effects on the meaning
conveyed. Designers need to be aware of the meaning effects of different modes, because each
medium offers specific possibilities to the designer and to the audience in their reading or use.
These meanings also relate to the specific societies, cultures, and individuals from which
the media artifacts are created, shared, and experienced.
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Cultural meanings constellate around
various configurations: nationality, region, ethnicity; general knowledge systems such as those of
science or the arts; or shared media affinities such as serious gamers, hardcore gamers, art film
fans, etc. Each culture receives the message of a particular medium in ways that are influenced by
its culture, as well as individual members.
Poetic science forms utilize different modes to communicate. They go beyond the
traditional text based form of the standard scientific white paper or academic text such as this one,
to incorporate a myriad of modes: audio-visual, tactile, kinesthetic, and many more. Multi-modal

75
“Multimodality(Kress).” 2016. Learning-Theories: knowledge base and webliography. Accessed May 20.
http://www.learning-theories.com/multimodality-kress.html.
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Kress, Gunther. 2004. “Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media.” In Preparing for the
Future of Knowledge Presentation. http://www.knowledgepresentation.org/BuildingTheFuture/Kress2/Kress2.html.
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forms can provide contexts for active, experiential learning that complement and support more
explanatory fact and information based forms of verbal learning.
Deep learning involves, first and foremost, activity and experience, not
facts and information. Yet something interesting happens when one treats
knowledge primarily as activity and experience, not facts and information:
The facts come free. A large body of facts that resist out-of context
memorization and rote learning comes free of charge if learners are
immersed in activities and experiences that use these facts for plans, goals,
and purposes within a coherent knowledge domain (Shaffer 2004).
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Through creating contexts for rich forms of multimodality, poetic science works draw on
a wide array of forms of human expression. Each mode communicates using a different flavor of
intelligence that is particular to itself, and that is received in different ways. Content that is
communicated using a multimodal, media rich approach has the potential to express more layers
of depth, specificity, and meaning. What can be expressed, experienced, and known through
hearing underwater sounds is very different than reading a description of them.
The theory of multiple intelligences, first offered to the educational community by Harvard
psychologist Howard Gardner (1983)
78
, proposed that human beings have many different types of
intelligences beyond what had been traditionally measured on standardized tests. Gardner’s
seminar types of intelligences are: linguistic-verbal, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-
kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal
79
and newer types: naturalist, spiritual,
existential
80
.
Transmedia frameworks provide multiple means and modes for engaging with content. This

77
Gee, James Paul. 2008. “Game-Like Learning: An Example of Situated Learning and Implications for
Opportunity to Learn.” In Assessment, Equity, and Opportunity to Learn, 200–221. Cambridge University Press.
78
Cooper, Sunny. n.d. “Multiple Intelligences.” Learning Theories. http://www.lifecircles-
inc.com/Learningtheories/Gardner.html.
79
Gardner, Howard. 2011. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Third Edition edition. New York:
Basic Books.
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Gardner, Howard. 1999. Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century. New York, NY: Basic
Books.
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framework can provide an outlet for learners to practice and develop intelligences that might not
be activated or prioritized within learning environments that are not multi-modal. Within
individual media themselves, artistic and poetic approaches to scientific material don’t always
make sense in conventionally analytic ways. Instead, they engage with other ways of knowing
besides the analytic. By accessing the full range of human intelligence, which includes non-linear
mental states, visceral knowing, and affective dimensions, content can be experienced more
holistically. As a result, different intelligences and mental states are activated, enlivened, and
engaged. When content activates a wider spectrum of sensory, intellectual, and emotional
experience, it has the potential to have greater impact on memory processing.
For example, studies
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suggest that patients with Dementia retain the ability to access and
be affected by kinesthetic and musical memories and abilities long after their analytic cognitive
abilities have deteriorated. I suggest that learning methods that engage with a wider spectrum of
ways of knowing can potentially imprint complementary information on multiple neurological
pathways, inciting learning along multiple modes, thereby increasing their possibility of being
remembered. For example, if content is repeated and learned analytically, kinesthetically, visually,
and aurally, it has a higher likelihood of being remembered than if it were only received along one
pathway.
Transmedia Poetic Science Learning
Transmedia, done well, can contribute to an immersive, responsive,
learner-centered learning environment rich with information and linked
to children’s existing knowledge and experiences. It can build upon what
children already know about playing games, telling stories, and sharing
media. (…) Through immersive, interconnected, and dynamic narratives,

81
Sherratt, K, A Thornton, and C Hatton. 2004. “Music Interventions for People with Dementia: A Review of the
Literature.” Aging & Mental Health 8 (1): 3–12.
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transmedia engages multiple literacies, including textual, visual, and
media literacies, as well as multiple intelligences.
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A transmedia approach to popular science communicates a scientific theme using varied
media lenses. For MIRAWORLD, this included a video game, short film, screenplay, and two
visualization applications. Each medium has different target audiences, and provides a unique
means of exploring the source material from a novel perspective.
Poetic science forms beneficially provide opportunities for learners to engage with layered
experiential learning contexts that connect them to content on multiple levels. There are a
multitude of lenses and forms of intelligent engagement through which science can be accessed.
Many of these forms extend far beyond how science is traditionally presented in classroom
frameworks. Popular audiences are genuinely interested in voluntarily engaging with science when
it is presented in entertaining frameworks such as discovery shows, science museum exhibits,
games, and science fiction. Entertainment based participation in science content doesn’t
necessarily lead to vocation based participation in science, however games and learning scholars
have demonstrated that practicing competencies within simulated learning environments like
games can indeed transfer to other non-game contexts. Games scholar James Paul Gee describes
serious games as "preparation for future learning."
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As Gee describes, “Video games are, at their heart, problem-solving spaces that use
continual learning, and provide pathways to mastery through entertainment and pleasure.”
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According to Gee, games and other art-based experiences that are designed to have “Good

82
Herr-Stephenson, Becky, Meryl Alper, Erin Reilly, and Henry Jenkins. 2013. “T Is for Transmedia: Learning
Through Transmedia Play.” Los Angeles and New York: USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and The Joan Ganz
Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. http://www.annenberglab. com/viewresearch/46.
83
Gee, James Paul. 2013. “Games for Learning.” Educational Horizons 91: 17–20.
84
Gee, James Paul. 2009. “Deep Learning Properties of Good Games.” In Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects,
edited by Ute Ritterfeld, Michael Cody, and Peter Vorderer, 67–83. New York: Routledge.
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Learning” properties in mind, “allow players to have powerful experiences that compete with
experience in the real world precisely because experiences in the real world, at their best—when
we humans feel control, agency, deep learning and mastery— meet just these properties.”
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The magic at work in games is about finding hidden connections between
things, in exploring the way that the universe of a game is structured. As
all game players know, this kind of discovery makes for deeply profound
experiences. . . To play a game is to realize and reconfigure these hidden
connections between units on a game board, between players in a match,
between life inside the game and life outside—and in so doing, create new
meaning. And if games are spaces where meaning is made, game
designers are the meta-creators of meaning, those who architect the
spaces of possibility where such discovery takes place.
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There are a number of ways in which poetic science vehicles, like MIRAWORLD
videogame Miralab can be incorporated into more deliberate learning contexts. For example, after
immersion in gameplay, it can be useful to show players how they have organically participated
in scientific processes, and to help them make connections between what they have done in a game
or other play experience and processes in other contexts. If students have come to associate
learning with modes that they don’t relate to, they might feel discouraged and incompetent.
Educators can help students recognize how the skills they have practiced and developed within the
game environment relate to other spheres, thereby helping students develop greater confidence in
their abilities. If a player finds that they can relate to science through modes of learning encouraged
by games, even if they haven’t previously responded positively to other modes, they can feel more
encouraged by their abilities and potential in an area they previously didn’t relate to.

85
Gee, James Paul. 2009. “Deep Learning Properties of Good Games.” In Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects,
edited by Ute Ritterfeld, Michael Cody, and Peter Vorderer, 67–83. New York: Routledge.

86
Zimmerman, Eric. 2008. “Introduction.” In Game Design Workshop, 2nd ed. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
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One of the dangers of not allowing individuals to explore and discover themes from science
in varied ways is that they might feel easily alienated from science before having properly given
it a try, for example if the science is presented in a framework that draws on a mode of intelligence
that the individual is less strong at.
Teaching which values a skill that may not be strongly linked to ability in
science can alienate the bulk of students from the discipline before they
have properly experienced it.
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Poetic science forms can be a context whereby players and audiences can first experience
the science and connect to it in non-threatening and encouraging ways before explicitly engaging
in formal learning modes.
As David Schaffer’s concept of epistemic frames suggests, games and other interactive
learning environments allow players to try on different identities and practice different
competencies and ways of framing the world associated with those identities, which can then be
applied to situations outside of the original game context of learning (Schaffer 2006)
88
. For
example, through engaging with practices and frames of mind associated with the scientific
process in a game, a player might feel more confident about engaging in scientific processes
outside of the game. They might begin to see themselves as a scientist or as an artist, or to be able
to apply an artistic or scientific lens to a new situation through having practiced that mode of
practice in a simulated environment. As Schaffer suggests, the mechanism of epistemic framing in
games can thereby accomplish in a general, but important sense, the elusive educational goal of

87
Carr, Malcolm, Miles Barker, Beverley Bell, Fred Biddulph, Alister Jones, Valda Kirkwood, John Pearson, and
David Symington. 1994. “The Constructivist Paradigm and Some Implications for Science Content and Pedagogy.”
In The Content Of Science: A Constructivist Approach To Its Teaching And Learning, Chapter 11. Bristol, PA:
Routledge.
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Shaffer, David W. 2006. “Epistemic Frames for Epistemic Games.” Computers & Education 46: 223–34.
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producing worthwhile effects that transfer from one context to another (Bransford, Brown, &
Cocking 2000, Schaffer 2006).
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Through playing a game like Miralab, a player might begin to see the world through the
eyes of a marine biologist through exploring and discovering new features of the eco-system in
order to solve its puzzles. Through play, learners are given the freedom to discover the content in
multi-modal ways, and to integrate it into their lives organically. This decreases the likelihood that
they might shut down, thinking their minds just don’t work in a scientific (or artistic) way. Through
poetic science, they might uncover a new relationship to science. Increasing the accessibility,
quality, and diversity of communication methods creates the potential for decreased audience
alienation from science, and can be an effective way of bridging the two culture divide.
Players might also begin to recognize the great skills and competencies they have
developed outside of formal learning contexts through their own interest-driven-learning
endeavors, and to feel empowered and encouraged by recognizing how they can apply these skills
to other areas. In a recent report, Kylie Pepper describes interest-driven-learning as: “a form of
participation where youths research and learn about their creative passions and hobbies, connecting
them to peers with the same interests who may extend beyond their immediate social circle. Often
communities of interest-driven youths are widely distributed, connected by social networking
platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. Because shifting technology trends move at a
substantially faster rate than curricular changes, ethnographic research consistently shows that
youths are gaining most of their knowledge and competencies in and through new media outside
of schools (Hull & Schultz, 2002; Ito et al., 2010).”
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89
Shaffer, David W. 2006. “Epistemic Frames for Epistemic Games.” Computers & Education 46: 223–34.
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Peppler, Kylie. 2013. “New Opportunities for Interest-Driven Arts Learning in a Digital Age.” The Wallace
Foundation.
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How we feel about the ideas being presented in our learning experiences
affect our learning about them.
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Considerations of the importance of contexts to learning are allied to this affective
dimension. The context in which we learn something affects the way that individuals construct
knowledge. According to Rodrigues (1992), learning about a scientific concept may be much
easier through contexts with rich links to students’ interests, such as teen culture and the human
body.
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Learning that takes place within a Transmedia poetic science environment encourages a
host of interdisciplinary skills that might not be practiced otherwise.

91
Carr, Malcolm, Miles Barker, Beverley Bell, Fred Biddulph, Alister Jones, Valda Kirkwood, John Pearson, and
David Symington. 1994. “The Constructivist Paradigm and Some Implications for Science Content and Pedagogy.”
In The Content Of Science: A Constructivist Approach To Its Teaching And Learning, Chapter 11. Bristol, PA:
Routledge.
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Carr, Malcolm, Miles Barker, Beverley Bell, Fred Biddulph, Alister Jones, Valda Kirkwood, John Pearson, and
David Symington. 1994. “The Constructivist Paradigm and Some Implications for Science Content and Pedagogy.”
In The Content Of Science: A Constructivist Approach To Its Teaching And Learning, Chapter 11. Bristol, PA:
Routledge.
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CHAPTER 4: World-Making
I describe MIRAWORLD’s thematic core and world-building methodology in greater detail.

The Lifecycle of the Immortal Jellyfish
This theory of transmedia poetic science grew from rigorous arts practice inquiry while
developing MIRAWORLD - a transmedia exploration of a naturally occurring biological process:
the lifecycle of Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish. Before describing the project more
fully, it is essential to have a basic understanding of the life-cycle itself.

Figure 20: MIRAWORLD artist, Jessie Jordan (2015). Illustration of Turritopsis lifecycle.
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Figure 21: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong (2014). Illustration.
Turritopsis dornhii, the immortal jellyfish, transforms through a fascinating life-cycle that
is unique in the animal kingdom. After reaching full sexual maturity as an adult jellyfish (Medusa),
deterioration associated with advanced age or a trauma (physical, starvation, environmental
change) can initiate a process of transdifferentiation whereby its cells transform to a new type of
cell, one that is in an earlier, healthier polyp state, thus self-healing through reversing.

Figure 22: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong (2014). Figure 23: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong (2014).
A scientific probe (Figure above) is used to induce a reversal. To study the reversal process
or speed up the lifecycle in lab settings, scientists prick the jellyfish to destroy its membrane. For
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most species, this is equivalent to killing it. However, for Turritopsis dornhii, instead of death, this
induces the reversal process (Figure 24).

Figure 24: MIRAWORLD artist Jesse Jordan (2015). Figure 25: MIRAWORLD artist, Kate Wong
(2014).

During the reversal, the umbrella-like membrane that surrounds the jellyfish turns inside
out, pushing its central stomach through it. Then the membrane congeals around it. Eventually, the
jellyfish transforms back to an embryonic state, and from there settles onto a surface, from which
polyps form. Polyps then sprout multiple jellyfish bulbs that eventually swim away once fully
formed, continuing to grow larger and increase their tentacle count. This process of reversal earned
it the nickname the Benjamin Button jellyfish, in reference to the short story written by F. Scott
Fitzgerald.
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Figure 27: Scientific Illustration of Turritopsis
Transdifferentiation

While every species regenerates, or restores and grows its cells, some in highly specialized
ways, Turritopsis is unique in its ability to transform back into a polyp at any stage of its Medusa
life-span. Its cells do this through a process of congealing both stomach and outer membrane cells
together as they transdifferentiate
93
, or transform into a new type of cell while in the differentiated
state.
Scientists have studied Turritopsis for many reasons, however one particularly notable
applied investigation involves STEM cells. Dr. Deepak Srivastava’s Gladstone Institute of
Cardiovascular Disease at the University of California, San Francisco, investigates whether

93
Piraino, Stefano, Ferdinando Boero, Brigitte Aeschbach, and Volker Schmid. 1996. “Reversing the Life Cycle:
Medusae Transforming into Polyps and Cell Transdifferentiation in Turritopsis Nutricula (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa).”
Biological Bulletin 190 (3): 302–12.
Figure 26: photographic representation of the
life-cycle with MiraVIZ CG model in the center

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damaged and scarred heart cells can be programmed to transdifferentiate to an earlier healthier
state
94
, through parallel close study of Turritopsis.
Despite their technical immortality, Turritopsis dornhii are surprisingly fragile. They are
notoriously difficult to keep alive in a lab, requiring round-the-clock supervision, careful feeding
and monitoring for precise conditions. In the wild, they often die before having a chance to reverse,
either because of environmental conditions or through being eaten. Foremost Turritopsis dornhii
researcher, Dr. Shin Kubota, claims to have nurtured them through a record number of ten
lifecycles
95
.
Building the MIRAWORLD

Figure 28: MIRAWORLD Logo
In Spanish, Mira translates as “sight” or “view”. Mira also relates with its English sound-
alike word, “mirror”. A world refers to a shared creative space. In its broadest sense, then, a
MIRAWORLD is a creative space that is organized and connected based upon a shared view or
method of seeing that reflects the real world. In this case, MIRAWORLD also refers to a
comprehensive transmedia world that houses multiple emergent views bound together by thematic
exploration.
Creating MIRAWORLD was an exercise in world-building, a term that emerged primarily
from the Science Fiction genre in which the experience of discovering, exploring and interacting

94
Ieda, Masaki, Ji-Dong Fu, Paul Delgado-Olguin, Vasanth Vedantham, Yohei Hayashi, and Deepak Srivastava.
2010. “Direct Reprogramming of Fibroblasts into Functional Cardiomyocytes by Defined Factors.” Cell 142 (3):
375–86.
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Kubota, Shin. 2011. “Repeating Rejuvenation in Turritopsis, an Immortal Hydrozoan (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa).”
Biogeography 13: 101–3.
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with fantastical worlds is a central component of the experience. Susan Karlin describes world
building as a system for creating rules and behaviors for fictitious worlds arising from the science,
technology, social structure, geography, economics, and politics governing them. These
parameters can then inform plausible characters, conflicts, and plot-lines.
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In Imaginary Worlds one of the most comprehensive recent books on world-building, scholar
Mark J.P. Wolf defines the term ‘world’ as “not simply geographical but experiential; that is,
everything that is experienced by the characters involved, the elements enfolding someone’s life
(culture, nature, philosophical worldviews, places, customs, events, and so forth), just as world’s
etymological root word weorld from Old German refers to ‘all that concerns humans’, as opposed
to animals or gods.”
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Wolf describes secondary worlds as imagined world-building locations and
contexts, whether literary, cinematic, or crossing multiple media, as distinguished from (though
often intimately linked with) the Primary World, or lived real world. Early secondary worlds often
emerged out of scientific processes, such as efforts to explore, map, or comment upon the Primary
World, with greater and lesser degrees of poetic layering. Many of these works could fall within
the rubric of Poetic Science. Indeed, Wolf traces the roots of science fiction to a subset of
imaginary voyages or travelers’ tales that especially blurred the lines between fact and fiction in
explorations of outer worlds
98
. The term “science fiction” does not appear until two decades after
the term “scientist” was coined, and was not seen as a separate genre (from fantasy) until the
twentieth century.

96
Karlin, Susan. 2014. “How World Building Will Shape the Future of Media and Business.” Fast Company,
November 18. http://www.fastcocreate.com/3038146/how-world-building-will-shape-the-future-of-media-and-
business.
97
Wolf, Mark J.P. 2013. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York:
Routledge.
98
Wolf, Mark J.P. 2013. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York:
Routledge.

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Though still often associated with fiction fantasy genres, world-building is well suited to,
and indeed has its early roots in, processes of exploration of natural and scientific phenomena.
Earth was the early frontier, as seen and imagined with the naked eye. Science fiction genres have
also looked beyond, considering outer space and the exploration of other worlds. However,
alongside this, science continues to explore and reveal unknown and less easily accessible worlds
on earth, such as difficult to reach underwater worlds or microscopic universes, all of which work
well for secondary world-building.
Exploring, revealing, and describing these little known worlds is a process of secondary
world-making, which is extremely complementary to a poetic science approach to transmedia
world-building. That is what I have tried to do with MIRAWORLD - to reveal and make the world
of the immortal jellyfish accessible and available on multiple levels as a model for world-building
that includes both fact and fiction: its real world habitat, its imagined microscopic perspective at
different phases of its life-cycle, and the world of the scientist’s investigation of it.
MIRAWORLD offers an experimental approach to developing an emergent transmedia
world bound together and generated based on a theme from science, rather than being based upon
a shared narrative story world. As motif for investigation and design, the structure of Turritopsis’
unique life-cycle acted as a contextual metaphor, research prompt, and unifying theme for diverse
theoretical, narrative, and philosophical exploration and world-building.
Inspired and informed by Turritopsis, MIRAWORLD team(s) conceived a comprehensive
media arts world with tentacles, permutations, and cycles across media, perspectives, and
disciplinary palettes. The contemplation of this otherworldly life-cycle manifested in varied
curiosities, artifacts of both an internal and external exploratory journey. This document presents
the varied ornaments of this journey, including notes on process, discarded directions, final
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outcomes, and suggestions for future research and development. Through elucidating the
intricacies of this methodology, I suggest ways in which it can be an exemplary and timely new
form for popular science communication.
Non-Fiction Storytelling

Though MIRAWORLD isn’t a conventional story system, it is useful to deploy metaphors
from storytelling to describe how the world was designed. This transmedia world is built around
the story of its main protagonist, the immortal jellyfish. The jellyfish’s lifecycle is the primary
structural theme and plot for the world. The co-stars and minor characters are those that interact
with the jellyfish, both in its natural habitat and in science labs. The world’s environments are its
native habitat and labs. Viewers and players who interact with this MIRAWORLD become its
extended participant actors – scientists, detectives, and enthusiasts. These elements - the jellyfish
and its relationship with its surrounding eco-systems - are the basic story, structure, and content
source for world-building.
This basic story generates and multiplies into additional emergent narratives and experiences
by the jellyfish’s greatest fans – our team’s designers, engineers, writers, artists, producers, and
other enthusiasts. The perspectives and interpretations of this cherished jellyfish evolve and
change, but carry their tentacles and a similar DNA back to the simple miraculous story of the
creature itself. As such, MIRAWORLD is a dynamic living eco-system of emergent knowledge
and discovery.
Given that the immortal jellyfish has a pre-existing non-fiction world (its real-world habitat
and characteristics), I did not impose strict guidelines from the outset on what the tone, format,
and style for its communication would be. Instead, as we learned more about the science of the
jellyfish and its world, our teams acted as explorers and discoverers, translating and getting to the
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know the science through our own artistic and technical processing systems. The end result is that
the style of delivery is not as unified as it could have been across media. Nonetheless, it provided
a rich creative laboratory for artistic experimentation that simultaneously honored and
communicated its original science.
The larger transmedia project design curated varying formats and types of content about
the immortal jellyfish and its world: those that were iterative and literary, and those that align with
more traditional and literal forms of science communication. As such, over time, as we cycled
through varying permutations of lyrical exploration of the life-cycle theme, additional colony
members and tentacles grew, transdifferentiating the spark of an idea and its associated hypothesis
into an expanding and modulating immortal colony that points back to the original story of the
jellyfish and its habitat, as explored by science.
A working metaphor for how a transmedia project will be structured can aid the design
process by being a short-hand for studying and communicating how this elaborate system will be
modeled. Systems design theory often draws from pre-existing models in the natural world, which
can be similarly useful for transmedia. For MIRAWORLD, the immortal jellyfish’s unique and
remarkable life-cycle acts as apt and poetic metaphor for the cyclical and morphing quality of a
transmedia eco-system and the creative development process itself as it gestates and takes form
across varying media. An open transmedia system can evolve through varying lifecycles and build
up a colony of works that are genetically linked. Never in a fixed state, it continually evolves and
devolves. Similarly, MIRAWORLD morphs into multi-faceted variations, reflecting myriad
means for exploration as participants play with the information in the world, which sometimes
responds and reflects actions back to the user.
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With MIRAWORLD, my goal was to experiment with transmedia primarily as a
methodological approach for discovering and communicating popular science. I explored
scientific, artistic, and narrative prompts and guidelines through the lens of varying media with
free reign so that I could see what arose within these open, generative, and emergent systems.
As each team discovered the science through the lens of their own particular practice, be it
engineering or design, they invoked their own curiosity as a guide. With each project -- video game
Miralab, short film MIRA, data visualizations MiraFlux and MiraViz, and multiple forms of
writing -- I sought to create a context whereby individuals could discover their own sense of
wonder about this species and its implications for their own worldview.

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CHAPTER 5: Poetic Layering
This chapter provides an overview of historical trajectories in Affect theory and emotive
studies that are foundational to this theorization of poetic science.

Affect and Embodiment
It is difficult to discuss the poetics of layers of emotive and sensory experience and
embodiment without considering the contributions of Affect Theory and the neuroscience of
emotion and feeling. The following section provides an overview of emotive studies that have been
foundational to my formulation of poetic science. In particular, when I discuss conceptual process,
I am mindful of the fact that emotion and physiological experience are never separate from
concept. Instead, they are a continuum of cognitive experience. A large part of my interest in poetic
science stems from recognizing that communications and processes that include emotion,
physiological experience, and concept are the most closely attuned to everyday experience, and as
a result lived.
In the early 1960s, the most recent historical split in the scientific study of emotions, affect,
and feeling occurred with Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer’s claims to demonstrate that
cognition and affect are inseparable and cannot be dissociated.
99
The famous Schacter-Singer
theory explains, “people search the immediate environment for emotionally relevant cues to label
and interpret unexplained physiological arousal.”
100
In other words, emotions reach consciousness
as part of a larger cognitive process. This process often involves creating a conceptual linkage
between emotions and other objects. Forms of testable and experiential physiological arousal, in

99
Leys, Ruth. “The Turn to Affect: A Critique.” Critical Inquiry , Vol. 37, No. 3 (Spring 2011), pp. 434-472.
100
Schachter, S., & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State.
Psychological Review, 69,pp. 379–399.
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and of themselves, do not necessarily have particularly distinct emotional aspects associated with
them. Or if they do, these are not readily interpretable by consciousness.
The emotive experience becomes meaningful and distinct through the thought process, and
through conceptually linking types of perception with context.
Whether or not there are physiological distinctions among the various
emotional states must be considered an open question. Recent work might
be taken to indicate that such differences are at best rather subtle and that
the variety of emotion, mood, and feeling states are by no means matched
by an equal variety of visceral patterns.
101

In this case, physiological experiences become meaningful emotional states through the
process of being interpreted using cognitive conscious awareness. The differential meaning
attributed to the physiological experience is much less defined and nuanced than the depth and
breadth of experience attributed to the emotional state achieved through merging with cognition.
This suggests then, that an emotional state may be considered a function of a state of
physiological arousal and of a cognition appropriate to this state of arousal. The cognition, in a
sense, exerts a steering function. Cognitions arising from the immediate situation as interpreted by
past experience, provide the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings. It is
the cognition which determines whether the state of physiological arousal will be labeled.
102

According to this approach, cognition, which consciously associates physiological experience with
external and internal contextual cues, memory, and linguistic labels, drives the interpretive
meaning of emotional states. Emotions might be considered to be especially colorful physio-
thoughts embedded within a larger system of cognition. Schachter and Singer aimed to
demonstrate the arbitrariness and malleability of emotional interpretation in order to emphasize

101
Schachter, S., & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State.
Psychological Review, 69,pp. 379–380.
102
Schachter, S., & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State.
Psychological Review, 69,pp. 380.
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the significant role that cognition plays in driving emotional meaning. They wanted to debunk
theorization of inherently pre-cognitive or non-cognitive physiologically based meaning. This
emphasis on cultural, social, and contextual meaning creation was widely embraced by social
constructivists, psychoanalysts, cultural theorists, and philosophers who embrace rigorous analytic
deconstructions of subjects within complex symbolic meaning-making systems. In addition to the
influence of Freud and psychoanalysis’ emphasis on drives, this cognitive approach dominated
popular scholarship from the mid-twentieth century until roughly the 1990s.
I do not disagree with these important assertions that narratives of conscious emotional
interpretation are developed and integrated alongside cognitive thought processes, and that these
emotional narratives integrate whatever internal and external cues are at their disposal. However,
the cognitive inquiry is largely one of a superseding move towards narrative integration, whether
of unconscious drives in the psychoanalytic model, rational interpretation of unformed
physiological experience, or analysis of the influence of cultural factors. I find this cognitive
narrative trajectory and the lack of specificity and significance attributed to somatic experience to
be limiting. Therefore, I align more closely with the Silvan Tomkins lineage, which I will describe
as follows.
In contrast, Silvan Tomkins’ three volume series, Affect Imagery Consciousness (Volume
1 1962, Volume 2 1963, Volume 3 1991) argued for nine measurable and innate, bodily based
affects. He broke with mainstream psychology at the time, which favored the cognitive and
behavioral approaches such as Schachter and Singer’s, to assert the primacy of the emotive system
as the motivating force in human life. According to Tomkins’ student and colleague, Donald L.
Nathanson, MD, when asked why there weren’t any commas in the title of his volumes, he replied,
“Because there isn’t any way to separate the three interlocked concepts. Affect produces attention
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that brings its trigger into consciousness, and the world we know is a dream, a series of images
colored by our life experience of whatever scenes affect brought to our attention and assembled as
scripts.”
103
In this case, the emotive system, first arising in physiological expression and
awareness, is what influences and drives the attention and activity of consciousness, rather than
the other way around. Tomkins also differentiated from Freud through describing the biological
drives as announcements for the need to move some substance into or out of the body alongside
localizing information about where that site of activity needs to occur. To Tomkins, the drives
derive all of their motivation from the affect system.
104
With this 1962 proclamation, the two
different approaches to emotive studies were clearly delineated.
According to psychologist and communications theorist Anna Gibbs,
Tomkins’s affect theory enables the specification of the energetic
dimension of affect in very precise ways. It provides us with differentiated
account of the neurological, physiological, and expressive profiles of each
of the nine affects it recognizes, allowing finer distinctions than the
traditional psychoanalytic concentration on the degrees of arousal of
anxiety and aggression. It delineates an affect dynamics that specifies
which affects are likely to be called up in response to which others and
why, and a systems oriented, nonteleological way of thinking human
development as affective responses are patterned –or organized—by
ongoing processes of script formation.
105

Contemporary emotive studies, which are most amicable to the embodied neurosciences,
and as I will argue, most relevant to media arts practices involving interactive design, owe a debt
to the thread of inquiry aligned with Tomkins’ view. Though this biology and psychology
influenced line of theory was at the fringe of popular scholarship until the late twentieth century,

103
Nathanson MD, Donald L. “Prologue.” Introduction. Affect Imagery Consciousness Volume IV: New York:
Springer, 2008. xi-xxix.
104
Nathanson MD, Donald L. “Prologue.” Introduction. Affect Imagery Consciousness Volume IV: New York:
Springer, 2008. xi-xxix.
105
Gibbs, Anna. “After Affect.” The Affect Theory Reader. Ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth. Durham,
NC: Duke UP, 2010. 188.
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its influence remains today. I will briefly trace some of the major influential figures leading up to
the 1990s and discuss some of the continued relevance of Tomkins’ view within contemporary
scholarship.
Sociologist Patricia T. Clough describes some reasons for the rise to prominence of what I
describe as Tomkins-influenced emotive theory as follows:
When in the early to mid-1990s, critical theorists and cultural critics
invited a turn to affect, they often did so in response to what they argued
were limitations of poststructuralism and deconstruction. …The turn to
affect points instead to a dynamism immanent to bodily matter and matter
generally—matter’s capacity for self-organization in being
informational—which, I want to argue, may be the most provocative and
enduring contribution of the affective turn.
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According to critic Ruth Leys, Tomkins-influenced scholars constitute affects and
cognition as two entirely separate systems, perpetuating the same Cartesian divide which many of
these theorists react against, through over-emphasizing the influence of the body. She characterizes
the Tomkins approach as theorizing emotions in anti-intentionalist or anti-representational
terms.
107
To oversimplify, both divide physiological, body-based experience from cognitive
processes to a certain degree. In the cognitive approach, emotion and the body are subsumed by
the mind. In the Tomkins lineage, there is a primary emphasis on felt bodily experience.
Leys opens her rather scathing critique of the Tomkins lineage, referred to as the affective
turn, with the following quote: “If you don’t understand try to feel. According to Massumi, it
works.”
108
Though I find challenge as well in some of affect theorist Brian Massumi’s theory, I
disagree with the overriding premise that a filter of cognitive understanding should be the pinnacle

106
Clough, Patricia T. “The Affective Turn.” The Affect Theory Reader. Ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J.
Seigworth. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010. 206-207.
107
Leys, Ruth. “The Turn to Affect: A Critique.” Critical Inquiry , Vol. 37, No. 3 (Spring 2011), 479.
108
Elad Anlen, “Reflections on SCT 2009,” In Theory (Fall 2009): 9, a participant in the School of Criticism and
Theory reporting on Brian Massumi’s miniseminar.
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measure of human experience and theory, especially as it concerns the practice of creating and
interpreting media arts. Leys argues for the continued relevance of psychoanalytic theory and
cognitive philosophy within the contemporary climate, which I find to be problematic.
Nonetheless, she does address important inconsistencies in confusing appropriations of scientific
material, especially concerning the rise of neuroscience fandom for humanities scholars. As a
neuroscience fan myself, I found many of these critiques to be useful points of consideration.
For example, Leys criticizes humanities scholars who cite secondary descriptions of
scientific experiments as source material. Neuroscientists such as Joseph LeDoux and Antonio
Damasio
109
have written accessible and widely popular descriptions of complex theoretical
scientific research about consciousness and emotive experience. Non-specialists have
enthusiastically embraced these texts, occasionally overzealously embracing these narratives as
fact or falling prey to ideological oversimplification. Nonetheless, all scholars who interpret
statistical data face similar issues. The narratives told about the data are often speculative and
creative, though presented as factual. Still, Leys offers an important reminder that it is always
best to work with source, rather than secondary material, when accessible. However,
interdisciplinary scholarship often must rely on explanatory interpretation from experts in the
less familiar field-of-expertise, so the directives on best practices are not always obvious.
Recent USC School of Cinematic Arts critical studies graduate student, filmmaker, and
student of Antonio Damasio, Ioana Maria Uricaru recently published her dissertation, Intimate
Beyond Words: Reconsidering the Cinematic Subject in Light of Neuroscience.
110
Uricaru
extensively addresses applications of embodied neuroscientific scholarship to critical cinematic

109
And related embodied theorists: Roger Sperry, Richard Davidson, Daniel Tranel, & Jaak Panksepp
110
Uricaru, Ioana Maria. Intimate Beyond Words: Reconsidering the Cinematic Subject in Light of Neuroscience.
Dissertation: University of Southern California, 2011. 35.
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theories of non-verbal emotive expression. Uricaru thoroughly supports her arguments for an
updated semiotics with in depth neurobiological description, based upon direct interaction with
neuroscientists. This text offers a prime example of rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship within
the neuro-fan arena.
Uricaru describes Oatley and Johnson-Laird refinement of the Tomkins’ emotion-script
theory in The Communicative Theory of Emotions as follows:
…emotions are basically goal-management instruments, generated by
cognitive appraisals (conscious or unconscious) and expressed in
behavior. A basic (nonsemantic, non-propositional, evolutionarily simple)
signal is launched by the brain as a result of cognitive appraisals, a signal
that readies the body for response and crystallizes cognitive tasks
(directing attention, making us aware of the environment and objects that
have been appraised). What we experience as this signal is launched in
what we call feeling an emotion.
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Tomkins’ theory is amicable to media arts practices which integrate automatic, systemic,
programmatic processing with associative expression and narrative forms. Indeed, Tomkins
himself envisioned an early career as a playwright. He discussed extensive environmental signals,
triggers, and stimuli which influence both scripted and scenic interactive measurable and
immeasurable processes.
Theories of the emotive system are also applicable to applications for emotive interface
design, and have been influential within the field of human computer interaction. One notable
example is Katherine Isbister’s work with developing tangible non-verbal tools for evaluating
affect within user testing.
112
Psychologist, Klaus Scherer describes the emotive system as a literal
interface as follows:

111
Oatley, K., and P.N. Johnson-Laird. "The Communicative Theory of Emotions." In Human Emotions: A Reader,
by Jennifer M., Oatley, Keith Jenkins and Nancy L. Stein, 84-97. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. 85.
112
Isbister, Katherine, Kia Höök, Michael Sharp, and Jarmo Laaksolahti. 2006. “Sensual Evaluation Instrument:
Developing an Affective Evaluation Tool.” Montréal, Québec, Canada.
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I have used the analogy of emotion as an interface to refer to this
mediation between environmental input and behavioral output. Since
there are nonemotional reactions to environmental stimulation, other
interfaces must also exist (e.g., reflexes or rational problem-solving).
However, the special role of emotion seems to be that of an intelligent
interface that mediates between input and output on the basis of what is
most important to the organism at a particular time.”
113

Silvan Tomkins’ most noted protégés are Paul Eckman and Caroll Izzard, who famously
developed their own classification systems for the basic emotions, building upon Tomkins
foundational work in this area. Incidentally, the Ekman basic emotional expressions of surprise,
happiness, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness are more widely recognized than Tomkins’.
114
Ekman
explored the distinction between what he considered to be universal emotional expressions
common to all cultures (emphasizing facial expressions), and then other bodily movements (such
as emblems and illustrators), which vary from culture to culture. Emblems and illustrators (such
as shrugging, nodding, hand gestures) serve specific social, cultural, and non-verbal
communicative purposes, often expressing something which could be communicated
linguistically, but is not.
Ekman sought a balance between shared emotive biological features and cultural
constructions in his development of the idea of “display rules”. These refer to the conventions,
norms, and habits that people develop to manage their emotional expressions. According to
cognitive scientist, Joseph LeDoux, Ekman’s “display rules” specify who can show what emotion
to whom and when and how much.
115
Drawing from an ethnographic and anthropological

113
Scherer, Klaus R. "Emotion Serves to Decouple Stimulus and Response." In The Nature of Emotion:
Fundamental Questions, by Paul Ekman and Richard J. Davidson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 127.
114
Ekman, Paul. Expression and nature of emotion. Eds. K. Scherer and P. Ekman, Approaches to Emotion.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 319-43.
115
LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. 1996. 117.
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approach, Ekman cites Mark Twain’s description of the hierarchical levels of acceptability for
expressing grief openly at western funerals, as an example of “display rules”.
Where a blood relation sobs, an intimate friend should choke up, a distant
acquaintance should sign, a stranger should merely fumble
sympathetically with his handerkerchief.
116

A number of researchers (such as Robert Plutchik and Nico Frijda, Philip Johnson-Laird
and Keith Oatley, Jaak Panksepp, Robert Plutchik) have similarly developed their own taxonomies
of emotional categories, some focused primarily on facial gestures, while others consider wider
body gestures. Robert Plutchick developed a color-wheel-style circle of emotional mixes (Figure
29). While these languages of discrete category are inevitably reductive, many artists and computer
scientists have appropriated these systems for useful creative ends.

Figure 29: Plutchik "wheel of emotions"
117

116
Twain, Mark. “At the funeral,” Ed. B. DeVoto, Letters from the earth: “From an unfinished burlesque of books
on etiquette.” New York: Harper and Row, 1962.
117
Plutchik, Robert, and Henry Kellerman. 1980. Emotion: Theory, Research, and Experience: Vol. 1. Academic
Press. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plutchik-wheel.svg
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Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman were certainly not the first researchers to develop
extensive theories relating facial gesture and physiological expression to emotive experience.
Throughout the twentieth century, threads of media artists similarly questioned which factors
contribute to the physiological expression of emotive experience. Drawing upon Edward
Muybridge’s scientific deconstruction of movement, psychologist and early film theorist Hugo
Münsterberg inquired as to which subtle features of facial expression best contribute to emotive
communication. In 1916, he describes:
Impressions which come to our eye at first awaken only sensations. But it
is well known that in the view of modern physiological psychology our
consciousness of the emotion itself is shaped and marked by the sensations
which arise from our bodily organs. As soon as such abnormal visual
impressions stream into our consciousness, our whole background of
fusing bodily sensations becomes altered and new emotions seem to take
hold of us.
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“The photoactors may carefully go through the movement and imitate the
contractions and relaxations of the muscles, and yet may be unable to
produce those processes which are most essential for the true life
emotions, namely those in the glands, blood vessels, and involuntary
muscles.”
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Münsterberg questioned whether pure kinesthetic manipulation could authentically
reproduce and communicate authentic emotional expression. Schools of acting grapple with
questions of how to best conjure and embody believable emotion. This problem - how to best
reproduce the embodied experience of emotion in visual form beyond manipulation of subtle facial
musculature – how to integrate the influence of somatic, visceral, hormonal, automatic nervous
system, physiological expression, intelligence, and reaction – continues to haunt figurative

118
Münsterberg, Hugo, The Film: A Psychological Study: The Silent Photoplay in 1916. New York: Dover, 1970.
55-56.
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Münsterberg, Hugo, The Film: A Psychological Study: The Silent Photoplay in 1916. New York: Dover, 1970.
49.
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animation, live-action cinema, robotics, and virtual characters. Motion capture technology
captures increasingly sophisticated movement. However, these added dimensions and layers of
incredibly subtle non-kinetic communication and experience have yet to be defined and explored
in systematic fashion. Interpretive artistic rendering and layering remains extremely necessary to
avoiding the terror of the uncanny valley. In turn, interdisciplinary integrations between the
systematic and scientific study of emotive expression and experience, and creative interpretation
can offer strong scholarship within these less defined areas within the field of aesthetic emotive
studies.

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CHAPTER 6: Case Study - Miralab
Poetic forms provide means for accessing and relating to scientific practices and concepts
using modes of understanding often associated with the arts: spatial, kinetic, narrative, and artistic.
Expanding the modes for connecting to science opens pathways and increases access points for
experiencing and participating in science, thereby increasing the likelihood of connecting diverse
sets of learners and learning styles with the material. This can demystify scientific methods and
ideas that might otherwise seem too abstract, complex, or distant from one’s life.

Miralab and Poetic Science
Miralab, one of the projects that emerged out of MIRAWORLD, is an experimental art
game inspired by the real-world lifecycle of the immortal jellyfish, which grows from embryo to
adult and then reverts back to embryo when it gets hurt, instead of dying. Miralab combines open
exploration with puzzle-based game play. The player guides an immortal jellyfish through an
underwater world while surviving and solving simple puzzles that teach them about the creatures,
plants, and properties of the jellyfish’s underwater eco-systems. This teaching process is not
didactic. Instead, players learn about the world through trying to figure out how it works in order
to solve puzzles to progress in gameplay. They learn about relationships between species and
plants in an eco-system, who is friend and predator, how jellyfish navigate, and strategies for
surviving as a fragile creature.

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Figure 30: early concept design for MIRALAB by Ryan Gillis
When encountering novel game structures, players must acquire knowledge about a new
world: its rules, their relationship to it, goal structures, and varying affordances. As such, learning
is inherent within all gameplay and not unique to Miralab. However, learning about structures
based on real science has the added bonus of exposing players to and teaching science as a
secondary benefit of play. Through curiosity, discovery, and a desire to understand and navigate
this world, secondary knowledge is acquired. Though most players, as assessed through interviews
as part of the play-testing process, did not describe themselves as scientists, they nonetheless
engage with motivating qualities inherent to the scientific process: curiosity and a desire to
examine the world, deciphering nature as an elaborate puzzle of relationships.
As mentioned earlier, in Spanish, Mira translates as “sight” or “view”. A lab is a place to
experiment, discover, explore, be curious, try things out, and play. I envisioned Miralab as a space
for the development team to discover the jellyfish and its environment through the lens of their
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own disciplines, essentially as a “seeing laboratory”. Personal curiosity and fascination about this
peculiar creature was to drive their respective game design, engineering and aesthetic
contributions. I outlined guidelines for how the process of making the game would relate to the
science. Real world science was to inform, inspire, and influence every aspect of the game. Beyond
that, so long as the game did not contradict, undermine, or stray too significantly from real-world
rules, their imaginations could run wild. In this way, the science could find its own new life-cycle
in this hybrid co-creation of imagination and marine biology study.
Our design choices were inspired by marine biology and then playfully reinterpreted. For
example, we designed currents for navigation because real jellyfish move around by floating on
currents. We devoured the science while our minds and hearts digested it. Within this learning
context, our role as designers, artists, and engineers, influenced both our learning style and world
view on how to discover, make sense of, and make meaning out of the original science. We hoped
to sneak science in - to inspire curiosity so that a player might want to learn more about the
creatures or ecosystem on their own - rather than to present scientific information in a didactic
way. We provided an opportunity for players to be immersed within this world and to ask their
own questions of it. As a result, both the making and playing of the game was an educational
process for both learning about science and considering how to creatively and technically
communicate the peculiar, dynamic, and fascinating experience of the jellyfish.

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Figure 31 & 32: Photography Representation of Turritopsis Life-Cycle with MiraViz CG model in the center
Throughout Miralab, the immortal jellyfish evolves and de-evolves through two stages of its
life-cycle: embryo, affectionately termed “blob” by the development team, and adult. Players solve
puzzles in different ways depending on whether they’re in a microscopic embryo or an adult phase.
The visual look and feel of the world also morphs depending on stage.
To communicate the feeling of being in a simpler stage of development, the game world is
rendered with primitive outlines, using a custom built edge shader during the embryonic phase.
Shown below circled in blue (Figure 33, 34), a red crystalline form represents the embryo stomach.
The player rolls around on the reef floor collecting food particles (red spheres) by moving over
them, setting off a visual (Figure 35, 36) and sonic cascade.
As an embryo, the world appears huge in scale because the player is tiny. Figures 33 and
34 show this progression in scale.
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Figure 33: Miralab. Start of the game. Screenshot. Figure 34: Miralab. After eating food particles. Screenshot.
With each particle consumed, the player evolves from embryo to full jellyfish medusa. First,
the embryo grows in scale to the world. Then the world appears less primitive. It gets brighter and
the edge shader morphs to a fully 3D rendered universe.

Figure 35: Miralab. World appears more fully formed. Figure 36: Miralab. Eating a food particle. Screenshot.

In Figure 36, the player is near the vicinity of a polyp, indicating that it is ready to transform
into a medusa jellyfish (fully formed umbrella bell shape with tentacles). In the real world, an
embryo wouldn’t be mobile. Instead it would settle onto the ocean floor or a sedentary object, and
then a polyp would grow out of it (Figure 37, 38 below).
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Figure 37: : Life-cycle by MIRA artist, Jessie Jordan Figure 38: Illustration detail of polyp formation
After settlement (Figure 37, circled), the embryo settles out, spawns, and then a polyp forms
(Figure 38).
We introduced a rolling mechanic into the embryonic phase, because it allowed us to create
game-play for the embryonic phase, which would have otherwise been static and uneventful. The
constricted nature of the rolling, and primitive visual style, contrast strongly with the open and free
movement of the adult phase and its fully rendered style, further emphasizing the morphing
perspectives across life-cycle. Adult jellyfish players have full capacity of movement as long as
their vitality is high, meaning that they are not hungry. As vitality drops, their color becomes grey
and they start to sink. This can be remedied by eating floating food particles.
The Miralab team initially intended to include game-play in every stage of the life-cycle,
but time constraints required simplification. I will briefly outline some of the game-play that was
designed and not fully implemented for integration in the final game. The “Reversal” is the
transition phase from an adult back to an embryo. In science, once an adult jellyfish receives a
physical trauma, such as starvation, severe conditions, or a wound, its cells begin a process
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whereby they revert back to embryonic cells (Figure 8). In the game, if the jellyfish gets hurt by a
predator or fails to eat enough, it begins the reversal phase of game-play. As it reverses, an
animation plays showing its stomach push outside of the bell, and then it congeals into an embryo
as it freefalls (illustration below).

Figure 39: reversal concept by MIRALAB artist, Kate Wong
The player steers the reversing jellyfish to a safe place on the ground where it will settle,
strategically placing a falling jellyfish in parts of the world to build up jellyfish colonies across
territories. Freefall is a vulnerable stage where it can easily be eaten. We also designed game-play
for a polyp phase where the player swings its “trunk” around to catch floating food particles,
thereby determining its size and the amount of jellyfish “bulbs” that will emerge. Early in
development, Miralab designs had multiple jellyfish non-player characters. The goal was to build
and protect vibrant colonies while finding and returning stranded relatives from distant parts of the
world.
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In the final iteration of the game, we focused on a single hero jellyfish’s journey and
optimized primary game-play for the adult phase while also including the embryo “blob” phase as
secondary game-play. This goal structure worked well to provide a sense of familiarity and
accessibility within an otherwise experimental game. It also reduced the load of artificial
intelligence required.
Though reversal game-play was eliminated, the transition between embryo to adult and
adult to embryo was visualized as a temporary psychedelic distortion of the expanding game-world
out of which the adult jellyfish animates into frame (Figures below).

Figure 40: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. Figure 41: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot.

Figure 42: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. Figure 43: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot.
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Figure 44: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot. Figure 45: Embryo to adult transformation. Screenshot.
Poetic Science Learning
Building the world of Miralab involved ongoing instrumental research into the habitat and
processes that surround the real-world Turritopsis dornhii, the immortal jellyfish. As described by
Bruce Mackh in his report on Arts practice as research, instrumental research is generally
understood as a search for knowledge or information to facilitate the creation or development of a
product, usually taking the form of a tangible object, performance, or service.
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As non-experts in the field of marine biology, our research into the biology surrounding
the species was additionally instructive. As the project’s mentor, I encouraged learning throughout
the process by sharing knowledge and resources including online sources, scientific literature,
marine biology textbooks, art-books, and scientific illustration guides. I encouraged students to
teach one-another about what they had learned, and to integrate this knowledge into development
throughout. I arranged interviews and tours of science labs with immortal jellyfish and marine
biology experts such as Turritopsis expert Dr. Maria Pia Miglietta, Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
Director Mike Schaat, Cabrillo jellyfish nursery curator Dr. Kiersten Darrow, California Science
Center researchers and staff, a behind-the-scenes jellyfish tour and field trip to the Monterey Bay
Aquarium, and snorkeling at a Catalina Island marine preserve. These field trips and interactions

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Mackh, Bruce. 2016. “Research and Arts Practice.” White Paper.

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were intended to provide a multi-sensory experience of the live species and research lab
environment to students, to demonstrate how interdisciplinary connections can be developed, and
to encourage inspiration beyond the classroom.
Participants studied scientific information in traditional textbook ways, such as learning
about the life-cycle, transdifferentiation, and the eco-system make-up. However, as non-scientists,
they were often most inspired by how scientific information connected with their own discipline.
For example, the artists fell in love with the visual, auditory, textural, behavioral, and philosophical
possibilities that the underwater world and species suggested. Engineers also considered graphics,
but many got most excited by species behavior and considering complex webs of relationships as
puzzles and systems design.
The process of relating, reframing, and integrating learning into students’ favored
disciplines was a process of creative rediscovery of the original source material. It reinforced
connections, familiarity, and closeness with the science in which students could tangibly see how
it related to and was therefore relevant to their practice. Creative rediscovery, using a poetic
science approach, can be a useful methodology for introducing complex subjects from which
students might otherwise feel alienated.
When learning emerges from curiosity, and is then activated and shaped through creative
discovery and play, it can inspire student investment beyond the basic requirements of the project.
Though some students were fascinated by the science for its own sake, the majority of them got
most excited by the material when they combined it with creative application and problem solving
related to a tangible playable outcome. As a result, I suggest that poetic science - combining
curiosity and learning of science with creative and technological practice and research is an
exemplary means for inspiring deeper learning of science. Through the process of digesting and
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translating the material to integrate it into their own discipline, students actively make it relevant
to themselves. Through the process, they make the science resonate.
Poetic Science Design
We wanted to inspire curiosity about the eco-system and the life-cycle through evoking
wonder at its beauty, and questions about its curious life-cycle. We created a beautiful
bioluminescent playground and designed a series of puzzles that require interaction and problem
solving with the flora and fauna from the environment. Character movement and relationships,
audio-visual design, engineered behavior properties, and game design dynamics, were all based
on real world flora, fauna, and eco-system dynamics.
We intended to communicate the feeling of being immersed in a living underwater
ecosystem. Therefore, its plants and animals are not static. Instead, they grow and die according
to their own vitality systems, a component inspired by the project engineers.

Figure 46: Miralab.:Level 0 Kelp forest.
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For example, as the game progresses, the modular kelp grow and sway in the water (image
above). As the player releases food particles from Pillow Anemone (image below), the Pillow
Anemone multiply and grow larger, quivering with movement.

Figure 47: Miralab. Level 1. Pillow Anemone releasing food particles. Screenshot.
We designed a generative sound system, using a system called FMOD in the game engine
Unity, in which each eco-system flora or fauna has its own sounds that morph, based on their size,
quantity, and distance from the player. As players swim past objects, they evoke a cascade of
sounds, playing an aquatic kelp forest orchestra, which in and of itself can be a compelling
immersive visual and sonic experience.
To achieve the feeling of being underwater, we iterated extensively on graphics and player
controls. The goal was not to have a photo-real look. Instead, I developed a style, which I call
Aquatic Retro Futurism. It consists of a cross between a low-polygon retro aesthetic, inspired by
early 90’s graphics and the movie Tron (1982), and a futuristic sci-fi style. To achieve this look,
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we iterated extensively on graphics, including writing custom shaders, mathematical calculations
for how objects are rendered visually.

Figure 48: Miralab. Aquatic Retro Futurism concept. Kate Wong.
The player controls were extremely challenging to develop. Our engineers worked with the
same principles of 360 degree flying controls, but then had to make the movement feel organic
rather than mechanical, and to undulate in a less controlled way, rather than being precise. At the
same time, we didn’t want the player to feel too frustrated or overwhelmed by the difficulty of
controlling the jellyfish, especially since they had to solve puzzles that required somewhat precise
navigation. In a flying game, players can more easily situate themselves with horizon lines and
variations between sky and ground. In an unfamiliar underwater world, this becomes even more
challenging. In the end, to decrease player frustration, based on play-testing feedback, we made
the jellyfish significantly more precise and controlled in its movement than an actual jellyfish
would be. However, carefully guiding a fragile, undulating, and difficult to control jellyfish
through an environment could easily be a compelling game in and of itself!
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Both player and non-player characters, and their respective relationships with one-another
were based upon real species. We started by situating the climate and location of where our game
world would be, based upon real world Turritopsis dornhii habitats.

Figure 49: Encyclopedia Britannica. Atoll. 2012. Illustration.
121

We mapped out the jellyfish’s habitat to be within the lagoon of an Atoll – a circular barrier reef
formed at the top of a sunken volcano.

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“Atoll.” 2012. Encyclopedia Britannica. http://media.web.britannica.com/eb-media/80/99280-050-15248A98.jpg.

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Figure 50: Atoll. Early world design sketch. Amanda Tasse.
At the end of Level 0, a current pushes the player into a small crater, which we called the
hub, introducing them to a darker “underground” puzzle level.

Figure 51: Hub concept. Kate Wong.
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Figure 52: Miralab, Level 0, entering a current. Screenshot.
The hub is in the distance (above). The player rides a tunnel-like current to carry them
through the world. As they ride, they are given a “fly-over” tour of the game world.

Figure 53: Miralab, Level 0, entering the hub. Screenshot.
The player (above) is pulled into the hub crater, through a sea sponge tunnel, deeper into
the cavernous coral reef.
Here are a few more examples to demonstrate how characters were designed based on
living species appropriate to Turritopsis dornhii’s natural habitat.
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Figure 54: Ostracian cubicus, aka yellow box fish. Figure 55: Final game box fish. Screenshot.

Figure 56 - Keeltail Needlefish, Platybelone argalus

Figure 57: Keeltail Needlefish, Platybelone argalus, concept drawing by Miralab artist, Miranda Crowell
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Figure 58: Miralab. Keeltail Needlefish, Platybelone argalus. Screenshot.

Figure 59: Tubastraea coccinea, Orange Cup Coral Figure 60: Miralab.Tubastraea coccinea. Screenshot.
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Figure 61: Miralab. Engineer and Game Designer concept map of Artificial Intelligence Patterns
Environmental Storytelling
Environmental storytelling refers to an unfolding, layered experience that is
navigated spatially, rather than via linear time. As such, elements of the story are triggered via the
environment or told using environmental objects. Players are drawn and led through the space
using light, contrast, texture, detail, ambient occlusion, lines, shapes, color, saturation, sounds, and
other triggers and clues as guideposts. In Miralab, we used brighter concentrations of color and
contrast, repetitive and novel sounds, movement, particle movement directionality, and areas of
simulated current pulls to lure players to areas and help them figure out where to go next. In
addition to navigation, the environment and characters clue players into basic gameplay and story
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questions: who they are, what their relationship to the environment is, where they currently are,
where they are going, as well as why and how they are doing all this. The player must understand
what their role is within the world in order to develop a deeper relationship with it. An awareness
of the environment gives the player a greater awareness of who they are as a character (or vice
versa).
As games and learning scholar James Paul Gee suggests, player enacted stories or
trajectories are a property of “good learning” that are intimately tied to the environmental space of
the game. Gee describes “good learning” as learning that “is guided by and organized by principles
empirically confirmed by systematic research on effective and deep learning in the Learning
Sciences (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking 2000; Gee 2004; Sawyer 2006).”
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The trajectory a player takes through a game—the virtual-real story—can,
in certain circumstances, give space a special sort of deep meaning in a
game. If I can revisit spaces (places) in a game, and different things
happen there at different times … then there are layers of meaning (layers
of my trajectory story) laid down, one on top of the other, at that place.
Space becomes a patchwork of such meaning-layered places, connected
in a myriad of ways through the meaningful (storied—in the trajectory
sense) connections across layers (this event that happened here is
connected, in some fashion, with that event
that happened there).
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In Miralab, we juxtaposed guided puzzles, which were a more concentrated and
constrained experience, with areas of more open play that focused on environmental storytelling.
Through solving puzzles, players learned about how the world worked – who was predator and
friend, how to escape common predators and more strategies for bypassing more challenging

122
Gee, James Paul. 2009. “Deep Learning Properties of Good Games.” In Serious Games:
Mechanisms and Effects, edited by Ute Ritterfeld, Michael Cody, and Peter Vorderer, 67–83.
New York: Routledge.
123
Gee, James Paul. 2009. “Deep Learning Properties of Good Games.” In Serious Games:
Mechanisms and Effects, edited by Ute Ritterfeld, Michael Cody, and Peter Vorderer, 67–83.
New York: Routledge.
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“boss” predators, where and how to find food particles, how to encourage food to multiply, and
how to move around using the current system. Each of these learned affordances gave players
additional tools for navigating the more open game-play environments within the game.
In describing best design principles for environmental storytelling, Don Carson says:
Self-discovery can be even more enjoyable than having the story spelled
out for you in the opening credits. There are lots of ways designers can
place story elements throughout their environments to lead their audience
to conclusions designed into the games plot.
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In this example, a traditional fiction story is replaced by a factual story, such as the story
of the life-cycle of the immortal jellyfish as protagonist, and its relationship with the other
characters in the environment. The story elements are elements that make up puzzles and the
conclusions are the learning goals. In designing Miralab, puzzles were a useful learning tool.
However, ultimately, we hoped to encourage more open sandbox play with the environment, to
allow players to discover it like a playground, and to play it like an orchestra.
Within transmedia worlds, meaningful discovery and play can happen not only within
individual media artifacts, but also in navigating the spaces between the parts of the world. This
playing with the transmedia world can activate “the capacity to experiment with the surroundings
as a form of problem solving” (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robinson, & Weigel, 2006)
125
,
which can be an additional layer of learning and meaning making.

124
Carson, Don. 2000. “Environmental Storytelling: Creating Immersive 3D Worlds Using Lessons Learned from
the Theme Park Industry.” Gamasutra, March 1.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131594/environmental_storytelling_.php
125
Jenkins, Henry, Ravi Purushotma, Margaret Weigel, Katie Clinton, and Alice J. Robison. 2009. Confronting the
Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. The MIT Press.
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World-Building Strategies
In designing the world for Miralab, we used the world-building strategy of “overdesign”,
described by world-building scholar, Derek Johnson as effective because it contributes to the sense
that the world extends far beyond what could be contained in a single format or on-screen narrative
depiction, and therefore makes it seem as if the world actually exists as a real place. Johnson
borrows the term “overdesign” from Kristin Thompson’s analysis of Lord of the Rings (2001)
production design process in which significantly more props and details were designed and built
for the environment, than were actually depicted on screen.
[Thompson’s] analysis is significant for pointing to how, via style, the
media text manifests as a world greater than itself. By designing beyond
the spatial and temporal bounds of what a single film can show,
overdesign creates an infrastructure for content networks that incentivizes
exploration of all the potential history systemically designed into the
world.
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For Miralab, we did not need to use overdesign to make a fantasy world seem real. because
the actual world of the jellyfish does exist. Instead, we built out our world based on research into
actual marine biology, interpreted through varying disciplinary lenses, as described. In building
the world, we embraced overdesign as an engaging process of researching the science and
imagining how to make it resonate through play. As part of our research, we created a vast
catalogue of detailed information about the eco-system, custom concept designs, and gameplay
ideas. In part, this was due to having over-scoped what would be possible to implement within our
time-frame. Nonetheless, through quick initial iteration of concepts via storyboards, simple mind-
maps, drawings, whiteboard sketches, clay sculptures, pipe cleaner-based dimensional diagrams,

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Johnson, Derek. 2009. “Intelligent Design or Godless Universe? The Creative Challenges of World Building and
Franchise Development” Franchising Media World: Content Networks and The Collaborative Production of
Culture. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Pinterest boards, and Google docs, we pruned our ideas down to a select few to be implemented,
while preserving our learning and appreciation for the wild chaos of an actual eco-system. Our
intention was to populate a database with these designs alongside further information on the
underlying science.

Figure 62: World-Mapping. Pictured: Will Hellworth, Matt Kane Figure 63: Digital world layout mapping. Amanda Tasse.

Figure 64: Early behavior storyboarding. Chris Muriel. Figure 65: Craft materials for rapid prototyping
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Figure 66: Miralab’s pinterest board. Screenshot.
In addition to overdesign, Johnson also describes texture as an effective world-building
strategy for transmedia worlds. He references Ronald D. Moore, creator of the 2004 version of
Battlestar Galactica:
The idea of textures recurred frequently in his [Moore’s] podcasts, used
to describe any televisual element that provided a deeper flavor or
understanding of the Galactica universe, often irrespective of advancing
the narrative. While Moore referred to texture just as easily to describe
characters as to describe the overall setting of the series, texture was what
made the world cohere as a seemingly coherent, believeable,
hyperdiegetic place.
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Both overdesign and texture building are methods for developing characters and worlds
that extend beyond the confines of a single media format. As details of audio-visual features,
stylistic elements, technological affordances, historical context, and narratives of interaction are
increasingly built into an environment, it is more likely that it will be treated and perceived as
being an active character. In Miralab, through overdesigning and integrating as much texture as

127
Johnson, Derek. 2009. “Intelligent Design or Godless Universe? The Creative Challenges of World Building and
Franchise Development” Franchising Media World: Content Networks and The Collaborative Production of
Culture. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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possible, we hoped to make players aware of the existence of a fantastical and fascinating real
world that extends far beyond our gameplay environment, and to become curious about exploring
it, both across the MIRAWORLD suite of projects, and in the actual world of science.
The Role of Art
In developing MIRALAB, I resisted the typical game pipeline convention that situates
game design and engineering as the primary driving forces of a project. As an artist, I sought to
develop an art driven interactive experience that communicates the feeling of being in a unique
ecosystem. As such, the game’s audio-visual textures were central to the affective experience of
being-in-the-world, and were arguably more important than its traditional game mechanics and
puzzles.
This is not to devalue or discredit the strong contribution of systems design thinking and
procedurality to the development and experience of playing games. As I’ve mentioned, Miralab
development began with extensive study of the jellyfish’s world and its complex eco-system and
life-cycle systems. We started by attempting to model and simulate these existent real-world
systems through the medium of a game, while focusing the vast set of options based on time,
technical, and creative constraints, to shape a focused context for playable experiences to occur.
We designed the pathways through which players could experience this world and get to know
the jellyfish’s systems. Ultimately, our design and technical choices about how to represent these
systems strongly influence the texture of what the designed experience is like.
The affective experience of playing some games is more influenced by their systems,
design, and engineering – the texture of how the movements and interactions feel – than by
audio-visual elements, while other games are much more shaped by their audio-visual design
than mechanics and systems. With Miralab, we sought to balance both approaches. Getting to
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know the jellyfish’s systems is critical to effectively navigating and appreciating the game, and
informed our entire development process. At the same time, being immersed in the audio-visual
textures of this otherworldly environment strongly influences the felt experience of playing this
game. We realized early on that both would be deeply significant to our player experience and
therefore chose to develop the audio visual experience alongside the rest of the game, rather than
bringing it in at a later stage, as often occurs. While much has been written about the strong
influence of systems design within games, the role of art has unfortunately been underexplored
and appreciated, so I’ll concentrate the rest of my discussion on the art side.
As I’ve discussed, art is often devalued, not only within art-science collaborations, but also
within media design processes. It is frequently used as an instrument to illustrate scientific, design,
written, or engineering concepts, rather than given support and funding to pursue its own creative
goals. Rarely is science used solely to illustrate art, though technology is sometimes employed in
service of art-based goals. This hierarchal devaluation of the arts is reflected within University
funding models that strive for fairness, but fund scientific efforts significantly and substantially
more than the arts.
When the arts and humanities combined account for just 13% of R&D
[Research & Development] expenditures among the non-S&E [Science &
Engineering] fields, and only 0.70% (seven-tenths of one percent) of
overall R&D expenditures, the conclusion that this obvious inequity
represents a cultural value judgment becomes nearly inescapable. . .
Coupling these statements with inequitable R&D expenditure data
supports the identification of a value judgment about the arts and
humanities as significantly less important than nearly all other fields
within higher education. Research in scientific and engineering remains
paramount. To be sure, their contributions to the quality of life on Earth
are undeniable. However, such figures do not support a “STEM crisis” as
reported by the National Math + Science Initiative (2015) but a crisis of
culture, especially in the arts and humanities.
128

128
Mackh, Bruce. 2016. “Research and Arts Practice.” White Paper.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 110

Given these significant institutional biases, it is not surprising that the arts are similarly
devalued within collaborative environments that include a scientific element, such as game
development. Engineering based contributions are compensated and culturally respected
substantially more. In standard pipelines, games are developed as far as possible based on rough
prototypes that do not incorporate art. Programmatic decisions are included in early design phases
and carry greater weight than artistic contributions. Art is one of the final pieces added, often as
skin and polish applied to beautify an already existing experience, rarely integrated at a time when
it could significantly impact a fundamental core of the game. As such, the art or artist is rarely
afforded significant influence. Instead, the art serves and modifies itself based on the game’s
engineering and design needs, rarely vice versa. This is unfortunate, given that the artistic textures
of a world have a strong impact on a player’s overall experience.
This is particularly problematic given the iterative nature of games, which rely heavily on
user feedback during the design process. If an experience is evaluated and modified primarily
based on engineered game mechanics, devoid of artistic input, art’s potential impact and influence
is further restricted. A vicious cycle of devalued artistic contribution prevails even within creative
environments. Graphics capability often drives technical innovation within games. However,
creative graphics engineering is significantly different from artistic innovation, which rarely
depends solely on technical polish.
Poetic science offers a conceptual framework for reasserting the value of arts contributions
in the communication and learning of science based insights. A transmedia framework provides a
useful working model for collaborating on these highly interdisciplinary projects in such a way
that the best practices and benefits of each disciplines’ contributions complement and enrich, rather
than dampen one-other. However, to achieve the best working model, both sides must be willing
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 111
to confront and address longstanding cultural and institutional biases that devalue the contribution
of the arts.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 112
CONCLUSION
Though great strides have been made in applying transmedia logics to non-fiction and
educational contexts in the past decade, there is still significant room for continued development,
especially in the areas of popular science communication, interdisciplinary environments, and
informal learning. A few recent exemplary examples are Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Out of the
Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement
129
, which
describes some contexts and dynamics in which transmedia organizing and media making have
been effectively employed for activist efforts. Colleague Jeff Watson’s transmedia Alternate
Reality Game Reality Ends Here mobilizes first year college students to become interdisciplinary
collaborative makers early in their careers outside of a formal classroom setting, providing a highly
successful model of transmedia media making within an informal learning context.
In developing MIRAWORLD, I applied a transmedia approach to world-building centered
on a theme from science as a model for popular science communication that emphasizes a
kaleidoscopic and poetic point-of-view. This methodology can be an effective means of learning
about and communicating interdisciplinary content to non-expert audiences, both within and
beyond the sciences for a number of reasons. A transmedia approach to scientific material can
preserve the original content in its native scientific form (data, research findings such as published
in a white paper, photographic evidence, etc.), while creating space for additional layers
(interpretation, reflection, engagement) to coexist that might include forms that are multi-sensory
or multimodal, piquing different types of intelligences. These layered contributions can enhance
and build upon the original source content and point back to it, making knowledge streams,

129
Constanza-Chock, Sasha. 2014. Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets: Transmedia Organizing and
the Immigrant Rights Movement. MIT Press.
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 113
practices, processes, and interconnections visible, accessible, and transparent to non-expert
audiences, while providing increased pathways for potential audience resonance. Through
resonating with layers of experience beyond the purely conceptual, participants’ hearts, minds,
bodies, and spirits might be moved and primed for further engagement and learning: exploring,
discovering, wondering, creating, questioning, and appreciating – activities that are integral to both
the arts and sciences. Genuine experiences of resonance: moments of wonderment, curiosity,
discovery, surprise, awe, inspiration, and appreciation, cultivate this urge to connect further.
Through opening up the types of experiences and connections one might have with scientific
material, audiences might find new joy and pleasure in experiencing the scientific material and
thereby establish more positive connections and associations with it.
Both experts and non-experts alike can access and participate in a shared world of active
knowledge making that explores problems and world perspectives from this multi-faceted point-
of-view. Through including diverse perspectives, voices, and media, these communication worlds
can be encyclopedic, rather than top-down, watered down, or overly filtered secondary
communication efforts. The human experience is inherently interdisciplinary and layered. Content
that engages a fuller spectrum of human intelligence is more likely to connect and resonate with
audiences in memorable ways that have a deeper impact on their lives.

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 114
TEAM CREDITS
Miralab

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Amanda Tasse
DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Matt Kane

LEAD PRODUCER Amanda Tasse, Tanya Huang, Brooke Hubert
ENGINEERING LEAD Matt Kane, Bryan Devore
DESIGN LEAD Matt Kane, Will Hellwarth
ART LEAD Amanda Tasse, Kate Wong
SOUND LEAD Laura Cechanowicz

DESIGNERS Zach Suite, Brendan Lobuglio, Chris Muriel, Alex Huang,
Jeff Chau, Zi Lee
ENGINEERS Bryan Devore, Brandon Nahigian , Sourav Dey, Yuling Lan
Nick Covey, Jon Chu, Zach Boehm, Dennis McGrogan
Steven Li, Sam Mazer, Brian Chen

USABILITY COORDINATOR Kevin Yeung, Eric Walker
ADDITIONAL PRODUCING Anaïs Ziae-Mohseni

CONCEPT ARTISTS Kate Wong, Miranda Crowell, Sam Robinson, Kyna Sherman
Caroline Scarbo, Rolando Cruz-Taura, Alicia Jang,
Nina Modaffari
3D GENERALISTS Maureen Lu, Shuhan Teo, Jeremy Reichman, Fan Fei
Tina Milerlei, Kyna Sherman, Calla Donofrio, Ruthie Wiliams
Ashley Lewis, Augustus Allen, Josephine Burke, David Binn
Gilberto Arreola, Neta Ravid, Antonio Silva

COMPOSER Ollie Lewin
SOUND DESIGNERS Sabrielle Augustin, Roy Salgeuro, Ethan Lee

INDUSTRY ADVISOR Ian Dallas
USC ADVISOR Tracy Fullerton, Laird Malamed
ART ADVISOR Miwa Matreyek
SCIENCE ADVISOR Maria Pia Miglietta, PhD

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 115
TEAM CREDITS
MIRA

DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER Amanda Tasse
PRODUCERS Jeremy Burkett, Dan Funes, Amanda Tasse

ACTOR – Mira Vanessa Patel
ACTOR – Dr. Kaya Jordan Anne Dudek

CINEMATOGRAPHER Xing-Mai Deng
EDITOR David Aristizabal
COMPOSER Igor Nemirovsky

1st Assistant Director Alan Manzo
2nd Assistant Director Itai Forman
Production Assistants Sean Light, Zach Davenport
Production Assistant

Camera/Steadicam Operator Quaid Cde Baca
Underwater Camera Operator Bert Skura
1st Assistant Camera Briana Del Giorno
2nd Assistant Camera Rob Snyder
Digital Imaging Technician Will Cherry
Assistant Underwater Camera Ben Skura

Gaffer Eitan Almagor
Key Grip Bevis Tran
G&E Swings Rob Padilla, Omar Al Aldakheel, Nathan Ibarbol,
Kyle Justin Go, Elma Lee

Art Director Xi Yang, Ryan VanDalinda
Scientific Illustrator Jessie Jordan

Production Sound Matt Ma, Jason Freeman
Assistant Editor Ashton Witt
Script Supervisor Amanda Griswold
VFX Set Supervisor Gene Warren III
Post VFX Amanda Tasse
VFX Consultant Bill Taylor, ASC, Mike Fink
CG Artist & Animator Dana Wilson

Additional Cast
Neurosurgeon Carla Wynn
Physician’s Assistant Craig Tsuyumine
Nurse Toy Lei
~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 116
Body Double, Stunt Diver Andrea Kemp
Life Guards Mike Sweet, Delminar Mendez, Gabriel Cohavy
Dive Safety Officer Matt Binder
Boat Driver Juan-Carlos Aquilar

Additional Photography
1st Assistant Director Peter Bawiec
Assistant to Producer Jaime Nikoletich
Production Coordinator Mojan Nourbakhsh
Assistant Camera Andy Huynh
Gaffer Jack Hackett
Set Decorator Federico Torrado Tobón

Advisers
Science Adviser Epilepsy Dr. Christi Heck
Science Adviser Marine Biology Dr. Maria Pia Miglietti
Sloan Faculty Adviser Tom Miller, MD
Writing Faculty Adviser Tom Abrams

Crowdfunding Backers

Dr. Jordan Tasse, Kristen Leppert, Erin Reynolds, Karen Tasse, David Aristizabal, Dan Funes, James Tasse,
Tulica Singh, Dan Tasse, Behnaz Farahi, Carl Maida, Colleen Galofaro, Victress Hitchcock, Steve
Anderson, Kathleen Dowdey, Jeff Watson, Anne Saitzyk, Samantha Gorman, Nick Covey, Ladan
Yalzadeh, George Gomez, Gisella Bustillos, Jo Pu, Anthony Woodley, Cheryl Berg, Brian Nordmann,
Aimee Graham, Aureus, Megan Hanley Elphington, Yogi Ken Chan, Brian Allgeier, Paul Bugala, Patti
Tasse Massoli, Brandon Hashimoto, Ann T Mills, Patrick Tessier, Ashton Witt, Carter Vincent Smith, Kelly
Christensen, Bruce & Janet Soinski, Paul Hickman, James Ricker, Peter, Nancy Jean Tucker, Karen
Elizabeth Price, Cory Misek, Jeanne Jo, Nathaniel Ward, Adam Liszkiewicz, Tasha Turner Lennhoff,
Austin Boyce, Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Cathy Tasse, Deborah Allison, George Matsumoto, Peter Brinson,
Jennifer Gilman, Ioana Uricaru, Optimal Entertainment, Michael Lukk Litwak, Andrew Huang, VJ Um
Amel, Asia Lindsay, Fawn Canady, Robert Funke, Moogega Cooper, Steven Healey, Dick Kaneshiro,
Johanna Demetrakas, Adam Tasse, Marientina Gotsis, Mike Rossmassler, Patsy Brown, Kurosh ValaNejad,
Ennejay, Transcendental Media, Dave Horowitz, Debbie Vlna, Joel Wachbrit, Chris Kerekanich, Joe Tasse,
Eric Niehbur, Malcom & Debra Dysart, Sharon Owyang, Assaf Mor, Gonzalo Aristizabal, Stephanie Miller,
Rasmus Vuori, Brent Yontz, Michael Annetta, Robbin Cat Grieve, Chris Cain, Aaron Crowe, Giulia Corda,
Jeremy Lerman, Corina Maritescu, Marilena Maritescu, Maryam Hosseinzadeh, Kendal Stavros, Erin Clare
Shea, Kathyrn Culley-Rapata, Louis Morton, Veronica Paredes, Megan Seely, Nahomi Maki, Lauren &
Michael Aquilino, Elizabeth Nicola, Chip Messenger, Xing-Mai Deng, Matthew Taylor, Deborah Gorman,
Charles Matthies, Ann Kiss, Sarah McClean, Kelly Sears, Jon Noble, Miwa Matreyek, Anna Romano,
Jessica Olman, Brittany Bowman, Elaine Welinder, Pete Leidy, Cindy Marie Jenkins, William Phelps,
Elizabeth Ramsey, Richard Mans, Dan Reeds, Amber Rae Bowyer, Horfrost, Carol Borden, Jordan
Weisman, Powen Yao, Jody Hughes, Liz F. Wilson, Jeremy Gibson, Carolyn Corry, Karl Baumann, Alanna
Waksman, Sara Fenton, Megan Duffy, Emily Duff-Bartel, Sadie Minkoff, Kathyrn Rile, Bryan Jaycox,
Sandra Joy Lee Aquilar, Irina, Patricia & Aaron Fenton, Randy Clemons, Knight of Words, Alejandro
Martinez, Melissa Bouwman, Damon Pierson, Laura Cechanowicz, Elysa Hillis, Ashley Hillis

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 117
TEAM CREDITS
MiraViz

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Amanda Tasse
PRODUCER Amanda Tasse
DESIGNERS Amanda Tasse, Will Hellwarth, Isaac Steele
ENGINEERS Charlie Fox Haskins, Qiaosong Wei, Soren Massoumi,
Xiao Yang, Suvil Singh
ARTISTS Maureen Lu, Amanda Tasse

TEAM CREDITS
MiraFlux

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Amanda Tasse
PRODUCER Jen Stein
LEAD ARTIST Anton Hand
PROGRAMMER Anton Hand

~ Poetic Science ~
Amanda Tasse © 2016 118
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Creator Tasse, Amanda (author)

Core Title Poetic science: evoking wonder through transmedia discovery of science

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinematic Arts (Media Arts and Practice)

Publication Date 08/02/2016

Defense Date 07/01/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 3rd culture,affect,animation,animation studies,art and science,art practice,arts based research,arts methodology,art-sci,cinematic arts,design research,digital arts,environmental storytelling,game design,game studies,games and learning,immortal jellyfish,informal learning,interactive design,media arts,media literacy,media studies,media theory,multimodality,multiple intelligences,OAI-PMH Harvest,participatory,poetic science,practice based dissertation,Regeneration,sci-art,science communication,science games,science pedagogy,science visualization,speculative design,Storytelling,third culture,Transmedia,Turritopsis dornhii,two cultures,Visualization,world-building,world-making

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Advisor Anderson, Steve (committee chair), Fisher, Scott (committee member), Jenkins, Henry (committee member), Willis, Holly (committee member)

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