Marte Newcombe and Greg Shirah
Art from Science
Wednesday, December 19, 2001
Building 3 Auditorium - 3:30 PM
(Refreshments at 3:00PM)

Goddard's Office of the Assistant Director for Information Sciences concludes the Fall 2001 GSFC Information Sciences and Technology (IS&T) Colloquium series with Marte Newcombe and Greg Shirah. They will speak on the topic Art from Science. Science has explored the unknown for centuries, and the resulting discoveries have changed the world and the way we observe it. The advent of satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Earth Observing System (EOS) have opened up new ways of seeing and provided us with an incredible array of new multi-spectral images and data sets of earth and space. Scientific visualizations are created using these data sets, turning data into imagery. The beauty and mystery of these images are becoming an inspiration to artists who are using the imagery for artistic endeavors. Like the scientist, the artist is on a quest for knowledge and communication. A small group of local artists and visualizers have been collaborating for several months to create artwork that is based on science using scientific visualizations and mathematical equations as source materials and computers as a medium for their artwork. Several works will be presented with a discussion on the techniques used in creating them and the evolution of the artistic processes as well as some justifications for why these science images have been used. A gallery presentation of the works will be available in GSFC's Building 28 atrium.

Marte Newcombe graduated from the University of Tasmania, Australia in 1970 with a B.A. and a graduate diploma in education. She taught French and German for ten years in Australia, Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea. In 1985 she graduated with a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington D.C. She has taught at the Corcoran in Printmaking, Computer Graphics and the Fine Arts Core program. Since 1999 she has been teaching Digital Art at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. She began to work in the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA Goddard in 1998. Subsequently she continues to be employed by SVS two days per week as a graphic artist and animator. Since 1985, Marte Newcombe has exhibited her sculptures, drawings, prints and digital work at hundreds of exhibitions throughout the USA and Russia.

Greg Shirah received an MS in Computer Science from George Washington University and a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Georgia. He has worked at NASA-GSFC since 1984. While at GSFC, he has worked in the Flight Dynamics Division, Data Systems Technology Division, and Earth and Space Sciences Computing Division where he currently works in the Scientific Visualization Studio. He has been involved in computer graphics in each of these organizations as a lead visualizer in the Scientific Visualization Studio, He has produced hundreds of visualizations that have been shown on national television (including all major evening news broadcasts), in the print media (including many magazine covers and newspapers), and on the web. GSFC Public Affairs has estimated that over a billion television viewers have seen the El Nino visualizations that Mr. Shirah produced.

IS&T Colloquium Committee Host: Milt Halem