I believe that public communication of science is an important aspects for scientists nowadays. I used some forms of art for this purpose.
Wildlife Photographing
As a behavioral ecologists, I always enjoy being in the wild to observe animals' behavior. I start doing wildlife photographing when I was still an undergraduate student in Taiwan. Wildlife photographing is always a great way to evoke what E. O. Wilson called "biophilia" (an intrinsic bonding between human beings and other living systems) from people based on my own experience. Here are some of my works.
Drawing
In addition to wildlife photographing, I also use drawing as a channel for public communication. Recently I start a project, Animals from My Two Worlds, to express ecological or conservation topics I'd love introducing to people by cartooning animals from Taiwan (my home country) and the United States (where I start my graduate program).
Left: The story of flying fish
My brother is a linguist. I learned a lot of interesting things from him, including the concept of "ethnobiology." Pe-ó is the Taiwanese name for flyingfish. Pe-ó-chiáu is the Taiwanese name for brown booby, which means the bird (chiáu) that hunts flyingfish (pe-ó). And the Taiwanese name for dolphin fish is pe-ó-hó, which means the tiger (hó, as a metaphor here I guess) that hunts flyingfish (pe-ó). This is an example how local names can be used to tell species interactions in ethnobiology! Right: Your Neighbor Leopard Cat A drawing I made for 'Leopard Cat Forest' exhibition organized by a group of people who want to evoke the conservation issues of the shrinking wild population of leopard cat in Taiwan. |