When Data Becomes Poetry: Art & Science in Unexpected Places — Issue No.47 April 1st 2025

Greetings from Juergen

This week, I've gathered stories that celebrate the fascinating marriage of art and science – a refreshing shift from our usual AI focus. From Barcelona's hospital transforming medical data into flowing visual art to Switzerland's new passport blending security with topographical beauty, these pieces showcase how technical precision and artistic vision can enhance each other.

You'll also find stories about NASA's artistic documentation of the space race, planetariums evolving into immersive storytelling spaces, and cutting-edge technologies preserving Renaissance frescoes in Florence. Plus, there's a thoughtful piece on how the Getty PST initiative brought artists and scientists together during politically challenging times. Each story reminds us that when art and science connect, both become more accessible and meaningful.

Experience "The Intersect" in audio form by subscribing to our companion podcast, where we bring these art-science connections to life through conversational exploration of each week's fascinating stories.

Data Driven Art

Live Hospital Data Visualisations Combine Art With Medicine

Barcelona’s Sant Joan de Deu children’s hospital has turned a data corridor into a living art piece. As reported by AV Magazine, the Cortex Data Visualisation—created by systems integrator Instronic—transforms live hospital data into fluid, ever-shifting visual patterns. Installed at the entrance to the hospital’s control room, it uses light, movement, and advanced graphics to turn raw information into something both poetic and readable.

What caught my attention is how this installation doesn’t just represent information—it reinterprets it. In the age of AI, we’re surrounded by massive, often inscrutable datasets. Artistic data visualization like this helps us reconnect with that information in a more human, visceral way.

This project highlights how real-time data visualisation can bridge the gap between abstract information and human perception, making it more accessible to a broad audience.

What other invisible systems around us are just waiting to be made visual—and maybe even beautiful?

Technology in Music

Apple Music Classical Adds Time-Synced Listening Guides

Apple Music Classical just added a feature that quietly rewires how we listen. As reported by TUAW, the latest 2.2 update introduces time-synced listening guides — real-time commentary that highlights shifts in instruments, form, and key moments in the music as you hear them. The update also includes curated editorial stations and personalized recommendations, but for me, it’s the listening guides that stand out.

I’m not a classical music expert. I listen with interest, but I often feel like I’m missing the story behind the notes. This kind of guided experience helps fill in the blanks without slowing you down. It reminds me of something I’ve been playing with on the visual arts side: using AI to turn museum wall text into spoken audio guides. These are custom, contextual, and deeply personal — my own handheld docent.

“These updates transform a regular listening session into a guided musical journey,” said Apple Music Classical’s Global Director, Anjali Malhotra.

What if every piece of music — or art — came with its own living, evolving context?

Design

Switzerland’s New Passport Is a Masterpiece of Precision, Technology, and Design

Switzerland’s new passport, featured recently on Moss and Fog, is a layered blend of security tech and visual elegance. Each page showcases topographical illustrations that double as anti-counterfeiting measures—UV-reactive inks, microtext, and biometric chips make this document nearly impossible to fake. It’s not just a passport—it’s part map, part machine, part museum piece.

My take? The Swiss have always had a thing for secrecy—banking codes, discreet vaults, and the kind of privacy that hasn’t always aged well. But here, they’ve flipped that impulse into something constructive. This passport doesn’t just secure identity; it turns the very idea of privacy into visual poetry. If hiding something is an art, this is the gallery.

When I see a travel document rendered with this much care, I can’t help but think: maybe the Swiss are finally using their obsession with privacy to make something inclusive—an object that protects without vanishing into shadows.

What if more bureaucratic tools looked like this—designed to be both secure and seen?

Art & Science

COLLISION ENSURES REACTION Getty PST: Art and Science Collide

The piece in Artillery Magazine by a curator involved with Getty PST ART offers a rare inside view of how more than 20 Southern California exhibitions tackled the uneasy, often raw meeting point of art and science. From AI-powered coffee readings to Indigenous technologies and biotech installations, the work was wildly diverse—sometimes chaotic, sometimes prophetic—but always shaped by a shared urgency.

What struck me most is how this initiative, meant to bridge art and science, was born out of political hostility toward both. The Trump era’s dismissal of expertise forced the Getty to act, but now, artists and scientists alike are having to scramble for funding in a hyper-polarized environment. That’s not new for the arts—we’ve lived in this scarcity mindset for decades. But for scientists, this is unfamiliar territory.

“It is telling that an arts institution would not ask a similar question about the benefit of collaboration for artists... Art and science are a conversation, not a collision.”

I’ve seen this firsthand working with nonprofits whose projects are stalled or shuttered because the skill of fundraising now demands navigating a minefield of cultural alignment tests. How do we rebuild support for shared knowledge in a country where even curiosity is seen as political?

Norman Rockwell Commemorates Gemini Program With Grissom and Young

In this feature from NASA, we learn how Norman Rockwell was commissioned to paint Grissom and Young, depicting astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young suiting up for their Gemini 3 mission in 1965. Rockwell worked directly with NASA, who even lent him a real Gemini spacesuit to get the details right. It’s part of a broader art initiative NASA started in 1962, which also included artists like Annie Leibovitz and Andy Warhol.

I’ve seen hundreds of archival NASA photos from the Apollo program—most of them were stiff, technical shots with minimal emotion. Sure, there were a few gems. But that’s what makes NASA’s embrace of artists like Rockwell so powerful. His painting doesn’t just document a moment—it makes you feel it. The human tension before liftoff, the quiet intensity in the eyes of the astronauts—those things don’t always come through in a Kodak frame.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working with a photography collector who had amassed a vast trove of NASA images from the Apollo space program. Most of these photos were pretty run-of-the-mill, boring chronicles of technology and space travel in those days, though there were obviously many stunning exceptions. The idea that NASA also collects art and hired painters like Norman Rockwell to chronicle these missions adds an element and a dimension that space photographs taken in the 1960s by the astronauts themselves often do not communicate.

What would it mean today if tech companies documented their work through the eyes of working artists, not just engineers?

Planetarium Films & the Evolution of Immersive Astronomy Experiences

The team at Blooloop recently interviewed Cyril Birnbaum, head of the planetarium at Universcience, about how these celestial theaters have evolved from mechanical star projectors to full-blown immersive domes. Now powered by 8K laser systems and real-time simulators, places like the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie in Paris are blending astronomy with digital art, music, and even humor. It’s not just about the stars anymore—it’s about storytelling, collaboration, and creating shared emotional experiences under the dome.

What caught my eye is the way these systems are quietly redefining what we expect from science education. It’s cinematic, sure—but also poetic, weird, and sometimes even irreverent. I love that a show about Galileo’s life might resemble a nightclub set. That’s not dilution—that’s expansion.

“Planetarium sessions in the past resembled stargazing evenings under the night sky,” says Birnbaum. “Today, some films are as realistic as science-fiction movies like Interstellar.”

Could the future of immersive storytelling be circular, domed, and collective instead of flat and isolated?

Digital Archiving and Art Preservation

How Technologies Applied in Florence Are Revolutionising Fresco Conservation

In The Art Newspaper, Julia Halperin gives us a fascinating look into how scientists and restorers in Florence are using advanced, non-invasive technologies to protect the Brancacci Chapel frescoes. Microwave reflectometry, infrared thermography, and digital holography are now part of the conservator’s toolkit—helping to identify cracks and detachments hidden deep inside centuries-old plaster. This blend of science and preservation is not just about saving the art; it’s about understanding how it was made.

I’ve always been a little obsessed with art restoration. The mix of fear and finesse that goes into tapping a 600-year-old fresco with your fingers—it’s both terrifying and beautiful. But let’s be honest: intuition can only go so far. Bringing hard data into the process doesn’t ruin the magic; it gives those instincts something solid to work with.

“Although detachments are often recognised by the tap test, this method is time-consuming... and its accuracy of execution and interpretation is too discretionary and subject to the individual skills and experience of the restorers,” says researcher Cristiano Riminesi.

Could this kind of tech eventually help preserve less-famous works in small towns and overlooked buildings, too?

The Last Word

Thanks for joining me on this exploration of how art and science continue to inspire and inform each other. These connections feel especially important in our increasingly polarized world, where both artistic and scientific endeavors face similar challenges. I'd love to hear which story resonated with you most or if you've encountered other examples of this powerful intersection. Your perspectives always add richness to these conversations.

Until next time, Juergen