Molecular Aesthetics

Thanks to advances in molecular science and microscopy, we can visualize matter on ananoscale, and structures not visible to the naked eye can be visualized and characterized. The factthat technology allows us to transcend the limits of natural perception and see what was previouslyunseeable creates a new dimension of aesthetic experience and practice: molecular aesthetics. Thisbook, drawing on an exhibit and symposium at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, documentsaesthetic developments in what Félix Guattari called the "molecular revolution." Just asartists in the Bauhaus movement began to use such industrial materials as metal, Plexiglas, andalloys as raw materials, artists today have access to new realms of the molecular and nano. Theindustrial aesthetic of machinery and material has been transformed into an aesthetic of media andmolecules. Molecular Aesthetics suggests ways in which art can draw inspirationfrom the molecular sciences -- and ways in which science can use art to make experimental resultsmore intelligible and comprehensible. The authors of the essays collected in the book discuss thecreation of molecules of remarkable beauty and the functional properties that stem from a fewgeometrical principles of molecular design; address the history of molecular structurerepresentation; examine the meaning of molecular aesthetics for scientists; and compare chemicalstructures to artworks.

Peter Weibel is Chairman and CEO of the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. With Bruno Latour, he coedited ICONOCLASH and Making Things Public as well as other ZKM volumes, including, most recently, Sound Art and Global Activism (all published by the MIT Press).

Ljiljana Fruk is a research group leader and lecturer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), DFG Centre for Functional Nanostructures (CFN), working on the design of nanoscale light-activated devices.