Talking the Talk

Confessions of an Overprepared Speaker

July is a two-talk month, something that, for me, is about as rare as the appearance of a comet. Last week, I spoke to students at a summer program at Purdue University about seeing science through the lens of art. And in two weeks, I will fly to Germany to participate in the Dagstuhl Seminar on Art, Visual Illusions, and Data Visualization. I plan to give a presentation about how visual artists use illegible or semi-legible text in their art. Because I am not an expert on this topic – I’m just an artist who does this – I am overpreparing.

A new ink on yupo painting with semi-legible text about the nature of recollections. This piece will be coming to Germany with me.

A reminder, because the Venn diagram intersection of “people who read newsletters” and “people who give talks” is likely large: giving a talk to an audience is not a normal thing to do. Most people in the world have never given a talk and never will.  

For many academics, giving talks is second nature; it’s what they do. And for a certain subset of writers, artists, entrepreneurs and journalists, giving a talk is likewise an everyday affair. For the rest of us, it’s kind of a big deal.

So I am overdoing it. I’ve been reading books and dry, scholarly articles about visual perception. I set up a meeting to talk to some artists about their use of obscured text. I got sucked so deeply into a piece about the duck-rabbit illusion that I added a copy of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations to my shopping cart before coming to my senses. Oh, you didn’t know Ludwig was a big duck-rabbit guy? I thought everyone knew that.

It’s clearly a rabbit, where is the controversy? Oh wait…

Deep in my heart, I know that all this preparation is pointless, because really, nobody wants to hear a painter talk about Wittgenstein.

People who invite painters to speak want to hear about their artwork.

I will, of course, talk about my work.

My work is great and I am the world’s leading expert on it.

But I will also talk about the work of other artists. Almost every talk I’ve ever given (lifetime count: fourteenish) has featured either a sprinkling or a giant shovelful of work by others. Why? First, because I’m often addressing a scientific audience that is not very familiar with art, and I want to introduce them to some of the other artists working in the science-art space. Second, because I’ve generally been assigned a topic (e.g., Microbiology in Art), and showing other people’s work strengthens my presentation. Third, because I’ve heard too many talks that are just a recitation of every single project the artist has done, in order, and they are sooooooo boring. More than once, people have told me after my talks that they would have liked to hear more about my work. Great! Find me at the bar.

Science inspired artwork by (clockwise from left) Betty Busby, Elaine Whittaker, Bjork and Laura Splan featured in my talk at Purdue

I try to give the kind of talk that I, as a fellow non-expert, would like to hear. So: intro, parameter-setting, brief field survey, deep dive into some of my work, conclusions. 20-30 minutes max. I better get cracking on those slides; I have less than a month to prepare ; )

Thank you for reading Artologica. If you think my work is fab and you would love to see more of it, click here. If you would like to see it IRL, you can find my upcoming show schedule here. If you would love to hear me talk at your next meeting, message me. I promise to overprepare.

PS: Look for a fascinating survey of art with illegible text in an upcoming newsletter