Visual structures of living things

Living things offer a singular beauty of infinite variety. The abundance of colours, materials and shapes that give structure to living beings, in this case animals and plants, is immensely rich. A naïve eye would contemplate nature in reverie, taking it on a captivating and meditative journey. A curious eye, observant and interested in the quest for meaning, would be enamoured of discovery and revelation.

Captured by the biologically present forms of living things, man contemplates them, attentive to detail, but also analyses them to understand them and grasp the forces that drive him. Many scientists, artists and designers have sought to understand how the generative forms of living things work. Alan Turing, mathematician and cryptologist, studied the generation of patterns during the development of living organisms.

In order to gain a better understanding of these generative processes that produce form, Turing delved into the structure of things, going to the very depths of living beings. Looking at nature means getting close to it. While the human eye makes the visible visible, the technological eye allows us to enter the invisible world. To see forms that exist in the world but were previously unknown until they were revealed. Optical instruments provide new knowledge.

Once these shapes have been observed, man will try to retranscribe them. However, this transcription is not so simple. Cajal and Golgi, two neurology researchers who co-won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1906 in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system, developed two graphic interpretations of the same observation. Their different representations of brain structure gave rise to two distinct interpretations of brain function. Observation and the technical means used have enabled the creation of new scientific images that support and open the way to interpretation schemes. Linked to scientific imagery, graphic design articulates forms to convey scientific knowledge, and so open people up to the world around them. Through the relationship between content and form, and between form and function, graphic design is a way of representing the world. According to Annick Lantenois, « graphic design can be defined as the formal processing of information and knowledge. The graphic designer is therefore a mediator who acts on the conditions of reception and appropriation of the information and knowledge he shapes ».

Graphic design is a discipline that consists of creating, selecting and using graphic elements to create a communication and/or cultural object, articulating symbolic and meaningful elements to promote, inform or educate. The graphic experience gives us a new, sensitive perception of the visible. Through visualisation and chromatic and formal translation, writing about living things helps us to understand them. In this way, and this is a particular feature of the relationship between form and living things, the ‘pattern’ is the link between the way we look at things, with the associated tools, and the phenomena we observe, in this case living animals and plants.

Is graphic design a key player in the observation and presentation of the forms that structure living things? What are the means of visibility and intelligibility, between representation and aesthetics?