Bugs make most people squirm. But Cape Town entomologist Dr Simon van Noort has proven, through his research, that science and art are not mutually exclusive.
While most people are either left or right-brained, Van Noort, is proof that the two can co-exist in one person as he has found a way to fuse his love for science and the arts.
“I have a creative side, and I have a scientific side, but they are not mutually exclusive. There are elements of both in each other,” he said.
“While art is a creative exercise for me, we do a lot of scientific illustrations in this work as well.”
Van Noort who has studied bugs for 30 years said an element of creativity must exist in someone to identify art in science.
“A lot of art is about composition. Seeing the beauty in something is sometimes only seen through altering the composition,” he said.
“Although close-up photographs are not normally featured in scientific publications, this is where creativity comes into play.
“This enables popularisation of science, and that is an advantage.”
The Cape entomologist said science and art could not be mutually exclusive because they are integrated.
“Artists and scientists are in the business of discovering and understanding the world we live in and displaying it,” he said.
“There is an artistic factor in science. You have to have creativity and imagination as a scientist to make discoveries and be innovative.”
Through inspecting insects microscopically, Van Noort not only studied the creature but also create photographic artworks from the microscopic image.
He uses a Leica microscope that allows him to capture detailed high-resolution images on a screen.
“It’s a microscope that is married with a software program. It comes with special lighting that provides even ambient light,” he said.
“The system allows you to take multiple images from the top to the bottom of the specimen. This can sometimes be broken down into 150 different pieces, which the computer algorithm amalgamates into a single image,” he added.
The machinery can cost upwards of half a million rand, Van Noort said. Funding for the machinery was received from various grants which he applied for.
Van Noort’s research imagery formed part of the Iziko South Africa National Gallery’s latest exhibition, titled Breaking Down the Walls - 150 years of Art Collecting, under the category ‘Science as Art’.
“The images that are part of the exhibition have been produced through the Leica software (which depicts) wasps (that) are around 500 mm in size,” he said.
“In the past, we used to illustrate specimens through line drawings, but now the imaging system shows the same thing,” he added.
Curator of the exhibition, Andrew Lamprecht, said they included the scientific artworks in the collection to pose the question, "Is it art?“
“We chose to include the images that scientists have taken of their specimens, and we want people to ponder on how art does not have to be limited to the mediums people are used to,” he said.
“When you look at it, you will see that these are very beautiful artworks in and of itself.”
Van Noort’s love for entomology started when he was a child.
“I was five-years-old and started collecting butterflies as most children do at that age,” he said.
“Insects and their diversity has been a passion of mine since day one. The beauty of it is that most of the species are unknown and undiscovered.
“We are at the forefront of science in entomology as we are discovering new species all the time.”
Van Noort received his PhD in entomology from Rhodes University. He has been employed by the Iziko South African Museum's entomology division for 30 years.
He is currently the curator of entomology at the museum. As a museum entomologist, his primary function is to discover, describe and name new species, Van Noort said.
“I do a lot of fieldwork which means going out and collecting insects. Most of our habitat and vegetation in South Africa are undiscovered,” he said.
“I specialise in wasps, bees and ants, and I specialise in parasitoid (small insects whose immature stages develop within or attached to other insects) wasps.”
Van Noort’s interest in parasitoid wasps was because of their ecological role in the function of the ecosystem.
“Without parasitoid wasps, we will have an explosion of pest species of insects. These wasps are natural population controllers,” he said.
He added: “They play a critical role in maintaining balances in ecosystems.”