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In an age of information overload and complex global challenges,\ndiagrams have emerged as essential navigational tools for human\nunderstanding\u2014yet their power is anything but new. In fact, these visual\nthinking frameworks are five times older than written language, evolving from\nStone Age cave markings to today\u2019s interactive data visualisations. This\nenduring 15,000-year lineage of diagrammatic thinking offers crucial solutions\nand innovative insights across the realms of science and arts.<\/p>\n\n
Active Tools for Understanding and Innovation<\/p>\n\n
Diagrams bridge the gap between abstract thought and visual\nrepresentation. One of the earliest known diagrams made by humans is on a stone\ntablet discovered in Abauntz Cave in Spain, dating to around 13,600 BCE. The\nstone tablet features a sophisticated topographical diagram depicting the local\nterrain, waterways, and wildlife of the valley. It goes beyond the mere\nrecording of physical features by suggesting\ntemporal and strategic elements through the tactile representation of paths,\nhunting grounds, and herd movements.<\/p>\n\n
This relic reveals a fundamental truth about diagrams: they serve not\njust as passive recordings but as active tools for understanding and\ninnovation. As diagrams have evolved from cave walls to digital interfaces,\nthey have developed into distinct patterns of creation that cross the\nboundaries between scientific and artistic practice.<\/p>\n\n
Scientific and Artistic Dimensions of\nDiagramming<\/p>\n\n
By observing the striking similarities between the diagrams found in\nscientific laboratories and those created in contemporary art practice, we can\nunderstand how diagrammatic thinking shapes knowledge production in both\nfields, and thus develop a framework for analysing these visual tools. By\nexamining how artists and scientists create and utilise diagrams, we have\nidentified four distinct but overlapping approaches to diagram-making:<\/p>\n\n
1) Generative diagrams: These serve as dynamic tools for creative\nexperimentation and discovery. Scientists visually brainstorm ideas to explore hypotheses\nand model possible solutions, just as artists such as Nikolaus Gansterer and\nJulie Mehretu use them to generate new visual and conceptual possibilities. In\nboth cases, the act of mark-making becomes a form of thinking, as ideas are\ndynamically reconfigured to generate new insights.<\/p>\n\n
2) Reductive diagrams: Both scientists and artists often create images\nthat reflect what Roland Barthes called \u2018an aesthetics of bareness and sacred\nsimplicity\u2019, indicating that the images are stripped to their essential\nelements. While scientists add simplicity or reduce complexity to isolate\nspecific variables or relationships, artists such as Yves Netzhammer push this\nreduction further, creating a stark visual poetry that embodies complex\npsychological metaphors.<\/p>\n\n
3) Notational diagrams: The systematic elements of scientific notation,\nsuch as grids, scales, and axes, appear in both domains. Scientists use them\nfor scientific measurement, while artists like Minjeong An repurpose these\nconventions to movingly and often comically reframe subjective childhood\nmemories through a lens of objective scientific analysis.<\/p>\n\n
4) Embodied diagrams: Both scientists and artists recognise the role of\nphysical gesture and movement in understanding complex ideas. Scientists often\nuse hand movements to explain molecular interactions or mathematical concepts,\nwhile artists such as Mariella Greil make this embodied understanding explicit,\ntreating the body itself as a diagrammatic tool for exploration and\ncommunication.<\/p>\n\n
A Poetics of Science: Practice-Based Research<\/p>\n\n
The abovementioned four approaches to diagram-making converge in\ncontemporary artistic practice, and were demonstrated in an exhibition I\ncurated, \u2018A Cabinet of Curiosities: A Wunderkammer for the 21st<\/sup>\nCentury\u2019 held in Hong Kong. The exhibition brought together 40 international\nartists and scientists, many of whom explore how diagrams shape our\nunderstanding of complex phenomena. Several works also demonstrated how\ndiagrammatic approaches can work in combination.<\/p>\n\n My art installation Perpetual\nMotion<\/i> was on display at the Hong Kong exhibition. It includes a specially\ndesigned carpet that merges notational and embodied diagrams by transforming\nNobel laureates May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser\u2019s research on grid cells into\nan intricate geometric pattern. Visitors could physically traverse the\ninstallation and experience complex scientific concepts through their bodies.\nWe also arranged for a contemporary dance performance to be staged on this\ncarpet, adding a deeper layer of meaning as the dancers\u2019 movements across the\nspace echoed the neural activity occurring within their own minds, weaving\ntogether a dynamic fusion of scientific understanding and bodily experience.<\/p>\n\n On the other hand, Shawn Pakhin Tang\u2019s art installation Inertia<\/i> similarly balances scientific\nprecision with artistic interpretation. He removed the hour and minute hands\nfrom a clock and replaced the second hands with compass needles, creating a\nmesmerising visualisation of magnetic fields and temporal cycles. Alternating\nbetween chaos and synchronisation, the installation offers both an accurate\nrepresentation of physical principles and a poetic meditation on time and\nconnection.<\/p>\n\n Bridging Past and Future: Outcomes and Implications<\/p>\n\n The examination of the four diagrammatic approaches and their\napplications in the exhibition setting reveals a fundamental truth: the\nboundaries between scientific and artistic diagramming are far more permeable\nthan traditionally acknowledged. This finding has important implications for\nthe future of visual thinking.<\/p>\n\n Digital technologies have not only transformed the way we create\ndiagrams, but also expanded what they can represent. Interactive visualisations\nallow us to explore multidimensional datasets, while augmented reality enables\nus to overlay diagrammatic information onto the physical world. As we face\nincreasingly complex global challenges, from climate change to artificial\nintelligence governance, the integration of these approaches becomes critical.\nModern diagram-makers must bridge not only scientific precision and artistic\ninsight, but also human cognition and machine learning, local action and global\nsystems, past wisdom and future possibilities.<\/p>\n\n In this way, diagrams continue the journey that began on cave\nwalls\u2014helping us not only to see and understand our world in new ways, but also\nto imagine and shape its future.<\/p> <\/p> About the author(s)<\/p>\n\n Michael\nWhittle is an associate professor of contemporary art in the Department of Arts\nand Design, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Macau. His\ninterdisciplinary research explores the intersection of scientific and artistic\nvisualisation practices. Prof Whittle was originally trained as a biochemist\nbefore transitioning to fine art. This dual background informs his approach to\nvisual thinking tools. Prof Whittle holds an MA in Sculpture from the Royal\nCollege of Art in London, and a PhD in Sculpture as a Japanese Monbusho\nResearch Scholar at Kyoto City University of Arts, where his dissertation\nfocused on diagrammatic thinking in contemporary art practice.<\/p> <\/p> Text: Michael Whittle<\/p> Photo: Michael Whittle, Pilar Utrilla<\/p>