Imagery is now the most common scientific artifact and it provides the most prevalent means for diffusing scientific knowledge through media, television and publications. The results of new research are now experienced rather than strictly explained, though this may still entail advantages for its general understanding. As well as scientific visualisation that is produced for both epistemological and promotional purposes, many of the graphical and animation techniques commonly employed for arts and entertainment productions come about as a result of methods developed for scientific modelling. Many computer animators that have achieved popularity in recent years also come from partly scientific backgrounds and use many of the mathematical skills and techniques acquired from those disciplines. I am thinking here of the work of Karl Sims, Yochiro Kawaguichijon McCormack and William Latham, artists who all (with the exception of William Latham) have degrees in the sciences as well as arts. However, when we view this work with its very unusual stylisations and startlingly unfamiliar transformations, feelings like distance and alienation often arise due to its very strangeness. Could these side effects be caused by the fact that this kind of work can owe its origins to practices so far removed from cultural imperatives? Computer animation produced by scientists or through new algorithmic procedures often seem to resist more than a superficial cultural interpretation, always 'too technical', but is it because we the audience have not yet become literate enough to appreciate the references of this new form, that we have not yet developed the 'algorithmicvision' necessary the read this imagery?
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