Francesca Samsel - Vulnerability, making a new language, and pursuing the irrational

Francesca Samsel is crafting a new language for our world. That is, she crosses art, science, and visualization to open new ways of understanding and engaging with the natural world, not just visually but across the sensorial spectrum. She recognizes the inextricably social element to this, too, and her work raises our capacity to collaborate, and in the process, alters our sense of what scientific inquiry is and can (and perhaps needs to) be. Her work as her life are teachers we need for the world we are walking into.

Origins Podcast Website

Flourishing Commons Newsletter

Show Notes:

• vulnerability (11:30)
• problem with the 'follow your passion' path (14:20)
• Ganymede (15:00)
• what she tells her students (15:50)
• art-science collaboration (16:00)
• Santa Fe Institute (21:20)
• James (Jim) Ahrens (24:00)
• Craig Tweedie (25:20)
• visual structure to see the complexity in data (29:00)
• Isaac Asimov 'that's funny' (30:20)
• the need for scientific breakthrough (31:20)
• Lia Halloran - your hand will physically guide you the way to breakthrough (31:30)
• the only mark that you determine as an artist is the first one (33:00)
• delivery-oriented society (34:30)
• "Stewardship of Global Collective Behavior" by Joseph Bak-Coleman et al. (40:00)
• visual vocabulary work (42:00)
• Art-Sci-Vis Lab at UT Austin (43:20)
• flourishing (47:00)
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (51:45)
• lightning round (48:00)
  • Artist: Jon McCormick (work called "Fifty Sisters")
  • Passion: geoscience and the complexity you find when you walk out of the door
  • Heart sing: fused glass, ice, and rock
  • Screwed up: obliviousness to colleagues
• Find Francesca online:
  • Website
  • UT Austin

Logo artwork by Cristina Gonzalez

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