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sons have big arms.
This view is now mistakenly Craft work Visit
identified with one of his What if we used movement to
predecessors, French naturalist manipulate the mind? That’s the
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In A new show reminds us science isn’t just there to premise behind choreographer
reality, Lamarck’s version of this Matthias Sperling’s deliriously
conception was semi-mystical, be useful – it’s a kind of making, finds Simon Ings strange performance-lecture Now
invoking the will or desire of That We Know, 1-2 November at
the young animal to change. the Lilian Bayliss Studio in London.
These basic, historical facts
have escaped palaeontologist Watch
Peter Ward in his deeply Seventy-two people died when
misguided book Lamarck’s fire consumed the Grenfell Tower
Revenge. He claims not only flats in west London last year.
that Darwin was wrong, but On 30 October, The Fires That
that Lamarck, or the idea that Foretold Grenfell on BBC2 tells the
he thinks was Lamarck’s, is right, haunting story of five major blazes
as shown by modern research that forewarned of the tragedy.
in epigenetics – a sexy term for
gene regulation. This involves Read
organisms responding to their Marion Nestle reveals an Unsavory
own developmental stage, and MARK BLOWER 2018 Truth: How food companies skew
factors such as environmental the science of what we eat (Basic),
stressors, by turning some genes while Donald Varene explores The
on and off, often by adding Science of Cookery and the Art of
temporary chemical tags to DNA. Dawns, Mine, Crystal by Yunchul Kim, gels, metals, all kinds of reagents, Eating Well (Columbia).
In principle, this explains much acids and oils. While labs (and not
Korean Cultural Centre, London, to
of our physiology and growth, 3 November. Some of the work also a few artists’ studios) grow more Listen
and why identical twins are not features at FACT, Liverpool, sterile and digital, his workspace The Outside/In Radio podcast
completely identical. remains stubbornly wedded to explores the natural world and
22 November to 3 March
Some say that these regulatory stuff. The artist’s wry description how we use it. A two-part look
changes can be transmitted NOSTALGIA was not the first of his practice – “touching, at overpopulation asks why this
through many generations, word that sprung to mind when staring, waiting for things to once burning issue has become
driving evolution. Ward goes even I visited a show at London’s dry” – captures something of something you only seem to hear
further, bizarrely including HGT Korean Cultural Centre by South science’s lost materiality. about from Marvel’s Thanos and
as an example of epigenetics and Korean artist Yunchul Kim. At first Kim’s latest work (see above) other comic book supervillains.
arguing, without any evidence, glance, indeed, Kim’s art appears shows a contraption in three
that everything from the rapid intimidatingly modern. parts that turns cosmic rays into Watch
expansion of the mammals after The new pieces exhibited bubbles suspended in space, a In cinemas from 2 November, Mirai
non-avian dinosaurs became were inspired by his residency copper-aluminium sludge, stirred (pictured) is a poignant Japanese
extinct to the human propensity last year at the CERN particle by hidden magnetic orreries, animation fantasy about a boy who
for warfare can be explained by physics laboratory near Geneva, and a shattered gelatin rainbow. discovers a portal to other times,
epigenetic evolution. Switzerland. They centre around What are these but the results and long-vanished ancestors.
The key stumbling block for this photonic crystals, colloids and of a strange science that is the
guff is that, in animals, there is no particle detectors, and are placed outcome of some spectacularly
evidence that epigenetic effects in the context of earlier work, purposeless noodling?
can be inherited for more than a featuring eviscerated hard drives, The physicists at CERN loved it,
few generations. pencil sketches of fluid flows and and Kim soon found out why: “I
For epigenetics to have a role in a “chemical synthesiser” turning make all my own machinery, and
evolution requires a mechanism the electrical current flowing so do they,” he says. “Their love
to get from changes in gene through a droplet of seawater into of craft is everywhere, from the
regulation in tissue to enduring a cloud of sound. colour for their cabling to the
changes in gametes. Darwin spent But for the scientists who are careful labelling of everything.”
years worrying about this and Kim’s most committed audience Kim’s art is a reminder that
came up with a completely wrong (and eager collaborators), there science isn’t just there to be
answer. Ward does not even try. ■ is something wonderfully old- useful. It is also a craft. It’s
fashioned about the way he works. something humans do, and
Matthew Cobb is a zoologist at the Kim’s studio in Seoul is full of something that, when presented
University of Manchester, UK materials: homemade ferrofluids, this well, we are bound to enjoy. ■
27 October 2018 | NewScientist | 45
