What defines beauty?

I watched a short lecture today by a medical illustrator in which he discussed the beauty of the workings of cellular structure. This got me thinking about a friend in graduate school that began working with a scientific institute on campus to view magnified views of her blood cells and other medical imaging processes. The results were undeniably beautiful and as she got more and more invested in the medical imaging the works she was creating became less and less manipulated until finally a 3-D model of her lungs was sufficient to represent her vision. It was a fascination with the ability to see the body in this new way that took over, and in many ways eclipsed the inspiration part of using the works to create something else. The imaging became the work, the art was in the gesture.

The medical institute was ecstatic to be collaborating with an artist. We were all seduced by the products of this partnership. At one point, though, a professor rightly asked the student whether there wasn't a vested interest on the part of "science" in seeing its developments and technologies as an art unto themselves. Wasn't she just a tool in a broader attempt to promote the imaging as art in its own right, as science as something beautiful and pure and truthful? And really, the imaging created a beautiful concept that was devoid of some of what art is about. There was no challenge there, just beautiful, pure "truth." Something of a dangerous, seductive concept. Anyway, the allure of imaging technology is still there, as a tool and as something more. The video below illustrates just that.