I recently learned about an artist who used simulations of meandering rivers to create striking visual works. The project immediately caught my eye because I had worked on a related model at Caltech, although in a scientific rather than an artistic context.
What surprised me was the way the artist described the model in his portfolio, presenting the dynamics of river meandering as though they emerged from his own “basic logic” (his exact wording). This model, however, is not “basic logic,” but rather a substantial simplification of fluid mechanics that has been subject to debate since the first introduction by Howard & Knutson (1984). The popular implementation — which the artist should have cited, as his work is an exact one-to-one replication — is MeanderPy. To point out that this is not “basic logic,” the implementation has also been subject to debate, as conventional geomorphology predicts that meander migration rates decrease at high curvature.
Citation is fundamental to scientific practice. Ignoring earlier attempts to solve a similar problem — or, in art, to introduce a new form of artistic expression — feels almost illegal, which should be the correct emotion when claiming others’ work. Whether the same expectation of recognition applies when work is transferred from science to art is less clear. When artists adapt scientific models as creative tools and present and sell them as profitable artistic products, where is the credit?