New Books In Communications

In Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), Adam Nocek, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies at Arizona State University, investigates the collusion between entertainment and scientific visualization in the case of molecular animation. “The very same tools that were invented to animate a character like Shrek or Nemo are now being applied to set in motion protein domains and cellular processes.” Opening with this quote by animator and scientist Gaël McGill, the book retraces the complex genealogy of molecular animation and analyses its pretension to scientific value. While the first half of the book deals with “molecular capture” as the cinematographic process of producing moving images of the molecular world, the second half thinks about that same “capture” as a form of governmental rationality, a kind of apparatus rendering life visible and available down to its most fundamental mechanisms. This discussion leads the a