Cell biologist by training, animator by vocation, Drew Berry simplifies nothing in his animations of apoptosis, the Central Dogma, and the malaria lifecycle. A biomedical animator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, he is the animator of the Emmy-winning documentary DNA and the jiving, twisting molecules of Harold Varmus's multimedia, jazz-scored lecture, "Genes and Jazz." Standing at the juncture of high-throughput science and powerful computer animation, Berry is taking biology's stories — once dominated by simple shapes and predictable tasks — and giving them a visual form that matches the power of the science itself. < Back | Continue >

Berry's animations are essentially visual review papers, accurate down to the forms of macromolecules and the bonding rates of enzymes. "The science is so rich," he says, that "all you have to do is hit the papers." And in those pages of "amazing concepts, amazing ideas," what pleases him the most is that it's all "just reality." An unexpected side effect of Berry's work has been that when laypeople view the animations, they intuitively grasp the cutting-edge science. Berry says, with some amazement, "The more hard-core it is, and the more complicated visually it is, the more people respond." Seeing the cell's activities conveys something fundamental to viewers, something that Berry sees in his mind as he digests the journal articles that contribute to each animation. < Back | Continue >

It's no surprise that many have found his work so beautiful as to call it art. Berry's pieces have been exhibited at the Guggenheim, the Centre Pompidou, and the MoMA, reaching audiences whose primary interest is not science. And yet, he observes, "it's working in that context. They can look at it and intuitively get what's going on. They're not getting inhibited by the barrier" of technical language. All the information that modern biology can pump out is so much fodder to Berry. "It's mind-boggling," he says. "It's just a tidal wave coming in now." What do you do when confronted with all the information you've ever wanted? It's a question he's not sure how to answer, but the power of the experience persists in the hundreds of molecules, flickering in Brownian motion, that slip across his screen. < Back | Continue >