Science thinking different: Imagination as a skill – Numerical models – Game-based approaches.
Hello, and welcome to July’s edition of the Imagination Engines. In this newsletter, I share my latest news and the interesting things I have found about the use of imagination in STEM.
This month I have been thinking a lot about the the tactile, analogue world and how it sets alight our imaginations and in this newsletter I share my thoughts. There are two Inspiring Interactions about individuals who demonstrate the power of craft and tactile in science communication – geoscientist and science-artist Lucia Perez-Diaz and science creator and YouTube star Simon Clark – and I review the book The Revenge of Analog by David Sax. Finally, I introduce my new personal making project, Project Prospero.
As you may know, I do all my science communication in addition to, and outside of, a full-time job, working my contracted hours over four days to give me a day to run FloodSkinner. This includes my workshops, the YouTube channel, and of course, the Imagination Engine newsletter. In the last month I have been offered two (very exciting) opportunities that will take up much of my time and headspace until the start of 2026 at least and consequently I can no longer commit to bringing you this newsletter every month. I’ll do my best, but it may not be every month or may be shorter.
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Crafting Connections: Science Communication in a Digital Age
I listen to the radio to help me focus on work. The station I often choose is called Absolute 80s and essentially plays the same ‘Best of the 80s’ CD collection on shuffle every day as far as I can tell. During the adverts, a narrator beckons me to join “Real Dating for Real People”. No thank you, I am a happily married man, I reply, and besides, if I was looking I’d be looking for a dating agency just for an imaginary girlfriend. The station’s ident, I think now voiced by Julian Barratt, then tells me “Absolute 80s, where real music matters” before they play the theme from the Ghostbusters film.
I’ve always found the way advertisers use language fascinating. For example, around about when Michael Gove unhelpfully spouted “People have had enough of experts” ushering in the erosion of trust in evidence-based approaches, toothpaste commercials transitioned from phrases like “scientifically formulated” and “chosen by experts” to “pro-expert”, and eventually to “professionally formulated”. The term professional seemingly became more palatable than scientific and expert – I even tried using this on my online profiles, labelling myself as a ‘professional researcher’ rather than as a scientist.
It would seem today that ‘real’ is an favoured buzzword for advertisers. They are usually well informed about the zeitgeist and they are tapping into a genuine desire for experiences that are genuine, authentic, and human. The digital world has transformed the way we live – and artificial/abominable intelligence (AI) is transforming it again – yet this yearning for connection, for authenticity, for realness, will always win through. But in our digital and AI dominated world, what is ‘real’?
Objects are real.
In The Revenge of Analog by David Sax, he described this as “digital is the peak of convenience, analog is the peak of experience.” Sax places this in the context of the renaissance of vinyl records, sales of which have increased year on year for the last 18 years – he highlights a preference for the richer sound quality and being able to hold, and own, an object – a tangible, tactile thing. There is also a connection here – the music is played live, the very vibrations carving the grooves into a master that is then used to press the records, whose grooves return the original vibrations into music. Thus, a record has an echo of the liveness of the performance. You can run your fingers over the surface of a record, feel the grooves on your skin, and be connected with its creator. Contrast that to a CD or digital file. They are just data transformed multiple times and estranged from their creators.
In the realm of games, there has also been a resurgence for analogue, with the market for board games set to grow from $21bn in 2023 to $41bn in 2029. This isn’t at the expense of digital games either, whose market value far exceeds this and also continues to grow.
There is a strong desire for people to make and build. I love Warhammer – I do not play that often but I like to build and paint their model kits. Despite competition from digital gaming, and predictions 3D printing will kill their business model, parent company Games Workshop are posting year-on-year increases in sales and profits. The doomsayers wanting to write the company’s eulogy fail to understand the enduring desire for the tactile – to feel and make things with your own hands and the joy that gives you. Some people call it the Ikea Effect. To me it’s obvious, for example, you cannot replicate the feeling of building a model airplane kit by building a digital model, or even printing out solid components of resin. The experiences are entirely different.
Craft is real.
Recently as I was wasting time in the evening by browsing YouTube I was reminded of the simple pleasure of seeing someone who is very good at their job being very good at their job. I watched Sarah Natochenny, the voice actor for Ash Ketchum on the Pokemon cartoon, being asked to improvise voices for characters she has only just seen. I love watching her facial expressions as she processes, imagines, then embodies the character, giving them not just a voice but a whole personality and back story. She has a craft, she is good at it, and its delightful to see her expressing that craft and me then thinking ‘wow, there’s no way I could do that’.
We will always be delighted by talented people showing off their talent and seeing something incredible being done for real. Even though Harry Palmer will always be my favourite spy, I do enjoy the Bond films. A huge part of their appeal is the action and the real stunts. When you see the Hornet X car do a mid-air corkscrew across a river in The Man with the Golden Gun it is because someone actually did that – it was planned on a computer and there is special FX trickery but ultimately, someone got in that car and drove it up the ramp. This was a rule for Bond films – the action was as authentic as possible. This was regrettably forgotten in the resultingly awful, CGI-riddled Die Another Day, something which will have been noted on Bond’s B107.
Both together are super-real.
The first Wallace & Gromit film, A Grand Day Out, was released, rather terrifyingly, in 1989. It used a painstakingly detailed process of stop motion animation and clay models to bring characters to life and tell the story. Each clay model was sculpted and manipulated by hand – a thing, an object, produced and controlled by someone good at their craft. Over Christmas 2024, the latest instalment of the story, Vengeance Most Fowl, became the BBC’s most viewed scripted show since 2002 at a time when live TV viewership is declining. Although now augmented with model digital effects, the heart of its production, and its lasting appeal, is that craft and the things it creates.
I don’t want you to mistake this as a false-nostalgia fuelled rant against the use computer animations and CGI. I love those too and my favourite shows as a kid included the vanguard of these, Reboot and Insektors. The point I am trying to make is that there is a still a space for hand-crafted shows and films to cut through – Recently, the restored 1983 pilot of the original Thomas the Tank Engine show, made using real models of trains and landscapes, has been viewed over 1.6m times in one month on YouTube.
Realness in Science Communication.
Good science communication connects people to science and in particular to the scientists involved. People want to see the ‘realness’ of science, experiencing it in a genuine and authentic way. They want to know the stories of real scientists behind it.
My specialism in science communication has been game-based approaches at festival-style events. The sort of place where you get given a small 3x3m space, a trestle table, and present some form of tabletop activity. I’m probably best known for virtual reality activities in this spaces, such as Flash Flood! and Humber in a Box. There was an appeal for VR in the pre-pandemic era, which I was purposely tapping into but my bet would be this is nowhere near as strong now as it was back then as the novelty has worn off. However, other activities like the EmRiver mini-flume and AR Interactive Sandbox have a timeless popularity owing to their tactile, hands-on approach. If I was doing similar work these days, I’d be focussing on my physical demo work and storytelling, for example Earth Arcade: The Forest.
Science is a craft. It is not easy and it needs years of training, mentorship, and practice to master. We often forget this. Like any craft, people want to see scientists being good at science. In our efforts to make science sharable and understandable we should not lose sight of also needing to amaze people into saying ‘wow, there’s no way I could that’. This may seem counter-intuitive because part of the role of a science communicator is to inspire people to be scientists, but I think this is where inspiration comes from – if I was younger and was better at doing voices, I might instead watch Sarah’s video and say ‘wow, that’s so awesome I want to be able to do that’.
Science communication becomes really special when someone is able to bring together their craft for science and another craft. Sam Illingworth is a scientist and poet and a science-poet. Rolf Hut is scientist and a maker and a science MacGyver. Iris Van Zelst is a scientist and games developer and science-games developer. There is a growing movement of scientists expressing their crafts and research through science-art, including these examples from former colleagues at the University of Hull I had the pleasure of writing about.
As AI becomes more embedded in real-life, as every YouTube thumbnail or LinkedIn ‘thought leader’ relies on increasingly samey AI generated visual slop, and as online writing becomes ever more generic and unimaginative, people will increasing seek a connection to the authentic, the genuine, the real. It might not seem so now, but the desire for tactile objects and demonstrable craft will surge in the future. Science communicators, hold your nerve.
Inspiring Interactions – Lucia Perez-Diaz
Lucia Perez-Diaz is just simply multi-talented. You could describe her a Geoscientist. She has a PhD from Royal Holloway, works as a researcher, has an impressive scientific publication record, and practices geoscience professionally. As an Earth Scientist, of the hard rock geology variety, Lucia specialises in understanding the processes of plate tectonics, describing herself as a detective using clues and computer models to recreate the way the Earth may have been in the long, distant past.
She is also a freelance illustrator and an incredible artist. She has a very distinctive and aesthetically pleasing style that she describes a “fun and whimsical”. Much of what she creates is made using papercut methods and even when her art is digital, whether that’s the beautiful illustrations for the game QUARTETnary or in her book How the Earth Works, it still bears that hand-crafted style. This is why her work appeals so much, it has a tactile quality, it looks like you could pick it up and run your fingers along the edges of each cut piece of paper – like a vinyl record, it is a medium that provides a direct connection between the audience and the creator.
Finally, you could also describe her as a writer and storyteller. She called herself a detective and in How the Earth Works she uses this as a device to draw the reader through the book. The book itself is aimed at children to inspire them with geoscience and learn about plate tectonics, but really it is her own story of investigating the deep past of the planet that she is inviting the reader to join her in. Recently, she has also turned her talents to science-journalism, joining the press team for the European Geoscience Union General Assembly, covering the themes of the conference including gender, AI, and ethics.
I asked Lucia a few questions about imagination and what it means to her work:
Why is imagination important to the work you do?
Much of what we do as Earth Scientists relies on imagination. We imagine processes we can’t directly see, and times we can’t travel to. Science, to me, is built on curiosity—and curiosity naturally leads us to create new ideas, to imagine. For me, science, imagination, and creativity are deeply intertwined.
As an artist, imagination plays the obvious role in the creative process, but also in figuring out how to communicate science in ways that resonate with people who may have different perspectives, interests, or relationships with it. It’s about finding new entry points into scientific ideas.
How do you keep your imagination sharp?
One thing I started doing a few years ago that really helps keep me creatively fit is taking on projects that are outside my comfort zone. Last year, for example, I created a series of illustrations featuring eight different characters based on various lipids.
“Take cholesterol and design a character inspired by its molecular structure and characteristics” — it doesn’t get much weirder than that! At times I regretted agreeing to it, but it pushed me to think in new ways, and I was really happy with the final result.
Some of these experiments never make it to social media — sometimes because I’m not allowed to share them, other times because they don’t fit my usual content — but they absolutely help keep my imagination active.
What are you currently working on that you would like to shout about?
Following my first book How the Earth Works, I’ve been developing ideas for new books — which I can’t talk about just yet, but I’m very excited about!
Alongside that, throughout 2024 and 2025, I’ve been working on a print series called Adventures in Time. It explores what it might be like to travel through different geologic periods. Right now, I’m working on a piece inviting travellers to the Paleogene—where you can climb Mount Everest while it’s still easy! (The Himalayas only began forming around 50 million years ago, so Earth’s tallest mountain was just a hill back then.)
Inspiring Interactions – Simon Clark
Simon Clark is one of the most successful science communicators on YouTube. His channel, @SimonClark, currently has over 644,000 subscribers and his videos regularly amass hundreds of thousands of views. Although his channel is now focussed on promoting climate literacy it started 15 years ago as a vlog about his experiences as a state-educated student attending University of Oxford. This was significant because Oxford and Cambridge have traditionally been a space for privately-educated students – even today where less than 7% of students are privately educated they make up 30% of student intake at these universities, and historically this has led to a disproportionate under-representation of state-educated citizens in important roles (e.g., 65% of senior judges are privately-educated). It’s clear that his representation of the state-educated voice in that arena resonated with many people.
What I have found inspiring about Simon is how he has managed re-invent and evolve his channel throughout his career. From that original vlog, through his time doing a PhD at the University of Exeter, to going full-time afterwards, and now focussing on climate literacy. He has adapted and grown with his audience whilst remaining true to himself and the content he wants to make and feels is important. Recently, he has been open about struggling with YouTube’s algorithm and the threat that poses to his livelihood – this led to another re-invention and the incorporation of some physical models into his videos. Simon makes these by hand and they are beautiful and he has been rewarded with millions of views. It’s imagination, it’s craft, and it’s realness – all the things I think people yearn for.
I’m also inspired by Simon as he is living my dream in many ways. He gets to be creative, share knowledge, and inspire people to learn every single day. He has already achieved my ambition and written a book (with an excellent audiobook version read by Simon himself). Like me, he’s a big gaming and Warhammer fan and successfully brings these into his work (seriously, check out his awesome Hawaiian Orks). When I put together videos for my YouTube channel, I looked to Simon’s for ideas – how can I put it together, how do I tell the story, how can I film this? Simon also co-hosted a brilliant podcast How to Make a Science Video with Sophie Ward where they chatted to other science creators. It is so jammed with useful insights and ideas that I highly recommend you listen if you want to make science videos.
I asked Simon some questions about imagination and his work.
Why is imagination important to the work you do?
Imagination is vital to me for two reasons. Firstly, YouTube is such a crowded marketplace that anyone not being imaginative in how they present their work risks being crowded by any number of content creators making things by the book. By making things that no one has ever made before, you stand out in a competitive niche. But more than that, and this is the second reason, it’s deeply fulfilling. I would never dream of referring to myself as an artist, but I think there is a part of me that clamours to express itself via art. Making videos is of course itself an art form, but trying to innovate and ask “what could I do here that’s unique” provides another level of artistic fulfilment.
How do you keep your imagination sharp?
I firmly believe that in order to create art you must consume art, and so I’m almost constantly hunting for new stimuli in the form of videos, podcasts, ideas, films, games, but particularly music. I’m one of those people who absolutely rinses their Spotify subscription. I think being exposed to new ideas in one medium – such as music – makes you question preconceptions and biases you have in other media forms. And doing that is the first step to creating something innovative. Which is the other key component – in order to create… you need to create! So I try to do something creative, whether that’s painting or singing or writing or videomaking, every day.
What are you currently working on that you would like to shout about?
I’m in the very early stages of a mammoth video that’s a sequel of sorts to my tiny Earth video. I can’t say much, but it’s going to be big in scale and involve very small models. And trains.
Reading: The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why they Matter by David Sax
I heard about this book whilst reading Rob Hopkin’s From What is to What if and whilst I was thinking about the importance of real, tactile things to imagination. I immediately knew from the title that I had to read (listen) to it. The book is an exploration of the resurgence of seemingly obsolete analogue formats despite many proclamations to their ultimate demise – think ‘vinyl is dead’ or ‘print is dead’.
Unlike some of the other books I have read – including those I have summarised previously – it does not delve it into the science and psychology of why analogue things are so appealing to people. Although I would have loved to have a more detailed exploration of these topics, that’s not the purpose of the book. It is a book about business and that does not make it any less interesting or worthwhile. The ‘why they matter’ is not quantified, it is qualified through the eyes of people who have learned to make money in areas others have discarded as ‘obsolete’.
It is a narrative told through lived experiences. Author, David Sax, travelled extensively to meet those at the forefront of these movements and tells their inspirational stories. These include Nicola Baldini and Marco Pagni who saved the brand and factories of the famous Italian Farrania camera film company after it closed in 2011, reintroducing production in 2022, and Ben Castanie and Aaron Zack who founded Toronto’s famous and immensely successful board game café, Snakes and Lattes. Success stories from the places most had written off.
A phrase that stuck out for me, and a theme Sax returns to often, is that digital represents the peak of convenience, where analogue is the peak of experience. Sometimes this is literal, for example, to a receptive ear the sound quality afforded by a vinyl record is superior to that afforded by a streaming service. In other examples, it is how an object allows its owner to communicate something about themselves – being seen reading a Kindle on the train does not let you show off your intellectual reading material like a book cover does. Making notes in a Moleskin notebooks lets everybody else in the café know about how terrible creative you are. This reminds me of Simon Sinek’s Start With Why – Apple’s ‘why’ is not to sell tech, it’s to sell a way of life. The analogue pioneers are tapping into that same energy.
Speaking of Apple, Sax covers the popularity and success of their 534 physical stores in the Revenge of Retail. You can buy Apple products online, from your own home, and often at cheaper prices too. Yet, their stores are busy and profitable. It is irrational. And this is where the limits of digital are found – people are not algorithms and we often act irrationally. This is behavioural psychology root of the value-action gap that influences the uptake of environmental actions.
Ultimately, for me, in this dawning age of AI, this is a book of hope. I have tried hard to not be an AI contrarian but as my social media feeds – especially LinkedIn – become full of posts and images of the same form and style, increasingly descending into the uncreative slop AI promises us, I have become more and more despondent and angry. No matter the value of the content, my brain is beginning to subconsciously reject anything that looks slightly AI generated. I want to see true creativity, people’s true thoughts, and skilful art and design. The Revenge of Analog tells me I am not alone and people will return to those things that are real and human.
Project Prospero: Part 1
I have been a fan of the Warhammer genre of games for a very long-time. It started with Advanced Heroquest and exploded when I came across issue 166 of White Dwarf in the local Tates shop. It was October 1993, I was young, and there was a free Space Marine model on the cover celebrating the release of the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40,000, the grim-dark sci-fiction fantasy tabletop wargame. That Space Marine was my first Warhammer model and progressed me on from gateway-drug of Airfix model airplanes.
Despite years of “you’ll grow out of it”, Warhammer is still a huge part of my life and who I am. I’ve never played that often, and barely play at all these days, but I love to build the kits and paint the models. It’s the narrative and storyline that fascinated me as a kid, and still does. The fictional universe is deliberately a sandbox for creating your own stories and tales, despite what some of the toxic fanboys in the hobby might tell you about immutable ‘lore’. However, I have found my enthusiasm waning recently and I think this is because I have stop using the models to tell stories. I need a new project.
I have an overly ambitious idea for a Warhammer trainset – a fusion of peak geekdom I could only surpass if I played with it in cosplay (let’s not rule this out). N-gauge is tiny, teeny trains, and Legions Imperialis is tiny, teeny Warhammer. Not quite the same scale but close enough. I love working with this scale as it feels like building model kits of model kits, it’s all very meta. The theme of this trainset will be the Burning of Prospero, a tragic event that occurred prior to the Horus Heresy that pitted two of the Emperor’s gene/warp-crafted sons and their Legions of super-human Space Marines against one another. This will allow me to build a board showing the beautiful city of Tizca and have a variety of models to place around it.
This will be a slowly building and evolving project. As I go, I plan to share some of fiction I create to bring the models to life. Stay tuned for future updates!
About this Newsletter
I am Chris Skinner, a science communicator, STEM professional, and ADHDer. I am on a mission empowering people to unlock their full potential by transforming imagination into a powerful, actionable skill. This newsletter tracks my journey. I would like you to join me, so please subscribe. This newsletter is free and I do not offer a paid tier. If you would like to say thank you and/or help me in my mission please buy me a coffee using the link below.
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