This photo shows the latest in our series of experiments in which a good artist live-illustrates a lecture. This was at the NEMO science museum in Amsterdam, on April 15, 2025. The show was the concluding event in the 2025 Ig Nobel EuroTour.
The photo (taken by NEMO’s ace photographer) shows artist Keira Lee Rice drawing on human-blackboard Fabian Kok. The drawing pertains to the talk being given at that moment by 2022 Ig Nobel Applied Cardiology Prize winners Mariska Kret and Eliska Prochazkova for seeking and finding evidence that when new romantic partners meet for the first time, and feel attracted to each other, their heart rates synchronize.
You can see a few other photos from that night, in a nice writeup NEMO posted.
A Brief History of Our Live-Drawing Experiments
The first of our live-drawing experiments happened last September, at the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That night, Keira Lee Rice live-illustrated each new Ig Nobel Prize-winning achievement, as each of the ten new prize-winners was revealed to the public.
A few months later, artist Becky Moon live-illustrated the talks, by Ig Nobel Prize winners and other notable thinkers and doers, at the year’s Improbable Research show that was a featured part of the AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science) Annual Meeting.