This is my first time writing to the list, so here you have a brief intro
about myself: I originally studied Mathematics, did research in
Computational Biology, and eventually pursued an MFA in Media Arts. I
currently work in the visualization and modeling of biomedical data, and
also contribute to open source tools used in computational arts and
design. This
site <http://andrescolubri.net/> lists various art and science projects I
have been involved in over the years.
I initially wanted to develop artistic practices to counter a perception of
increased specialization and institutional compartmentalization in the
sciences. I thought that the arts could help to create a more
multidisciplinary dialog by pointing to unexpected connections between
different scientific fields.
In general, I found scientists receptive to the idea of creating
connections between art and science... but they are ultimately constrained
by the demands of their academic jobs (publications, grants, etc). I also
think that making good art or science it is hard enough by itself, so doing
both is even more challenging!
I probably had an all-or-nothing mindset at the beginning in regards to
what art, science, and the art-science intersection are or could be, but I
softened my views over time. Back when I got interested in the art-science
practice, I did a little video <http://andrescolubri.net/s3-project/>for
the S3 Project (Sights and Sounds of Science) at the Materials Research
Center at the University of Chicago. This video is little more than just
myself walking around the research institute I used to work at them time. I
remember that one of the professors looking at the submitted projects said
something along the lines of "I expected that eventually someone was going
to start running around and filming us". This memory now makes me think
that if we look at the scientific activity as whole, perhaps we can
interpret it as another kind of societal performance, and and as such to
find its implicit or underlying art.
Adding to the list of scientific institutions offering art residencies, I'd
like mention the Art Residence at the Broad Institute
<http://www.broadinstitute.org/what-broad/artist-residence-program>, a
genomics medicine center in Cambridge, US, where I do part of my research
work.
Best,
Andres
On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 4:12 AM, Guillermo Muñoz <m.m.guillermo@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Here i leave an in-put for this interesting discussion from Victor F.
> Puntes, ICREA Research Professor and leader of the Inorganic Nanoparticles
> Group - www.inorganicnanoparticles.net at Catalan Institute of Nanoscience
> and Nanotechnology (ICN2) - www.icn.cat
>
> He is developing art/sci interactions included in his team work (
> http://www.inorganicnanoparticles.net/outreach/art-science/) and directed
> a wiki for nanotechnology (nanowiki -
> http://www.inorganicnanoparticles.net/outreach/nanowiki/), with Josep
> Saldaña, Joan Escofet and Eudald Casals.
>
> Guillermo
>
> -------------------
>
> Nice. But soft. The question would be why there would be any reason why a
> scientist will not spend time, energy, efforts and resources in arts. Who
> first separated music from maths? who divided between wonder and poetry?
> Painting or displaying data? How can be scientist without studying
> intensively the history of knowledge, epistemology, and all the mistakes we
> already did? How limited would be the understanding of the laws of nature
> without philosophy? Maybe we should change our definition of scientist, and
> our definition of artist, and everything will be much clear. Mercenaries
> should be excluded. How are different my willing to know from my subjective
> experience of the world? Or looking for the missing parameter or note or
> stroke? if you can dance your phD, why not to paint your uncertainties?
>
> the benefits of spatial representation, data visualization, efficient
> communication are irrelevant details to me when compared with the benefits
> of using your brain, broadly and intensively, exploring all mechanisms of
> creations in order to better understand the world and the experience of it,
> and then communicating it. Beautiful ideas in a beautiful suit, specially
> when the content does not really exist and everything is its shape (every
> though is a precise local neuronal excited topography inside the brain).
> Beautiful is an emotion of good Espinoza would say.
>
> "I feel that the surrealists have created a series of valid external
> landscapes which have their direct correspondences within our own minds."
> J. G. Ballard
>
> Therefore, the first question is why there is this sci-art division, the
> second is to look for those who escape from this situations and learn from
> them. There should be a continuum between the most
> duly incomprehensible mathematically computing brain and the most absurd
> surrealist expression of man, and we should be free to move through it. Why
> it is not like that and how to remove the barriers that prevent it (lack of
> education I guess) seems to me key questions on this debate... while others
> are developing the STEM* strategy as the revitaliser of science, ignoring
> knowledge and thinking I am affraid. Ignoring the brain.
>
> I think that there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more
> important to have beauty in one's equations that to have them fit
> experiment. If Schrödinger had been more confident of his work, he could
> have published it some months earlier, and he could have published a more
> accurate equation. It seems that if one is working from the point of view
> of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound
> insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete
> agreement between the results of one's work and experiment, one should not
> allow oneself to be too discouraged, because the discrepancy may well be
> due to minor features that are not properly taken into account and that
> will get cleared up with further development of the theory. Paul
> Dirac, *Scientific
> American*, May 1963.
>
> *Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
>
> Victor F. Puntes
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