Posts Tagged ‘NEA and NSF’

Symbiotic Art & Science: Can Artists Make Scientific Discoveries?

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

March 15, 2011
Washington, DC

by Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein, Professor of Physiology, Michigan State University

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Illustration of some of the thinking tools that artists and scientists share, derived from autobiographical material and interviews with highly creative scientists and artists, from the book Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World¹s Most Creative People by Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein, 1999. Drawing by and courtesy of Robert Root-Bernstein ©

In our third blog post on the NEA/National Science Foundation conference, Symbiotic Art and Science, Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein discusses where the arts and sciences intersect. A professor of physiology at Michigan State University, in addition to studying the evolution of metabolic control systems and autoimmune diseases, Root-Bernstein has also researched and consulted on the creative process for more than 15 years. He also is an editor for Leonardo, a journal on the arts, sciences, and technology.

If we wish to promote the melding of arts and sciences, then there is an issue that was not formally raised at our conference that needs to be addressed: can artists make scientific discoveries?  While I do not want to argue that the answer must be “yes” in order for there to be useful collaborations among artists and scientists, it seems to me that the case for melding arts and sciences becomes significantly stronger if it can be proven that artists, working as artists, can make significant contributions to science.  While this task may seem impossible, there are, in fact, a large number of cases in which such contributions have been forthcoming.

Artists and musicians addressing scientific and technological problems invented chest percussion (musician Joseph Auenbrugger), the stethoscope (musician and artist Rene Leannec), the laryngoscope (singer Manuel Garcia), the first pill-making machine (artist William Brockedon), the principles governing tree growth (artists Leonardo da Vinci and, independently, John Ruskin), camouflage (painter Abbott Thayer), frequency hopping—a standard mode of encrypting electronic information (actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil), and the first artificial intelligence program (composer Lejaren Hiller).

Artists have invented several classes of novel geometrical objects and structures that have been appropriated by scientists in both life and physical sciences, including Wallace Walker’s “kaleidocycles,” Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, and Ken Snelson’s tensegrity structures. The invention of pointillism by Seurat led directly to modern pixelization as well as to the color blindness tests. The Fauvists gave rise to false coloring, which is employed for data analysis in every science. Indeed, the “chip”—our modern integrated circuit—is made using mainly artistic techniques: the logic is embedded into the design by drawing, it is then printed using silk screen methods, miniaturized using photolithography, and the patterns are then etched into the chip. In other words, the modern world would not be possible without the insights and inventions of artists. We lose sight of this conclusion at our peril.

I will only mention in passing that the mirror-image argument can also be made. Scientists and engineers addressing artistic problems have been similarly productive, inventing electronic music, kinetic sculpture, moiré computation (a form of analogue calculating), color theory, elucidating how we hear and perceive sound, devising optical and aural illusions to explore cognitive functions, unveiling the mathematical principles behind origami, tiling, packing, fractal forms, and much more. Unveiling this rich cultural heritage of cross-fertilization between scientists and artists might itself be a worthwhile endeavor.

I want to emphasize in concluding that I do not believe that the goal of an NSF-NEA collaboration should be primarily, or even peripherally, to fund artists to do science or scientists to do art. My sole point in presenting this argument is to demonstrate that arts and sciences are, indeed, similar enough that the methods of one can usefully be employed to make breakthroughs in the other.

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Symbiotic Art & Science, Part 2

Friday, March 11th, 2011

March 11, 2011
Washington, DC

by Bevil Conway, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Wellesley College

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Dr. Bevil Conway with his artwork Globe. Photo by Joanne Rathe

In our second guest post on the NEA/National Science Foundation conference, Symbiotic Art and Science, Dr. Bevil Conway writes about the creative processes for artists and scientists. As a neuroscientist, Conway specializes in visual perception, especially as it relates to color. As an artist, his work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, is reproduced in a number of books, and is held in private and public collections.

I was asked by the NEA to put down a few thoughts to “address the question of how the creative process is the same or different in the arts and in the sciences.” The request was prompted by the fact that I am both an artist and a scientist. My artistic endeavors have included printmaking (etching, woodcut, drypoint), painting (watercolor, oil), and sculpture (glass and silk), while my primary scientific interests have centered on mechanisms of visual perception, primarily color. I have never considered my engagement in “science” as distinct from my activity as an artist. Although art and science differ in their modes of production, their expert communities, and often their quantifiable utility, both avenues of investigation have provided me with a mechanism to appreciate (and hopefully uncover!) the mysteries of perception. Both are fun.

In his closing remarks at the meeting, [author] Peter Turchi summarized the challenge posed by this assignment—Peter said (I’m paraphrasing from memory) that the diversity of creative processes amongst artists is perhaps as great as the number of artists themselves, and that an attempt to characterize stereotypes of artistic process will likely fail. (He was considering writers, but the same can be said of visual artists, and scientists for that matter.) So my perspective is surely an anecdote, an “N = 1” as scientists like to say (and dismiss). From what I’ve witnessed amongst those of my colleagues who also make art and practice original scientific research, it seems to me that the spark that motivates both pursuits is essentially the same: a desire to make, and satisfaction in having made, something original, whether a piece of art or an experiment. As [neurophysiologist] David Hubel pointed out to me when I summarized the conference to him: the sciences and the arts are more closely aligned with each other than either is to the humanities. The arts and sciences have as their goal the creation of something entirely original. The humanities, on the other hand, are essentially engaged in criticism, although the best criticism is also original.

How do I approach a scientific experiment or an art project? In both cases, the “process” appears to me to be similar. I struggle to quiet the internal mental critic. I play. I make accidents and observations. I work every day, obsessively, and often have a difficult time sleeping. I worry about craft, and enjoy getting a feel for the materials and how they react under different conditions. And sometimes while working in my studio or laboratory, something happens that strikes me as worth following up. In this sense, the process is much like that of evolution itself, which first requires a diversity of phenotypes from which natural selection picks winners. My PhD advisor, Margaret Livingstone, encouraged me to remember Pasteur’s famous words, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” So the central question morphs into: “When making art or doing science, on what basis is selection made? What constitutes an experimental result worth chasing, or an artistic intervention worth repeating?” These questions seem inaccessible to me, perhaps idiosyncratic, and maybe the domain of the critic and not the artist. As Mark Morris says when considering his process, “I’ll know it when I see it.”

In case you missed it, here’s our opening post in this series by dancer/choreographer Liz Lerman.

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Posted in Art and Science, General, Visual Arts | 2 Comments »

Symbiotic Art & Science

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

March 1, 2011
Washington, DC

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in The Matter of Origins by Jaclyn Borowski_3

The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange performing The Matter of Origins. Photo by Jaclyn Borowski

At the National Science Foundation building in Arlington, Virginia, an exciting conference has been taking place over the last two days on the intersection of life sciences and arts: Symbiotic Art and Science. Bringing together scientists and artists (and some who wear both hats), the conference looked at innovative collaborations that have taken place between the arts and sciences, and asked some important questions, like What motivated you to cross disciplines and how did you do it? Or, What do artists gain from working with scientists, and what do scientists gain from working with artists?

We have asked some of the participants to talk about their experiences in these types of collaborations, their experience with the conference, and their thoughts on some of these questions. We will run the guest blogs each week over the next month; to start us off is choreographer and dancer Liz Lerman, founding artistic director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. Lerman has had plenty of experience in art/science collaborations: her piece Ferocious Beauty: Genome explored genetic research through modern dance and her new piece, The Matter of Origins, looks at physics inspired by her visit to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Here’s what she had to say:

Introductions at the Symbiotic Art and Science meeting took an interesting turn as one person after another acknowledged their split personality or hybrid research tactics. I found myself remembering my own mantra as a young choreographer moving from a residency at Children’s Hospital in Washington, DC, to a rehearsal of the company, to teaching at a local university, and saying to myself, “I am not fragmented. It is just that the world is so compartmentalized that in order for me to be whole, I have to cross many borders.” I have continued that journey and now describe those borders as membranes. For example, we can respect the creative act of making distinctions knowing at the same time that there are real differences between art and science even as we seek and discover with delight their common properties.

This meeting—convened by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation—was conceived by Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, the president of Marlboro College and a longtime advocate for the power of art on its own terms and in relationship to contemporary issues, and by her longtime friend and colleague Chris Comer, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Montana who runs a summer program in Ireland called “Brain, Mind, and the Artistic Imagination.” Everyone seated around the table seems to be immersed in a variety of projects that bring together very curious forms of experimentation in which the arc of observation-research-testing-sharing-questioning cycles around and around.

Many of the participants have been at this for years. We could have taken just one of the projects put forward and spent a week coming to terms with its implications. For myself, listening to those morning introductions, I was moved by the passion and caring that seems to be motivating so much of the exploration. The artist Mel Chin, describing his work in the dirt of New Orleans, made me almost feel the air in the room fill with the same lead that is now in the bodies of so many young people living in certain parts of that city. When Nalini Nadkarni, a biologist from Evergreen State College described her compelling relationship to trees from an unconventional form of climbing to view the canopy I was completely intrigued. And then she went on to explain how she has measured the movement of a single twig and calculated how far that twig would have walked if given mobility and in that moment, I at least, felt myself in a new relationship to the forest. Speaking of forests, Fred Swanson from the U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University showed an image from what might be described as a “neutral laboratory” in the woods as part of his Long-Term Ecological Research network. Here he brings together scientists and artists to observe and then describe/express and share in their process of noticing. He says in a quiet voice that the whole enterprise might teach patience and hope.

I am looking forward to what day two brings.

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Posted in Art and Science, dance, Partnerships, Speeches and Events | 2 Comments »

More on Alt.Art-Sci…

Friday, September 24th, 2010

September 24, 2010
Washington, DC

by Adriene Jenik

songofthetreesWeb

“Los Altos Story Tree, California” by Wonderlane via Flickr

Organizers of the recent National Endowment for the Arts and National Science Foundation summit asked participants to identify in advance and then share with the group their BIG challenges. One challenge that surfaced early on is the lack of shared frameworks for understanding what it means to be critical of one?s practice. Biases embedded in the processes and methodologies of science encourage the perception of a lack of critical reflection by artists while a mirrored set of biases give the perception of a lack of critical reflection by scientists. From the perspective of those performing cultural research, the scientific research field does not acknowledge or accept responsibility for the potentially damaging or even destructive potential of their research, and is heavily invested in the much-touted benefits of scientific and technological progress. Meanwhile, artists (who historically lack externally articulated and standardized methodologies of assessment, evaluation, and claims testing) appear resistant to criticism.

Questions continued into the evening. How can we appropriately ?measure? artistic impact without reducing or diminishing the power of individual interpretation? Taking a recent installation at the venerable art and technology festival Ars Electronica as a case study, we discussed evaluative matrices that might ?easily? produce ?data? that could be used in part to assess an artwork?s impact. Logging time spent with the piece, counting the number of viewers, and valuing return visits at exponential rates, are obvious quantitative measures that could be employed. But reporting ethnographic observations and narrative stories of encounters, and considering other ?residues? that offer evidence of audience interest and transformation are also necessary to present the full picture of an artwork?s impact. Since whichever critical or evaluative frameworks we might offer ultimately reflect (and re-inscribe) what we value, can we create indices of the messy, the unknown, the ambiguous, and the accidental?

Artists in alt-art.sci culture cannot permanently elude the discussion of evaluation (just as our partner scientists cannot continue to ignore the larger context and implications of their research). As collaborators we have a responsibility to explain our practices, instincts, and analytics so they can be understood (and valued) within the research context. As educators, we need to improve our understanding of what ?Making as Thinking? means for our students. If we, as a culture, can acknowledge that what we don?t and can?t know is equal in importance to what we do and can know, we may be able to work together to interpret, appreciate, and learn from the songs of the trees.

Adriene Jenik is the Director of the School of Art at Arizona State University in Tempe. You can read the first post in this series by Roger Malina here.

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