Art-Science Collaboration: Blending the Boundaries of Practice (original) (raw)
Related papers
Doubling Down on Wicked Problems: Ocean ArtScience Collaborations for a Sustainable Future
Frontiers in Marine Science
The UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development recognizes the current ocean sustainability crisis and calls for a transformation of ocean science. Many of the key challenges recognized by the UN Decade are examples of wicked problems: intractable and messy situations with high stakeholder divergence. Addressing wicked ocean sustainability problems requires adaptable, iterative, and participatory approaches that can embrace multiple ways of knowing. It also requires a re-imagining of our relationship with the Ocean from extraction and resulting environmental degradation, towards the building of a sense of connection and stewardship. We propose ArtScience as a means to this end by highlighting how transdisciplinary collaborations can help create sustainable ocean futures. We reflect on a recent ArtScience event emerging from Ocean Networks Canada’s Artist-in-Residence programme. By situating ArtScience in a broader context of inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations, we...
Victoria Vesna: Inviting Meaningful Organic Art–Science Collaboration
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 2019
We asked Victoria Vesna for an interview upon investigating her recent collaborative project, Noise Aquarium, through which, together with an interdisciplinary group, she brings awareness to a general audience of underwater noise pollution in relation to the plankton and their plight of coexistence with microplastics in the ocean. The discussion that ensued resonated as to fruitful artistic process, contribution to science, and the organic nature by which many of her most meaningful collaborations evolve to produce art. & VICTORIA VESNA IS motivated through the pursuit of organic collaborations that enable her to explore interesting areas of science while injecting her artistic training as a lens to raise the awareness of that research to broad audiences. Her recent appreciation of plankton led to envisioning Noise Aquarium (Figures 1 and 2), a large interactive virtual display that projects 3-D scans of specimen obtained through unique scientific imaging techniques and immerses the audience in an "aquarium" of diverse planktons projected to appear as large as whales. Noise Aquarium attempts to elicit a visceral response to the vicious circle where there is fracking and all these things related to creating fossil fuels, and then we make plastic from it, use it once, throw it all away to the point where we are just basically killing ourselves-we are drowning in plastic. Through their presence alone, audience participants activate destructive underwater pollution noise such as fracking and sonar, demonstrating how we are implicated by inaction. When we asked how her study of plankton led to Noise Aquarium, Victoria told us: "About five, six years ago, Alfred Vendl, director of the Scientific Visualization lab at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna visited nanoscientist Jim Gimzewski's lab at the
Very Complex Matter: Collaborations in Art and Geobiology
Artnodes, 2017
Geobiologist Dawn Sumner, known for her research on early life in Antarctica, her contributions to the Mars Curiosity science team, and for co-founding KeckCAVES at the University of California Davis, has also spent the past decade working in collaboration with artists. This paper addresses the relevance of these art/science collaborations to her scientific practice through an analysis of four of her projects: Collapse (suddenly falling down) with Sideshow Physical Theater; Dream Vortex with Meredith Tromble; Life Extreme with Philip Alden Benn; and The Vortex with Donna Sternberg and Meredith Tromble. The experiences gained by Sumner and her collaborators show that there are many different ways in which artists and scientists can learn from each other. Echoing throughout the collaborations is the realisation that turning ideas into form yields a result that can stimulate the next cycle of creativity.
2021
To increase awareness of the current challenges facing the marine environment, the Future of Our Seas (FOOS) project brought together the expertise of scientists, public engagement experts and creatives to train and support a group of marine scientists in effective science communication and innovative public engagement. This case study aims to inspire scientists and artists to use the FOOS approach in training, activity design and development support (hereafter called the ‘FOOS programme’) to collaboratively deliver novel and creative engagement activities. The authors reflect on the experiences of the marine scientists: (1) attending the FOOS communication and engagement training; (2) creating and delivering public engagement activities; (3) understanding our audience; and (4) collaborating with artists. The authors also share what the artists and audiences learned from participating in the FOOS public engagement activities. These different perspectives provide new insights for the...
Frontiers in Marine Science, 2020
There is a disconnect between ambition and achievement of the UN Agenda 2030 and associated Sustainable Development Goals that is especially apparent when it comes to ocean and coastal health. While scientific knowledge is critical to confront and resolve contradictions that reproduce unsustainable practices at the coast and to spark global societal change toward sustainability, it is not enough in itself to catalyze large scale behavioral change. People learn, understand and generate knowledge in different ways according to their experiences, perspectives, and culture, amongst others, which shape responses and willingness to alter behavior. Historically, there has been a strong connection between art and science, both of which share a common goal to understand and describe the world around us as well as provide avenues for communication and enquiry. This connection provides a clear avenue for engaging multiple audiences at once, evoking emotion and intuition to trigger stronger motivations for change. There is an urgent need to rupture the engrained status quo of disciplinary divisions across academia and society to generate transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental challenges. This paper describes the evolution of an art-science collaboration (Catching a Wave) designed to galvanize change in the Anthropocene era by creating discourse drivers for transformations that are more centered on society rather than the more traditional science-policy-practice nexus.
Art-eco-science. Field collaborations.
Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, 2019
Art-eco-science practitioner Keith Armstrong is committed to a hybrid practice. He collaborates in the field with ecological scientists recording biodiversity, species loss and extinction and creates works that play a role in redesigning social relations to natural systems. Currently working closely with aerial robots (aka drones or UAVs), Armstrong wants to understand how ‘we’ might better use drones, away from societal preoccupations with surveillance, privacy, AI and remote warfare, and our apparent drive to create bleak ‘new natures’. In this conversation, Armstrong and sustainability scholar Tania Leimbach explore the potential of arts- science collaborations to radically transform attitudes, perceptions and modes of participation.
2018
For many decades, contrasting opinions regarding the value of collaboration between the arts and sciences have been voiced. Some commentators have argued that the fundamental differences between art and science makes interdisciplinary practice untenable, while others suggest that many potential benefits are achievable through dialogue and mutual work in areas of shared interest. Against this backdrop, this thesis examines the contention that climate change, as well as being the subject of scientific research, can also be examined through art, and that by working collaboratively across art and science, new understanding may be reached. The thesis documents a series of interdisciplinary projects that were established with scientists working in areas of climate change, geomorphology and palaeoanthropology, and critically examines the resultant strategies, practices and artistic outputs. The creative approaches that were employed included working with science teams in field contexts, (re-) interpreting acquired science imagery, and organising exhibitions and symposia. Each approach involved different modes of collaboration, and each raised key discussion points, including the use of science images and material within fine art and the structuring of the collaborative relationship. Findings from earlier interdisciplinary projects provided the conceptual, theoretical and practical framework for a concluding art and science collaboration with an international team of researchers, the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP), who are investigating the relationship between human evolution and climate change. In developing and exhibiting art that emerged from the HSPDP project within the gallery context, the curatorial aspects of hybridised displays of art and science images, objects and contextual documentation are examined. New approaches within the artscience and climate change discourse are identified, including the insights that can be gained by bringing divergent practices together to enable audiences to encounter larger narratives of humanities relationship with a changing climate.
Arts et sciences, 2020
During the residency The Calanques, a land of science and source of inspiration, visual artist Shanta Rao explored the world of jellyfish, whose increasingly frequent occurrence on the beaches of the Calanques National Park (Marseille region, southern France) raises the question of otherness, of the links between humans and other animal species. Based on a collaborative experiment with marine biology researchers Justine Gadreaud and Guillaume Marchessaux (Aix-Marseille University), the artist's research into the biological transformism specific to certain jellyfish has given rise to works at the crossroads of painting and sculpture, as well as photographic and video images that juxtapose the apparatuses of artistic and scientific research. Following a first exhibition at the end of the residency at the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur Regional Found for Contemporary Art in Marseille (2018), the initial project has continued to develop with the creation of new works and exhibitions, notably at the Edouard Manet institutional gallery (Gennevilliers/FR, 2019), the Joseph Tang gallery (Paris/FR, 2019), the Shimmer art space (Rotterdam/NL, 2019) and the Nest contemporary art center (The Hague/NL, 2020). RÉSUMÉ. Lors de la résidence Les Calanques, territoire de science et source d'inspiration, l'artiste plasticienne Shanta Rao a exploré l'univers des méduses dont la présence grandissante sur les plages du Parc national des Calanques (région de Marseille, sud de la France) repose la question de l'altérité, des liens entre l'humain et les autres espèces animales. Expérience collaborative avec les chercheurs en biologie marine Justine Gadreaud et Guillaume Marchessaux (Aix-Marseille Université), les recherches de l'artiste autour du transformisme biologique spécifique à certaines méduses ont donné lieu à des oeuvres à la croisée de la peinture et de la sculpture ainsi que des images photographiques et vidéographiques mettant en parallèle dispositifs de recherche plastique et scientifique. Suite à une première exposition de fin de résidence au Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain Provence-Alpes-Côted'Azur à Marseille (2018), le projet initial a continué de se déployer par la réalisation de nouvelles oeuvres et leur exposition notamment à la galerie institutionnelle Edouard Manet (Gennevilliers/FR, 2019), à la galerie Joseph Tang (Paris/FR, 2019), à l'espace d'art Shimmer (Rotterdam/NL, 2019) et au centre d'art contemporain Nest (La Haye/NL, 2020).
Art and the Senses for Ocean Conservation
This paper considers the role of art in ocean conservation. Drawing on the presentations and work of two artists featured in the One Ocean Hub Art and Emotions webinar hosted during the UN World Ocean Week, the paper focuses speci cally on the sensorial nature of art and of human beings and the role that art can play in advancing ocean conservation. The main argument offered is that ocean conservation plans and policies should consider the importance of humans to ocean conservation, the importance of human artistic endeavour to ocean activism and nally the importance of the sensory to human experience. Acknowledging and recognising the importance of human sensory experience in relation to the sea, can nuance existing discourses of ocean use and bene ts, revealing human priorities and potential obstacles to conservation. Third, by leveraging human sensory expression through art, ocean conservation advocates may be able to re ne and produce more effective communication for ocean conservation. Finally, recognising the sensory (and the artistic) is key to reorienting humanity as it enters a post-anthropocentric age, marked by dramatic ecological change.