Breaking Down the Barrier Between Art and Science

What is art and what is science? Art is a creative pursuit while science is an analytical one, you might say. Of course, these definitions preclude the idea that artistry involves analysis and that science involves any creative action. That doesn't seem quite accurate.

Perhaps today the differences between these practices are less important than their similarities. Interdisciplinary study has long been a central tenet of liberal arts institutions, and indeed, "has become a recognized part of the intellectual commons, a permanent entry in the academic lexicon (Rhoten, et al.)." But we still see art classes and science classes; artists are still not seen as scientists themselves or vice versa.

Again, this begs the question: what defines art and what defines science? Since 1988 Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. has been promoting projects that cannot very easily be assigned to either category. Their "Fishes Feed Us" campaign is a "public awareness project that draws attention to the critical ill health of our planet's oceans" using ocean creature animations created by children (asci.org). "Pattern Finding" is an exhibition of digital artwork that seeks to explore the mind and the patterns of the universe. Neither of these projects can be defined as anything other than a mixture of disciplines, or art-science.

Princeton University is on the art-science blending bandwagon as well, featuring on their website an "Art of Science" gallery which displays the beautiful artistry found in the natural world. Photographs - whether using the natural light spectrum or computerized representation - of microorganisms swimming through water, the process of a neutron collider and the close-up translucence of an insect thorax are a few examples. These images express artistically what scientific study seeks to convey: truths about the world in which we live.

Dr. David Edwards of Harvard University has done away with the hyphen altogether in his book Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation. In it this biomedical engineer describes a process of "idea translation" between artists and scientists in which progress comes from a blending of creative approaches. He founded an institution called Le Laboratoire in Paris where artists and scientists work side by side in experimentation. While Edwards acknowledges that the place looks a lot more like an art gallery than a traditional lab, he insists that the goals are the same. Hypothesis, experimentation, result or no result. Examples include scientific processes applied to variations on music and visual representations of stem cell division, both seeking to bring new understanding in a distinctly "artscientific" way.

Recognizing that interdisciplinary study is the wave of the future, Edwards' ArtScience Labs offers the ArtScience Prize, "a catalyst for student learning through passionate pursuit of innovative art and design ideas at the cutting edge of science (artscienceprize.org)." These programs - currently expanded from Paris to include Boston and Oklahoma City - offer high school students the chance to essentially form think tanks, generating ideas to promote innovation in the burgeoning artscience community. It is not clear what will come of this effort, but the effects of art and science on society never are. What we can conclude is that young people are getting the opportunity to delve into innovation right alongside established artists and scientists, expanding this idea of collaboration even further. People everywhere, whether young or old, whether gifted dreamers or analysts, are applying creativity toward expanding our understanding of the world in which we live. And that is an exciting prospect.

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See what's new in the arts at GettingDiscovered.net!

Sources:

http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/resources/upload/2006ssrcwhitepaper.pdf

http://asci.org

http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/2008/03/david_edwards_artscience_reviewed.html

http://artscienceprize.org