QUESTION
This joint session covered two issues: Christa Erickson's "What are the most productive roles of science and technology in the art? Impetus, means, content, context, or aesthetic reference? Which role(s) make for the most interesting art or the most interesting collaborative projects? Why?" and Carl Weinman's "What is the tension between art and science in your project? Tension is a force which can be used to build new structures which are inherently different that the two anchoring disciplines." Christa suggested we separate the discussion into the phases of projects: development, production, and the work and its reception. Carl Weiman's comments are marked in this color.

REPORT

DEVELOPMENT

Q: As artists, how do we engage engineers/scientists in the creative process?
A: Learn something about them/their field first.
A: Be able to talk their language enough to start a conversation.
A: Or, find a different engineer...

In first contact, artists looking for collaboration regard the scientist as a potential service, e.g. device maker, and a bit intimidating because of the "advanced" and highly technical nature of his/her discipline. This causes several destructive tensions: miscommunication, failure to motivate, frustration at lack of cooperation. The scientist may feel used, or the concept may not appear worthy. These conflicts can be overcome by opening up free-form communication before specific work definition, educating the artist in the tools of the scientist, and the scientist in the concept of the artist. Scientists and artists share an intensity in the traits of intelligence and creativity. By communicating in ideas rather than regarding the collaboration as a chore in translating between two languages, rapport can be established.

Q: How do you convince a scientist of the validity of a drawing or design based on your inner vision?
A: Ask for input.
A: Get your art on the cover of "Nature."
A: Find people whose motivations mesh with yours.

Q: As artists, how do we use science/technology?

A: As metaphor.
A: Visual referent.
A: Social motivation.
A: Experimentation.
A: Potential means or tool.
A: As a medium.
A: As a legitimizer to sponsors.

Q: What is the best role for the scientist when collaborating with     artists?
A: Suggesting/brainstorming/feedback loops...Talk is the key tool.
A: Productive disagreement.
A: Mutual appreciation, and the interplay between dissonance and
   resonance. Ongoing feedback process is an engine of creativity.
Q: Why might scientists seek out artists?

Rarely does a scientist seek out an artist for concept development or high-level ideation. This is unfortunate. Perhaps ASCI could offer brainstorm sessions with scientists in the New York City area.

A: Visual output, appearance.
A: End product.
A: As catalysts; provoking scientists.
A: To reframe, recontextualize.
Q: Are artists seeking science/technology or scientists/technologists for possible funding opportunities? What     implications does this have?
A: Yes. The art world has little funding for work.
A: Sometimes the art becomes an illustration for the science, which isn't very interesting as art, but helpful to the     science and not uninteresting as education.
A: Sometimes this means interesting experiments in process and form for the art/artist.

The National Science Foundation and the Sloane Foundation are eager to fund interdisciplinary projects which disseminate science education to non-scientists. The NSF funded the Robotic Renaissance Project at Cooper Union under Artist Adrianne Wortzel.

PRODUCTION

Q: What are the uses of science and technology in the production of a work?

Here science and technology are viewed as a service. This is not as rich as collaboration, but nevertheless commonplace and useful. Many artists now work exclusively in technological media.

A: Tool.
A: Technique.
A: Research material.

Q: Should the artist do the production or hire/coax the scientist/technologist into it?

Scientists are often frantically busy working the grant treadmill and resistant to get involved in extra work, especially if that work is viewed as a "lark". The potential for publication and fame are useful motivators here. Exchange of ideas is most important.

A: Learn how to do the production if they can. Then do it.
A: Learn enough to make informed decisions in a collaboration with the expert who knows how to do it better.
Q: Is is a problem to have the scientist/technologist just do it?
A: Yes, the process can get too segmented and not come together.
A: Yes, the artist looses the vision of the work.
A: Often, unless you have a good relationship or the knowledge to direct it closely.
A: Not always, esp. in design/architecture projects, sometimes it is best to have a team where every person brings their own expertise.

FINAL WORK & RECEPTION

Q: Is it art if all it does is illustrate science?
A: Not very interesting art.
A: Won't really be shown in an art context, but might be in other interesting ones.
A: Helping the scientist that way might get them interested in your project...

In this case, the role of artist and scientist are reversed from the first question. The scientist is using the artist as an illustrator. In both cases, when one party simply uses the other as a service, the result is not collaboration but exploitation, and the results show it.

Q: Is it interesting if it just aestheticises the science?
A: Maybe, but only if it manages to transform the pretty science images somehow.

For example, fractal images, presented as numbers are boring. When artistically enhanced with false color and selective clipping and framing, they are stunningly beautiful. Their beauty is valuable to scientists because they can immediately discern patterns with their aesthetic senses of color and symmetry, which reveal complex structure of scientific values. The sonification of DNA performs a similar role. But for the non-scientist this is also worthwhile both as an artistic experience and an education. It provides a glimpse into the complexity and beauty of the universe in which we are embedded as well as the "rush" of aesthetic pleasure.

Q: What do art and science do differently? Similarly?
A: Same - reveal a truth, make ideas accessible.
A: Same - achieve understanding.
A: Different - Art poses questions; science poses them but tries to answer them.
A: Different - Art looks at culture; science at more specific systems.
A: Different - Art is first person; science is (tries to be...) third person .

While both fields seek to reveal deep truths about the universe, the (audience) experience of art is deliberately personal. The impact and impression esperienced by the viewer/audience is the goal of art. Science, on the other hand, tries to reveal truths that are "objective" in the sense that they deliberately liberate the expression of these truths from subjective experience. The development of science is inherently tied to a community of interlinking concepts transcendent over the individual contributers, for example, the laws of physics. Nevertheless our culture reveres the individual creativity of great thinkers such as Einstein as much as the creativity of great artists.

Q: What makes for the best art that uses/collaborates with
   science/technology or scientists/technologists?
A: The collaboration made something neither could do alone possible.

When teaming, the end product is not only something neither party could do alone, it often turns out to be rather different and more interesting than the original conception of the team members. The continuous feedback between the two parties constitutes a process which drives the project. Here, the tension is productive, pulling a cable across a river that the pylons cannot cross by themselves. The first-person experience of art is now anchored in a technological framework, and the science is ennobled in a concept piece whic transcends mere apparatus.

A: Science or technology acts as a social landscape for the work.
A: The art makes a distinct transformation or experience out of something from the science or with the tools.
Artists need not be intimidated by scientists. Art is prophecy, and science is fullfillment of prophecy. Leonard Shlain in his brilliant book "Art and Physics" maintains that the artist perceives nascent concepts long before they are systematized by science. Perspective drawing technique prophesied and actually stimulated the development of Cartesian and non-Euclidean geometry, upon which all our physics is built. The "Refuse's" in Paris rebelled against the rigid physics of the establishment, presaging relativity. Our new web technologies have accellerated this process of feedback between art and science, and many practitioners in this session regard themselves as inseparably in both camps.

Reported by Trilby Schreiber

Christa Erickson is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who investigates the politics, pleasures, and pains of spaces mediated by electronic technologies. She weaves together video, tactile materials, physical interface devices, programming, and the Internet in installations. She is currently developing a body-memory piece on the Human Genome Project titled Dis-ease. Her individual and collaborative works have been presented widely, including galleries across the U.S., international media arts festivals, the Walker Art Center, the California Museum of Photography, and the Banff Center for the Arts. She is Assistant Professor of Art at SUNY Stony Brook where she teaches electronic media.

christa.art.sunysb.edu