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A&S CONTEXT |
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Jill Scott. Artists-in-Labs. Processes of Inquiry
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Cited by ARTISTS-IN-LABS. PROCESS OF INQUIRY, Jill Scott
Many artists are searching for fruitful practical collaborations with scientists and ways of bringing their findings into the public realm for debate. Here, I wish to help artists in this search by addressing some transdisciplinary discourses, which may also 'open up' scientists to more creative interpretations. My premise is that more beneficial art and science collaborations might depend on these discourses, which are based in education, innovation, ethics and social public engagement. I will use specific examples from the artists-in-labs research initiatives in the Life Sciences, physics and engineering/computing and other contexts to illustrate this premise. The first discourse I wish to address is about know-how transfer and its relation to language, immersion and creativity. The second will explore ethics in relation to artistic interpretations of reality and the responsibilities of producing scientifically robust knowledge for the general public. The final discourse will investigate innovation and its social impact, including converging technologies, information and the products of progress. Obviously each of these topics is large enough for a book of its own; consequently, this essay should be read as a possible set of guidelines to 'open up' these debates. If any science cafe, scientist or exhibition curator would like to re-appropriate them for further discussions they are most welcome. As an artist, educator and a context provider I sincerely hope that these issues might be publicly debated in relation to transdisciplinary research. In this light these discourses are not so obvious or commonplace; instead they trace some fundamental problems in the collaborative practice of art and science. The disciplines of artists and scientists are very different. Nevertheless, some sharing of ideologies could become a solid base for valuable innovation, production, distribution and socio-cultural consumption potentials. Artists are beginning to understand scientific methodologies and scientists are beginning to see the value of aesthetics and communication skills by artists. Unfortunately, the exchanges of these skills are often hindered by prevailing controlled and guarded specialist attitudes of educational institutions. |
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am a research professor in the Institute, Cultural Studies in Art, Media and Design at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Zurich. Cultural studies are no longer confined to the theories of post-colonial discourse or gender studies. The study has expanded to include an analysis of cross-cultural ethnographical studies and the influences and traces of transdisciplinary theory and practice. The theoretical side of transdisciplinary research has exciting and novel potentials, but the practical side of this juncture is much harder for educators to implement. In the case of art and science education, transdisciplinary practice requires mixed laboratories with both art and science tools. Imagine a lab with professional tools for tissue engineering, video editing, design prototyping and nanotechnology for example. Apart from the obvious financial problems of constructing such a mixed lab, where transdisciplinary practices can be taught, educators themselves would have to be open to the prospects and controversies of transdisciplinary team-teaching. SymbioticA, at the University of Western Australia, has proved that it might be more appropriate to offer a lab, which combines only two specific disciplines like biotechnology and sculpture. (See SymboticA at http://www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/ Art and Science Collaborative Research Laboratory.) Mixed disciplines our artists-in-labs project operated along similar lines. Dr. Ulrich Claessen from the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology Basel claimed that the artist's role inside science labs was to provide a 'soft' and 'social communication' factor for their over-specialized scientific teams. In the past, many artists have been employed or commissioned to make works for science parks, like the 'Explorato-rium' in San Francisco, USA or 'Technorama' in Winterthur, Switzerland. Here, artists who specialize in natural phenomena, like Ned Kahn,(see Ned Kahn's work under http://nedkahn.com ) work alongside science teams who wish to illustrate the basic principals of disciplines like physics or biology with the hope of enhancing the general public's comprehension and understanding of science. One could say that they help scientists to 'validate' their knowledge, but not to 'situate' it. Usually, these artists have been hired into such teams because of their learnt skills in communication and their own past history of illustrating or interpreting science. At the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland a similar mini science park exists, called the PSI Forum. One of the artists-in-lab recipients, Dominik Bas-tianello, worked with the technicians to make an interactive video sculpture that served as a unique platform to illustrate aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity. While Bastianello's illustration allows the public to understand a difficult scientific principal, other artists like Nigel Helyer tried to actually integrate aspects of physics into a public sculpture, which also educates the art audience. Both approaches worked by making the invisible, visible but they involved 'situated knowledge transfer' between the technicians and the art-'St in-situ. If knowledge is 'situated' it must include the surrounding cultural and contextual field as well as take the audience into consideration. The term 'situated know-how transfer' automatically implies the willingness to cede information from one person to another without any level of snobbery (Unfortunately, we also came across some levels of jealousy about the funding of artists who are commissioned for art and science projects, especially with public funds normally designated for scientific research). In relation to art and science collaboration, further discussions about this type of information transfer are necessary. These might focus on the topics of language and metaphor, contextual immersion and relational creativity. 1.1 Language and Metaphor Firstly, within the transfer of knowledge between artists and scientists, artists are asking if more sensitive and appropriate metaphors could be found to understand scientific research. Secondly, they are discussing how to deal with the learning curve of their own scientific knowledge. The aim of both these quests is to communicate more deeply with scientists. For example, in relation to metaphors, understanding the terminology in physics is very important. When PSI scientists explai |
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ned how their cosmic-ray detector could detect and measure muon particles (Most cosmic rays are protons. When these primary cosmic rays hit the earth's atmosphere at around 30,000m above the surface, the impacts cause nuclear reactions, which produce pions. These pions decay into muons and muon neutrinos which rain down upon the surface of the earth. Actually, about 200 rain down on each square meter of earth every second, www.cosmicrays.org), they used the metaphor of a dinner plate to describe how 60 muons cover its surface every second. Eating is an every day activity and in this case one can imagine that muons are constantly landing on one's food. The artist Nigel Helyer took the same phenomena and applied it to a sound composition, where the particles trigger sound samples from a sound library with various pre-recorded samples from the PSI environment. Scientists are trained in finding everyday metaphors in order to explain their research, but artists are trained in finding poetic metaphors, which they believe have more public impact. Instead of using metaphors based in generalizations and language, the contemporary poetic metaphor is more based on thought or on conceptual associations. As Lakoff suggests(see Lakoff, C. (1993). The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. www.ac.wwu.edu/%7Emarket/semiotic/lkof_met.html), artists and writers learn that there are many conceptual types of poetic metaphors. There are structural metaphors related to the concept of dimension, whose dimensional associations may change with differing cultures, another type is about orientation and these occur when structures are experienced in terms of spatial orientation. A third might be ontologi-cal metaphors, which occur when our experiences are structured in terms of abstract phenomena or in terms of concrete textures, forces, and objects. It would be interesting to see WARM/SOFT/ART Mutable Ill-defined Not comprehensible Flaccid or spongy Imprecise Easy COLD/HARD/SCIENCE Reliable Well-defined Comprehensible Sharp Precise Difficult what would happen if scientists were to start to explore more poetic metaphors. Would a more common transdisciplinary language evolve? I would like to suggest that our current mediated and literate public might be interested to replace the older language stereotypes, based on archetypical metaphors for more conceptual poetic metaphors. In science education, one of these main older language stereotypes is the metaphor of 'soft' and 'hard'. As Swiss psychologist Burton Melnick (Melnick, B. Cold Hard World \ Warm Soft Mommy: Gender and Metaphors of Hardness, Softness, Coldness, and Warmth, www.clas.ufl. edu/ipsa/journal/1999_melnick01.shtm) recently wrote about gender sensitive metaphors, one of the most problematic categories of science is the dividing concept of the sciences as either 'hard' or 'soft'. These label physics, computer science and mathematics as 'hard' sciences, and psychology, sociology and the arts as 'soft' or human sciences. As can be seen from the diagram above, the division has problematic connotations. Melnick concludes that it is extremely difficult to dissolve these stereotypes but it is brave to try. In the artists-in-labs project Dr. Ulrich Claessen from the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnolgy CSEM often commented that the artist Margaret Tan had amazing organisational skills combined with reliability and precision. Many scientists think that the humanities are full of soft or wobbly or airy attitudes. Old metaphors can cause conservative judgements and problematic shifts in respect, an issue that needs to be taken into account in relation to the future of art/sci collaboration. Rich Gold ex-mediator of the artist in residence program at Xerox Park, USA said: "Engineering, science, art and design are different, the problem is to create a language to speak to each other with respect"( Rich Gold's comments can be found in Harrris, G. (1999). Art and Innovation: The Xerox Pare Artists-in-Residence Program Leonardo Books, MIT Press). Cold concluded that the problem of collaboration lay not in the fact that these disciplines were different, but that there was a basic lack of respect for each other's accumulated knowledge and the associated means of expressing it. While, the mantle of science often seems |
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to confer an unquestioned intellectual and moral superiority upon those who assume it, I also wonder about the hierarchy that endows some artists with the moral and intellectual hauteur to look down on other disciplines. The English scientist Lewis Wolpert states, art cannot be taken seriously because it is "not constrained by reality". He also suggests that to try to bring the arts and sciences together is basically just "social snobbery as scientists are still envious of the status of the arts and the humanities" (Wolpert, L. Strange Bedfellows, www.lablit.com/article/39 ).Therefore, competition is another factor to consider in this lack of respect, a factor which can also happen within one discipline. For example, in the Planetarium we had some difficulties in this regard. However, the situation between art and science will not improve if collaborators are unprepared to learn about each other's processes and knowledge. Particularly, more difficulties will arise if artists refuse to take on the responsibility of acquiring more robust scientific knowledge before commenting on or attempting to collaborate with scientists. Certainly popular science can serve as an initial educational interface for artists to understand scientific concepts, but the reading of science textbooks and glossaries or the attending of lectures, seem to be necessary for a higher level of communication. For example, at the Artificial Intelligence laboratory, some communication problems occurred because the artist did not share the same definitions as the Artificial Intelligence scientists. Terms like 'embodied' or 'morphology' were often misappropriated by the artists, but if artists learnt more about Artificial Intelligence terms, the communication level definitely improved. During her artists-in-labs residency, Adrianne Wortzel attended the postdoc research updates, related lectures, debates and collaborative work presentations at the Artificial Intelligence lab and developed much more appropriate evolutionary metaphors, which featured the Artificial Intelligence lab's robots and embedded the scientific research of the lab with a deeper meaning. In most cases, after several months of the artists-in-labs residencies, the artists' vocabulary had changed and grown considerably, but more preparation would have certainly helped. However, the learning curve of the artist, was accelerated by the daily immersion in the lab context with its peers and associated discourses. 1.2 Contextual Immersion Contextual immersion is revered in both art and in science as one of the most valuable ways to transfer knowledge. In social science, one can find interesting discourses in this regard. According to Sandra Caravita, the lab context is so fundamental for learning and for the exchange of information that education is problematic without it (Caravita,5., Hallden 0. (1995). Reframing the Problem of Conceptual Change, Learning and Instruction, 4. p.89; Caravita, S.(1995). Costruzione collaborative di prodotti e tecnologie della comunicazione, TD7. p.6). She also suggests that a scientist must actively build knowledge through the personal interpretation of his/her experience, but must share this experience not only with peers but also with 'outsiders'. What would be the value of the artist being this 'outsider'? In their reports many of the lab directors say that the artists were important objective outsiders and social catalysts for the scientists because they enjoyed hearing about their work. If the artist is lucky enough to accompany a scientific researcher on a specific experiment, then perhaps the operative involvement, the exploring of ideas and reality, and placing of the hypotheses into practice could be affected by the artist's feedback. I call this concept the 'artist-as-researcher' and it is is in accordance with Caravita's idea that knowledge building "receives promotion from the cultural environment and the social interactions that accompany the learner's explorations". Watching people work, also provides an essential insight into the life and mind of scientific inquiry. Other artists at the Centre for Microscopy ZMB were given a 'hands-on' education on tools like the Scanning Electron Microscope. As the artist N.S. Harsha elaborates in his report, mimicking others was an essential part of his learning process. According to the English psychologist Susan Blackmore, mimetic action |
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s are causal and often unintentionally adopted (Blackmore, S. (2000). The Meme Machine. Oxford University Press, p.52). However, besides being an ability, which distinguishes human from animals, learning by imitation is actually quite a complex scenario, one has to make the decision to imitate a process, do what counts as the same or similar, make a complex transformation from one view to another, and finally match bodily actions. In 2005, I was a participant in an intensive biotech beginner's workshop in London run by SymboticA. I found Life Science education to be very focused on the mimicry of proven processes and procedures, but interactions and implications in a given field of related research are important as well. Certainly deeper immersion in a particular scientific research project and its related cultural context was a creative and inspiring experience for Axel Vogelsang. Immersion in the lab context can become a good starting point for new educational approaches to transdisciplinary practice. However, do scientists want to learn anything about creativity from artists? 1.3 Relational Creativity Currently the concept of creativity is a very controversial and hotly debated topic in some scientific circles. But I cannot think of many university science courses with similar levels of creative thinking and communication skills than one can find in art and design schools. Could there also be a scientists-in-art residency program? Art training begins with a combination of abstract or controversial thematic topics and basic skill assignments in an attempt to inspire creative thinking. Many scientists question if creative training should enter into the process of applied scientific research and often suggest that artists should wait until the research results can be published and/or applied before any design is commissioned. The engineers at CSEM told us that designers mostly enter the picture after their production was completed and ready for the public. However, there are a growing variety of responses about this question, depending on the individual project and the type of scientific research involved. While creativity is widely discussed in neuroscience it is hardly discussed in physics, mathematics, computing and biotechnology labs. Certainly, new creative approaches are also sorely needed to entice women to become more interested in these particular areas of science education. Last year our artists-in-labs team conducted a gender survey with Arts Catalyst in London and The Art and Genomics Centre in Amsterdam(Arts Catalyst in London- www.artscatalyst.org/index.html and The Art and Genomics Centre.Amsterdam, www.artsgenomics.org ). Differing attitudes towards creativity seem to be the cause of an enormous gender imbalance in many European countries in these particular science departments. As statistics prove, women are under represented in science (For an extensive survey about the stasticts of representation- see the EU report by The Helsinki Group on Women and Science. http://www.cordis, lu/improving/women/helsinki.htm ). In reference to the 'relation between creativity and science' discourse on a theoretical level, the social scientists in the US are leaders in this field. For example, in Evelyn Fox Keller's book 'The Century of the Gene', she proclaimed that the few women who are engaged in genetic research always provide a much "more creative sociai approach" (Fox Keller,E. (2000). The Century of the Gene, Harvard University Press). The science question in feminism has also been raised very thoroughly by Sandra Harding. Harding clearly states: "Perhaps we should turn to our novelists and our artists for a better grasp of what we need, because they are professionally less conditioned than we (scientists) to respond point by point to a cultures defences of ways of being in the world." (Harding, S. (1986). The Science question in Feminism. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press) Donna J. Haraway claims that artists who acquire solid information about science bring very sensitive issues to the public for scrutiny (Haraway, D. J. (1996). Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan(c)_Meets_OncomouseTM. New York: Routledg ). Currently we are in the process of forming a Relational European Art and Science Network (The first meting of the network took place in Jan 2006 in Cassis, France.), so that we can explore solutions to the issue |
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of shared creativity, by training more artists in science. Perhaps, we can also harness the potentials of transdisciplinary practice to involve women in a more creative approach to science. If for example, mature women artists were trained in scientific fields, could they produce mediated art and design works which emphasise the creative potentials of scientific inquiry? These works could also be distributed to secondary schools, where any alternative role models are sorely lacking. Women, who abound in the arts, may bring an interesting controversy with them, one that cognitive scientists are already questioning: Is creativity only relational or does it grow with transdisciplinary influence? Once Jacob Bronowski suggested that the act of discovery in both art and science were similar. The "discoveries of science, the works of art, are explorations -more, are explosions of a hidden likeness. The discoverer or the artist presents in them two aspects of nature and fuses them into one. This is the act of creation, in which an original act is born, and it is the same act in original science and original art" (Bronowski, J. (1965).Science and Human Values. Harper and Row, New-York,1958.www.drbronowski.com).Both similar and different attitudes towards creativity need further discussion. The above discourses on situated knowledge, language and metaphor, contextual immersion and relational creativity constitute a starting point for further dialogue between art and science; one that reinforces the need for more practical experiments and a re-thinking about transdisciplinary education. If science educators are looking for more sensitive and poetic metaphors and communication design skills, then art can help. For contemporary artists 'reel' information is not taboo and they particularly like more socially conscious scientists. Most of the directors of our artists-in-labs group told me they had made friends with other contemporary artists in the past whose or\q\na\ approaches had impressed them. 2. Ethics and Artistic Interpretation for the Public The day-to-day grind of working in a shared art and science laboratory may not only help to improve conversation about relational creativity, it may also tend to include the search for a wider discourse about ethics. Currently in the Institute for Ceobotanics at the ETH Zurich, they cultivate test fields for Genetically Modified Organisms and at the same time they conduct large international risk assessments of such activities, especially in developing countries. The artist Thomas Isler was indeed surprised to find that so many conflicting viewpoints could simultaneously exist inside one field of research. Unfortunately, the general public is often presented with only black and white arguments about CMOs. In another lab, the Centre for Microscopy ZMB in Basel, teams of pharmaceutical researchers use the lab for many different research topics such as the study of surgically manipulated fruit flies for behavioural research or the research on cellular transplant potentials for cardiovascular diseases. Artists in such environments are often interested in the challenge to bring such controversial research to the public. This is why it is really important for them to understand the debate thoroughly even though they might have quite different approaches than the scientists to the task at hand. These approaches include: -artists who wish to explore how scientists work and how they construct their international and political debates (Thomas Isler, Shirley Soh) -artists who see themselves as informed activists and wish to help scientists conduct their critical enquiries and to shift public decision-making (Brandon Ballengee. www.greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/art- ist_id-19.html)
-artists who claim that the actual wet and alive materials from the biotech labs could be used as a raw art material for sculpture (Orien Catts www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au/research/pig.html) or who actually crossbreed animals as a genetic comment with their associated shock value (Kac. E. Telepresence and Bio Art — Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots,. 2005. University of Michigan Press). In all of these approaches, poetic metaphors are used to convey confl |
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icts, interpretations and research results to a wider general public, or alternatively, to an already informed or ethically literate art audience. Often, the wider public realm requires a simplification of the artwork and a set of activist strategies. Scientists also have a problem modifyinging complex research for the public, however, the discussion point I wish to raise here is not if artists or scientists should be activists, but rather if and when they choose to combine forces, could they find new activist strategies which can cause a public outcry and in turn might effect the decisions of politicians? Considering the terrible state of our planet's environmental future, I would like to suggest that brainstorming sessions about these strategies could help. 2.1 Shared Bio-Ethics Formal debates about holism and the future of environmental and biotechnological research might help transdis-ciplinary collaborations to increase. Some of these debates have been organized by Science Cafes in Scandinavia, Paris and the USA (Science Cafes or Cafe Scientifique. www.cafescientifique.org), and also by the Welcome Trust in London (Welcome Trust see http://psci-com.ac.uk:80/events/public.html), whose main focus is medicine and art. These events share the proof that the public not only wishes to be engaged in controversies, but that new ways to explain scientific research are sorely needed. If more artists were interested in these debates, then the audio-visual interpretation of ethically dubious science could also be further discussed in public. The Welcome Trust and its related links (http://psci-com.ac.uk:80/events/public.html ) claim that such events can help science become more accountable for its research initiatives. I would suggest that more artists attend these events, instead of confining themselves to art and science events prepared for them by art related organizations. Many people think that ethical discussions are difficult and they probably always will, but artists who attend hearings about scientific conflict will also raise their knowledge about the public understanding of science. This factor would assure them a larger role to play and claim them a unique voice. On the main www-site for the Earth Charter (www.earthcharter.org ), one can find a famous quote by Aldo Leopold from 1949. "All ethics rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts." By this he means that each individual voice counts as part of a potential strategy to present a more holistic viewpoint to the general public. In this light I would consider art as a main player to transfer science to the public. Firstly, artists pride themselves on their freedom of speech and they are not frightened to say what they think. Secondly, they are concerned with artistry. As artists-in-labs recipient Shirley Soh says, in relation to the interpretation of scientific ethics, "the artistry in art comes not only in deciding what to say but also in how to say it. I am always searching for the 'one' image, which might have the power to make an ethical comment really clear." These skills of finding unique visual metaphors for the public are learnt by trial and error with feedback from art educators and audiences. Thirdly, the corridor of communication from science to the public about ethics is often stifled by conformity or middle of the road pressure from science peers. One can find 'critical resistance from within' in many environmental science labs, but the pressure to conform to the stoic methodologies of science often requires these resisters to dampen their radicalism. According to Angelika Hilbeck from the Institute for Ceobo-tanics at the ETH Zurich, scientists must always be seen as standing in the middle of an informed debate. Fourthly, as Isabel Rohner discovered, some scientists at the ZMB in Basel thought that objective discovery in relation to peer pressure was a more important publicly visible factor to consider, rather than ethics. These four points are important factors to consider in relation to ethics and the public realm. Naturally from the scientists' perspective it is problematic to determine what the "interests" of a living thing should be. Should they be required to see themselves as trustees or guardians for all of the many endangered species or for the future of the planet's ecosystem? Considering the above comments, acti |
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vists strategies might focus on the ability of western cultures to live more humbly, rather than consume such a large percentage of the worlds resources. While 'nature' has a great history in art, the Life Sciences are searching for the delicate margins necessary for sustainability. For eco-activist artists like Brandon Ballengee, Shirley Soh and Tiffany Holmes the quest for sustainable systems are issues that they share with many biologists. Ballengee believes in assisting local communities in a move towards sustainable developments, while Holmes looks for ways to raise public awareness and help manage local resources. If there were more practical and provoking contributions to the ethical debate by artists (particularly without the interference of religious morals), then some new strategies might be found. These contributions might encourage more transdisciplinary collaboration with scientists. As artists like Thomas Isler, Tiffany Holmes and Brandon Ballengee have discovered, the most beneficial way to start working with scientists is to participate in their field trips and help collect empirical evidence for environmental science. Not only do the artists learn a great deal about data analysis, but perhaps at those late night fireside talks, scientists feel freer to give their true opinions, outside the walls of their institutions. This is one of the reasons why Dr. Loyd Anderson, director of science at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and Art (NESTA) (NESTA, Science, National Endowment for Science, Technology and Art: www.nesta.org.uk) in the UK, currently recommends funding for collaborative thematic spaces or field trips and thematic expeditions when artists and scientists can spend time together. Using the term 'agora' to mean a substantial creation of time and space in which ethical discussions can take place and ideas can flow, NESTA hopes to create transparent new approaches to ethical issues. Using an interesting ecological metaphor, he likens the creation of these contextual spaces to the creation of 'green corridors' in biology. In biology, these corridors are not isolated biotopes, but holistic fields and communities, which can promote diversity exchange. However, the artists one should invite for such a journey should be carefully chosen, with some prior background in the Life Sciences. In another project funded by Greenpeace, entitled Cape Farewell, David Buckland (Cape Farewell, http://www.capefarewell.com) sailed to Antarctica with a group of scientists, artists, journalists, musicians, TV camerapersons and high school teachers. Inspired by a book entitled "The Future of Ice" by Cretel Ehrlich (Ehrlich, G, (2004).The Future of Ice-A Journey into Cold. Pantheon ),the aim was to make creative works about global warming alongside the collection of empirical measurements about the effects of global warming on the ice. Although it is a great strategy to visit a place where the effects of climate changes are obvious, unfortunately the group of artists and writers who accompanied the scientists tended to romanticize ice as a beautiful sculptural material instead of constructing artworks, which engage the public in the actual ethical debate at hand. Therefore, the issue of artists being properly pre-exposed to the role of scientific research and resultant proofs is an important aspect to consider for the future of transdisciplinary collaborations. As the artists in the ZMB, Centre for Microscopy, N.S. Harsha and Isabel Rohner discovered during their artists-in-labs residencies, the lab context is also an 'agora' because artists are not only there to learn about the ethical issues at hand but about the importance of data analysis. By discussing these corridors of environmental exchange, the hope is that an artist could also produce an artwork with more scientifically robust knowledge, one that also takes into account the intelligence of the audience. 2.2 Scientifically Robust Knowledge for the Public How accurate does an artwork have to be about scientific content? When the directors of the science labs in our project thought that artists were interested in shock value as an ethical tactic, they equated this tactic to a tabloid news style, which damages the image of scientific research. Instead, they preferred artists with more considered goals who were excited about the specific research being undertaken in the lab itself. |
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They also preferred artists who had some prior experience with bringing results to the public (See page 53 for jury guidelines in this book). They asked me if I thought that the artists would make careful notes about what questions scientists themselves were asking? After some months in the labs, the artists experienced how science research programs are supported and how theoretical disputes are resolved among peer groups. They became educated in specific goals of research and learnt how to operate in the labs. This allowed them to legitimately comment on the value of a given science experiment in an accurate fashion. There are other artist-in-resident programs which do not allow the artist to work alongside the scientists inside the labs. Director Dianne Bowles from the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) (CNAP. www.cnap.org.uk/http://bid.berkeley.edu/bidclass/radings/ben-jamin.html) at the University of York recently opened her centre to 'artists-in-residence' because artists provided them with the opportunity to move out of their own comfort zones. The centre is directly involved in finding practical solutions for specific problems like climate change, alternative energy and plant science. Here innovation is limited by serious applied intellectual property and the artists were not allowed to be involved. Instead, the artists spent time making a rather shabby sociological survey, without any insight into ethical debates which were probably taking place in the lab itself. Our artists-in-labs recipient Isabel Rohner was surprised to find that Dr. Markus Diirrenberger, the director of the ZMB, was quite enthusiastic about engaging in debates with an artist about the manipulation of drosophilae flies, while working in the lab. The debate occurred after a rocky confrontation between Rohner and a female scientist about the value of this manipulation in relation to the ego of the scientist. Perhaps an artist's role is also to be a spark for more scientific debate within the actual lab environment. As Eh/in Fox Keller suggests, the conventional accounts that scientists offer about their successes to each other are not value-free. In fact the very language, tacit presuppositions, expectations, and assumptions shared by natural scientific researchers are very value-laden". However, informed artists, who can weave very complex questions about value and society, might be an effective catalyst for 'loosening up' such dialogues. In order to explore this cross-over more thoroughly, new transdisciplinary and mediated spaces could be cultivated in the vicinity of the science labs, so that scientists can easily attend these events. In the artists-in-labs project the learning curve of the scientists was definitely improved by the exhibition of the resultant artworks right inside the facility of the science lab itself. In the past, art had a valuable role to play if it was backed up by solid claims of scientific knowledge (e.g.Hans Hacke's work "Crey Water Reclamation' 1969; or Harrison's 'Sustainable od Source' 1972, and Joseph Beuys who in 1982 planted 0 oak trees in order to shift air pollution levels at Docu-enta). It seems art can offer some true scientific models father than just pay lip service. It might be interesting for the general public to see some of these art and ethics discussions on mediums like film and video, rather than only read about '. Writing may have augmentative value but we live in an audio-visual culture. Film can often offer potentials for many angles of this debate to be understood, one which includes the perspective that most branches of science operate under a shared ethics of 'accurate results'. Science mostly requires honest reporting of results, meticulous control and cementation of observations, as well as the formulation and avocation of ideas, but it also requires each scientist to leave a legacy for others to follow. This shared ethic demands respect for each other and values peer assessment. The role of the bio-artist, as curator Jens Hauser indicates, is to keep a diverse array of possible solutions alive, based on the current concepts, theories, principles and methods that are ethically debated among the various scientific peers and lab contexts. The results could be a highly skilled, critical and reflective artwork which might gain more respect from science. As Donna Hara-way suggests, if science is really neutral then these interpretations should also reflect how cultural fact |
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ors and public response might have an influence on innovation itself.
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mation and progress. 3.1 Converging technologies One of the most common debates about teamwork focuses on the invention and sharing of tools. As Walter Benjamin suggested, scientists have always invented tools to see further, illustrate theories or test the clarity of their inventions. (Benjamin, W. (1963).The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc- tion. http://bid.berkeley.edu/bidclass/readings/benjamin )However, our ways of seeing are still affected by who uses the technology we invent to see with. For example, does an artist make a visualization of water quality in a different way than a scientists, if both use the same tools? Within the last 40 years, both worlds of art and science have produced thousands of innovative audio and visual tools. For example artists invented Photoshop and it is used in many science labs, while scientists invented photography and it is used by many visual artists. Today, media and communication tools are increasingly shared by scientists for research illustration and public demonstration platforms. In the artists-in-labs project, the role of the artist/designer Axel Vogelsang was to develop a platform for interactive narrative, one that could illustrate the teamwork and database potentials from the ClobIS group. After surveying the level of robotic research in the Artificial Intelligence lab, the artist Adrianne Wortzel used the medium of film to showcase the converging edges of their research. The artists Clea T. Waite and Andrew Quinn worked alongside the Planetarium staff on shared 3D computer animation tools as both had a background in innovative software applications. These variations in the development and use of shared tools should be discussed further between artists and scientists in lab situations as well as in the internet where blogging and open source potentials are already available for converging technologies. As a reaction to these needs, new departments of Design and Innovation are being launched, like at the Open University in Milton Keyes, to simultaneously train students in engineering, computer science and user design.35 As Erwin Schrodinger once said about innovation, "the task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees". (Schrddinger, E. http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1933/schrod-inger-bio.html). Transdisciplinary education might help to develop this insight and tools, which can cross between disciplines. Another example of tool developments within the artists-in-labs project is the simulation tool by Margarete Jahrmann for the Artificial Intelligence lab, which has turned out to be a test platform for both artists and scientists to use. Within the discourse of converging technologies appropriation of technology from one discipline to another can be considered as a form of innovation. For example, Margaret Tan found the CSEM fall-detector from Neuchatel for her mobile application artwork and used it in a performance about the plight of foreign domestic workers. 3.2 Comparing methodologies An ensuing discourse about the differences between methods and methodologies of art and those of science might be another area which could further art and science teamwork. Sandra Harding defines the word 'method' as a pre-determined technique for the gathering of evidence, but she defines the word 'methodology' as a theory and evaluation of choices about how research does or should proceed. Contemporary media artists are familiar with the method of gathering evidence with similar technologies and use similar methods of production than computer and engineering scientists, although they might include the user earlier in the production process. Usually, these artists have already worked along side inventors, programmers and engineers before, and they are interested in the theoretical and practical impact of scientific methodologies on culture. In the 60s and 70s, media artists were dependant upon access to inventions by engineers and programmers, a factor, which determined their context and often their content. Twenty years ago, artists in research teams began to help develop many visualization tools, like Softimage or on-line compositing platforms. In the artists-in-labs project it was very exciting for the artists to work in our partner laboratories wher |
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e groundbreaking research is currently taking place. Some artists had prior experience in robotics, computer programming, visualization and electronics, but they found that they had to learn more about scientific methodologies to become team catalysts. Depending upon the science involved, a traditional painter or sculptor might move through a research lab gathering evidence in a rather unsystematic way. The Centre for Microscopy ZMB in Basel was a good environment for these types of artists, because it is a service centre for many projects. Most sculptors or painters use methodologies which fall into the three categories of (1) assemblage, (2) elimination and (3) conceptualization. These are often methodologies which evolve over time or shift along the way. In installation art the conceptual art process itself can even be evident in the final product. In contrast, the process or steps by which a scientific discovery takes place are far more data driven and the innovative goals are often set in place from the start. Therefore scientists often think that art methodologies are risky or a waste of time. However, a closer look at art methodologies show that there is actually some correlation with scientific methodologies. The first category of assemblage would be called a 'bottom-up approach' by Artificial Intelligence researchers as it involves the process of accumulation, analysing behaviour, flocking, compilation and fabrication. The second process of elimination, one of reduction (e.g. sculptural carving), is very similar to some of the working processes in biotechnology. Following the procedure of gathering information, it involves incision, division, classification, codification and tagging. In this light the working process of a researcher in nano technology and a researcher in video editing might also be compared. The third art methodology is a conceptual one which reflects upon the process of imagining and ideas, postulation and supposition, impression and concoction while the process is taking place. When Max Planck asserted that the scientist must work by using an "essentially artistic imagination", perhaps he was referring to these three art methodologies (Plank, M. www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/-history/Mathematicians/Planck. html). In reaction Lewis Wolpert believes that there is nothing so dissimilar as the methodologies of science compared to those of art, because science is based on proof. However, I believe that the big difference is that artists have a choice about which proof to follow and which to question. Wolpert further states that scientists have to be very aware of what is known about the problem being investigated in science because science has to follow strict criteria, which affirm a lack of contradiction (ibid Wolpert 39). In this respect he may be right! However, it is the actual contradictions that are of great interest to artists! Artists are not required to 'publish or perish', but to 'exhibit and connect to the audience or perish' and conflicts are often played out in the exhibition space itself. As Rich Cold suggested, art and science share the discourse of patrons and peers rather than of clients and consumers (ibid Gold, R.). In terms of methodologies the responsibility of any dedicated scientist is similar to any committed artist, both require obsessive fascination, hard work and communication with their respective peer groups, but access to society is another issue. 3.3 Information as progress Currently, we live in an information society. A great deal of information has led to innovations based on information management, but at this very moment many creative people outside the bastions of management are often inventing software and hardware which focuses on social benefits. They could be philosophers who like the Brazilian Andreas Paval invented the idea of the Walkman, or they could be mixed groups who simply discuss social questions online. As Richard Lowenberg (Executive Director of the Davis Community Network in the US) suggests, we need to discuss more about the fact that our current society is "answer-rich but question-poor, where people place importance on a premium on facts and can get access to them fast and furiously".40 He also states that the flow of information can determine the course of social evolution and should be used to collaborate on more environmentally, economically, politically a |
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nd culturally sustaining directions. In agreement, I suggest that we definitely need more public debates about information and cultural difference. When I was in Bangalore in 2005, the Indian city known for its unprecedented rise of IT development and innovation, I was surprised about the poor state of the infrastructure. IT offshore companies employ millions of Indians who have been speed educated in express training centres. The Indians on the street seem to have little beneficial infrastructure from this 'progress' except for a bit more money in their pockets. Outside these bastions of IT power, one can find crumbling public transport systems, devastating sanitary conditions and unstable electricity sources. In fact corruption is on the rise. If access to information is seen as 'progress' then surely the local environmental infrastructure should also be improving. Indeed, it seems that the capitalist policies behind science and business, either produce, control or deter progress. In conclusion, innovative approaches should include local, social, cultural and environmental factors, as well as information and development in relation to users. Both artists and scientists have many shared roles to play in this regard. 4. Conclusion The above variety of discourse topics have been inspired by the experience of our artists-in-labs project. There is still a lot of work to do if we really want to encourage more practice-based art and science collaboration in the future. Discourses in education and know-how transfer about situated knowledge, contextual immersion and relational creativity might help us to re-define the roles of artists in the scientific environment. A second group of discourses about ethics including bio-ethics and artistic interpretations of scientific knowledge for the public are on-going discussions, which will continue to change with new discoveries in the Life Sciences. The final category, discourses about innovation and its social impact on culture, particularly in the subjects of converging technologies, comparing methodologies and information as progress might lead to a better understanding about how scientific research teams could benefit by incorporating artists. This incorporation might help to encourage more unusual products and innovative applications for users with respect to their cultural and political difference. In 2004, I started to open up some of these discourses on a Ph.D level and developed a node of the Planetary Collegium based at the University of Plymouth UK, called Z-node (http://www.z-node.net). Z-node is a research program with a dedicated group of 12 international researchers who meet regularly in the ICS, HCK Zurich, Switzerland. The three aims of the theoretical research are to explore the relationship between design, art, science and technology, to search for collaborative comparisons of processes and technical methodologies and to focus on critical and ethical discourses in relation to communication and collaboration. The experience of learning in different cultural environments, sustainability and scientific-based laboratory research are paramount to our discussions. On an applied level, the main practical focus of the program is the creation of research initiatives, which require the transdisciplinary collaborations between science, art and industry. For the general public, discourses, which deal with ethical and social contexts can further help to explore art as a catalyst to improve public relations for scientists. The representation and interpretation of ethical and social issues within scientific research may also help to generate an new level of respect. Each one of our lives is but a brief moment in the vastly complicated networks of relationships that comprise our shared worlds. In art and science no ground rules exist. What is central, indeed crucial, is that researchers in art and science retain a commitment towards the people they study and their respective subjects of study. The moral principles underlying research could also involve these new discourses and help to develop the cause. Most of our scientific collaborators were open enough to allow a project like the art-ists-in-labs to occur because the scientists involved thought along similar lines.
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| enced in the accompanying DVD or in the artists' reports and science lab pages of this book. The author also thanks the directors of the labs for such meaningful discussions during and after the course of the residencies. |
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