[spectre] Arts and Sciences

Andreas Broeckmann abroeck at transmediale.de
Sat Feb 25 21:21:00 CET 2006


dear friends,

like others, i am aware that there is an ongoing debate about the 
arts/sciences relationship, and i guess there is a lot of truth in 
trebor's analysis of 'science' as camouflage for arts in a 
unfavourable funding environment.

however - and please ignore this if the question is foolish - i would 
like to come back to the question that i originally asked, i.e. 
whether anybody has any evidence for an actual *increase* in 
art/science collaborations.

the question was not meant as a form of polemics, nor did i want to 
put down the (critical and affirmative) examples that there are. 
(with regard to bio-art or space-art, for instance, the same handfull 
of names crop up everywhere. and with regard to the 'status' of those 
endeavours, i liked andrew's throught-provoking suggestion: 'I see 
researchers using creative means to express their work, and we may 
not consider this art under a limited view (could we consider bioart 
a science?), but culturally I think it would be important to consider 
a broader definition of what artistic or creative practice could 
involve ethnographically.'

regards,
-a



>>  on 2/17/06 9:48 AM, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
>>
>>  out of curiosity: is there any evidence that the relation between art
>>  and science is in fact intensifying (as blurbs like these always
>>  suggest), and that what we see is more than a (statistically
>>  horizontal) decade-spanning string of incidental projects and
>>  cooperations? there has been talk about this intensification for at
>>  least 50 or even 80 years, if you take the original Bauhaus or the
>>  post-revolutionary Russian Avantgarde into account. but there also
>>  seems to be an insistence of much of art to stay away from science,
>>  and vice versa. luckily.
>>
>>  (most of the 'gravitation' mentioned here might be coupled with a
>>  centrifugal force, in which case it would be interesting to understand
>>  who or what is keeping the two, art and science, in each other's orbit.)
>>
>>  regards,
>>  -a
>>
>>
>>>  New Constellations: Art, Science and Society
>>>  An international conference charting the ways in which art and
>>>  science are
>>>  gravitating towards one another within contemporary culture. The
>>>  Conference
>>>  will present the latest thinking about collaboration between artists and
>>>  scientists and examine how the worldwide trend towards interdisciplinary
>>>  engagement is changing the definitions, methodologies and practices
>>>  they use
>>>  and how they view the social implications of their work.



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