[spectre] Necessity or Taboo. How to evaluate art & science projects?

[Redazione Digicult]

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Digicult presents:

NECESSITY OR TABOO
HOW TO EVALUATE ART & SCIENCE PROJECTS?
Txt: Silvia Casini

Complete article:
http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1953

Digimag 60 - January 2011
http://www.digicult.it/digimag_eng/


Scientists and communicators are more and more persuaded that divulgating 
science to the public and involving outsiders into it is a duty rather than 
a choice. In order to make science is necessary to use a various range of 
tools: from a pen and a sheet where to draw sketches, write notes and create 
mental maps, to the utilization of the most advanced technology. The 
sciences that more evidently and more closely concern the human body, such 
as genomics and neurosciences, are searching for more effective ways to 
communicate and involve people.

Art entered the scientific field many years before scientists and artists 
became aware of it: the focus on the perceptive and aesthetic-functional 
aspects has always been a part of scientific experimentation and research, 
sensitive to representative procedures utilizing images rather that words. 
Many science museums before, and science centres later, like San Francisco 
Exploratorium, Dublin Science Gallery and Paris Laboratoire bet on the union 
between art, science and technology. Design played a key role in the 
modernization of science museums, that were looking for a more and more 
advanced, user-friendly and absorbing interaction with the public.

However, art stayed out of it. Art museums remained completely different 
from science museums and science centres, most of all because people went to 
the science museum with the purpose of learning something. In Italy a 
certain snobbery towards the terms "didactic" and "educational" reigned 
supreme. Now it seems the situation has reversed though: art, even 
contemporary one, can be and must be not only explained, but approached and 
treated like an ordinary aspect of everyday life. The educational function 
of art is a taboo no more: children get closer to art through a great number 
of didactic laboratories, direct experiences, meeting with artists, thematic 
paths. The magic formula "hands on" that radically changed the planning and 
the setting up in science museums seems to go well with art and design.

The collaborations between artists and scientists are always very useful 
occasions indeed, and keep on giving good results. These people work side by 
side in the attempt of visualizing invisible-to-the-eye phenomena and 
analyzing and using the properties of matter. Thanks to art-science 
projects, artists can reach sophisticated instrumentations otherwise 
forbidden outside the laboratory, while scientists have the chance to 
analyze the studied object through new visualization procedures that take 
advantage from the artist's intervention: when observed through the use of 
different techniques, some objects seem to become more visible and reveal 
new properties. Moreover, in this way the artists who care for science and 
technology often ask themselves about ethical, cultural and social 
questions, while the scientists rely on new communicative ways to show the 
outcomes of their researches and earn the public's assent.

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Complete article:
http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1953