STEAM at Work: “Translating” Science into Dress

Abstract

Translation is considered a highly effective means for introducing new ways of thinking and inducing significant cultural change. At a time in which collaborations between STEM and the Arts are perceived as a necessary cultural change, this article employs the concept of inter-semiotic translation to explore the role that textile art in the form of dress and accessories can have translating, metaphorically, scientific concepts and ideas into a material incarnation, and what is at stake in this materiality. As the discourse around the art/science dichotomy is a gendered one, the article employs feminist translation as the theoretical framework to shed light on the agency of the artists/translators who contribute not only to the dissemination of science across national and cultural borders—between “the two cultures” of arts and science—but who may also play a role in the constitution of scientific discourse itself, since the textile metaphors they construct may eventually bear upon the scientific concepts that develop.

Keywords:

• STEAM
• dress installation
• intersemiotic translation
• art-science
• feminist translation
• sciart
• bioart
• Communication of science

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Electronic textiles—wearable computers, reactive fashion and soft computation—have translated science into wearable technology, for military, medical or communication purposes (Berzowska 2005). This article however deals with the translation of scientific concepts into textile art and installations.

2 Metaphors of DNA often liken it to text, book, or code. However, as Sophia Roosth has noted, biologists have also described nucleic acids “as strings, strands, or threads that coil, unspool, knit, and knot. Analogies from the fibre arts run deep in the life sciences, as can be seen in terms such as strand, tissue, membrane, fibre, and filament in anatomy and net or web in systems biology and ecology” (Roosth 2011).

3 CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Armida De La Garza

Armida de la Garza is Senior Lecturer in Digital Arts and Humanities at University College Cork, Ireland, where she also lectures in Women’s Studies. She is interested in collaborative, interdisciplinary research that bridges the gap between science and the arts. Her recent research projects include internationalising the curriculum for STEAM and working with students as partners in virtual international mobilities. She started her academic career as a translator. [email protected]