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ABSTRACT
This paper begins by reviewing the historical construction of ‘SciArt’, and the way in which its supposed interdisciplinarity often shaded into science communication. Early discussions about the complementarity of art and science were conceived in terms of epistemology, notably the qualities of imagination and curiosity. The paper moves on to discuss how, during the current decade, Art and Science (A&S) discourse has altered due to changes in the cultural politics of both its constituent fields, emerging as a ‘transdiscipline’ characterized by ‘creativity’. Eighteen in-depth surveys with leading practitioners in A&S form a substantial part of the research material, yielding an evaluation of what the disciplinary, economic and cultural implications of this changed discourse may be. Though potentially angled towards the solution of ‘wicked’ problems, transdisciplinarity also sacrifices the specific critical expertise of art, fetishizes tech at the expense of science and selectively ignores institutional problems inherent in funding and power structures.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Charlotte Sleigh is Professor of Science Humanities at the University of Kent. Originally trained as a historian of science, her research, writing and teaching now touches on science in diverse areas including literature, art and communication, always understanding science as a social process, mediatized through cultural forms. She is author of numerous books and editor of the British Journal for the History of Science.
Sarah Craske is a British artist working at the intersection of Art, Science & Technology. Sarah was trained at Central St Martins and is now director of the SPACER studio, Ramsgate and honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of the Sciences, University of Kent. Sarah explores how the concepts of knowledge & data, practice & space, language & method, and equipment & materials transform through transdisciplinary working. Through this she is engaged in the playful development of her own transdiscipline – Biological Hermeneutics – and a manifesto for transdisciplinarity. Sarah was the winner of the 2016 MullenLowe Nova national award and is currently artist in residence at the Bioprocess Laboratory, ETH Zürich, Basel, in collaboration with international company Biofaction.
Notes
1 For reasons that will become clear, we regard A&S (Art & Science) as a term preferable to SciArt. We employ the latter only where echoing the language used by historical actors in our account.
2 Though the quotation is attributed to Vladimir Nabokov, to British readers it may more naturally summon the unhappy fact/fancy dualism that divides and structures Dickens’s Hard Times.
3 In her lecture, Cornelia Hesse-Honneger makes a strong eco-critical case for scientists’ need to accept the observational skills of insect-specialists working outside of academia, and most especially to take on board the alarming evidence of mutation caused by human activity that her artistic research has revealed.
4 Ball (Citation2013, vii–viii) hints at a parallel history for ‘curiosity’, yet to be fully investigated.
5 https://www.ted.com/topics/creativity last accessed 26 July 2016.
6 One is obliged to observe that the central point of STS is that scientific knowledge has always been characterised by social robustness; the problem is merely which people are permitted to speak for ‘society’.
7 The quotations from the survey responses that follow have been silently tidied for minor errors of typing and grammar. Any significant changes or interpretations are marked with square brackets in the usual manner.
8 Other former art schools, as Candlin (Citation2001) and Borgdorff (Citation2006) have noted, began to evaluate their practice as ‘research’ following their re-definition as Higher Education Institutions subsequent to the Further and Higher Education Act (1992).