July 2, 2012
IES Urbano Lugrís (A Coruña)
Summer School for Art and Science
Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Abstract:
Artists and scientists alike seek out visual images of worlds both visible and invisible. They attempt to ‘read’ nature in very similar ways: artists make drawings as they work towards the finished canvas while scientists also use drawings, in addition to mathematics, as tools to work towards a scientific theory. I will explore this fascinating realm of highly speculative thought and look into some fundamental questions: Are there similarities in the creative processes of artists and scientists? If so, what are they? And how can cognitive science help us understand the nature of creativity?

[...] [Susan] Aldworth featured in an exhibition, Art & Science: Merging Art & Science to Make a Revolutionary New Art Movement, at the GV Art Gallery in London last year (its current group exhibition, Polymath, explores similar themes). Long at the forefront of the science/art or “sciart” movement, this is the only independent commercial gallery with a human-tissue licence, enabling it to show challenging and often controversial work exploring areas such as prosthetics, transplants and genetic engineering.

Last year's exhibition was curated by a long-term enthusiast for the "revolutionary new art movement" (and the eventual creation of a "third culture"), Arthur I. Miller, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at University College London.

"There has always been science-influenced art," he says, "but [there were] no major collaborations until the 1960s."

Of course, "there will continue to be a market for emotional art", he adds, but he is far more enthusiastic about the areas that have been explored on the frontiers of science: from robotics art and zero-gravity dance to attempts to redesign the (increasingly obsolescent) human body.

Until now, there has been "much more biology- than physics-based art, because it's easier for artists to learn the basic principles and get access to labs", Miller says, but he has been involved in a number of attempts to redress the balance.

One was a collaborative project with graphic artist Fiorella Lavado called Weaving the Universe (2009-10), which set out "to evoke the ambiguity and beauty of the Cosmos in the large and in the small, while exploring the human mind, the means by which we imagine these strange worlds".

Miller is now working with photographer Anaïs Tondeur on another project devoted to the notion of the multiverse, addressing questions such as: "Is there any evidence our Universe once collided with another one?" [...]

From Third-culture club by Matthew Reisz in Times Higher Education - 15 March 2012.

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April 26, 2012

Bowland Lecture Theatre
Berrick Saul Building
University of York

Abstract:
Today the term ‘art and science’ is on everyone’s lips. But what is it and where is it going? I predict that in the future art and science – the traditional ‘two cultures’ that still often eye each other warily – will fuse to form a ‘third culture’. Interdisciplinarity will become a discipline and art and science as we know them will disappear. Aesthetics and art itself will be redefined.

To explore this I will look at the interplay between art and science in the 20th and 21st centuries. How do collaborations between artists and scientists come about and how do these collaborations work? How does science affect art and art affect science? Are art and science fusing into a third culture and if so what will this third culture be like? I will look at these questions and more using illustrations and examples.

Click here to download the programme.

What can cognitive science tell us about the mind

February 20, 2012 at 2:30pm

University Pierre and Marie Curie
4 place Jussieu
Tower 55/56
2nd floor
Room 203
Paris

Abstract:
Artists and scientists alike seek out visual images of worlds both visible and invisible. They attempt to ‘read’ nature in very similar ways: artists make drawings as they work towards the finished canvas while scientists use mathematics as a tool to work towards a scientific theory. I will explore this fascinating realm of highly speculative thought and look into some fundamental questions: Are there similarities in the creative processes of artists and scientists? If so, what are they? And how can cognitive science help us understand the nature of creativity?

1st March 2012 at 7:30pm

http://www.salon-london.com/content/Events/Event/event-Salon-XV-15

Salon-London
University Women’s Club
2 Audley Square
London W1K 1DB

Conversation on “Creativity and the Beauty that Creates Havoc” with Teresa Amabile, Howard Gardner and Hans Rosling

14-17 June 2012

Tällberg Forum 2012: “Beyond Imagination – Eliminating Limits”
Tällberg, Sweden

9th February 2012 at 2:00pm

Kinetica Art Fair
Ambika P3
35 Marylebone Road
London NW15LS

Abstract:
Today the term ‘art and science’ is on everyone’s lips. But what is it and where is it going? I predict that in the future art and science – the traditional ‘two cultures’ that still often eye each other warily – will fuse to form a ‘third culture’. Interdisciplinarity will become a
discipline and art and science as we know them will disappear. Aesthetics and art itself will be redefined.

To explore this I will look at the interplay between art and science in the 20th and 21st centuries. How do collaborations between artists and scientists come about and how do these collaborations work? How does science affect art and art affect science? Are art and science fusing into a third culture and if so what will this third culture be like? I will look at these questions and more using illustrations and examples.

World in the Balance: The historic quest for an absolute system of measurement by Robert P. Crease

PRECISION and fastidiousness – at first blush the quest for a precise system of measurement might seem a plodding pursuit. But as philosopher Robert P. Crease makes clear in World in the Balance, it was anything but.

From prehistory to the present, Crease ties humanity’s search for precision to the history of nations and of ideas. Any measurement must be based on a “standard” that embodies a unit, such as a foot, a finger or a hand. Eventually standards came to be inscribed in stone or metal and stored in protected areas such as the Acropolis for the Greeks, and in later centuries in Paris and Washington DC. Ownership of the standard symbolised political and social power.

Read full review

Published in New Scientist on Dec 3, 2011

For the Colloquium: Art, Science and Culture: Towards a reevaluation of the work of Carl Gustav Jung

May 10-12, 2012
University of Strasbourg
Strasbourg, France

Abstract:
At a key time in his scientific development, the physicist Wolfgang Pauli underwent analysis by Carl Jung. The encounters were inspiring for both men and sparked changes in their work. I will talk about how two of Pauli’s most important scientific discoveries were affected by Jung’s analysis of his dreams: why atoms are structured as they are (the Pauli exclusion principle) and what this has to do with the archetypal number four; and the necessity for mirror symmetry as an archetype in physics as well as in the collective unconscious. A very different Pauli emerges, one at odds with esteemed colleagues such as Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

February 6, 2012 – 6:30pm

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
University of the Arts London
Granary Building
1 Granary Square
London N1C 4AA

(Open only to staff and students at CSM)

Abstract:
Almost simultaneously, in the first decade of the 20th century Albert Einstein discovered relativity and Pablo Picasso cubism. How – and why? This fascinating story involves their often turbulent personal lives; the high drama of their struggles to achieve new ideas in the face of opposition from contemporaries; and the unlikely sources for their creative leaps, ignored by everyone else.

To fully understand what happened involves coming to grips with wide-ranging questions such as: Are there similarities in creativity between artists and scientists? What do artists and scientists mean by ‘aesthetics’ and ‘beauty’? Can we unravel creativity at its highest level?