Art and Science
By ItsNotMagicItsScience
Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vitruvian.jpg
Somewhere in the dark mists of time, somebody – probably a schools guidance counsellor – decided to classify others by their aptitude. Some were classed as artistic and others as scientific. These distinctions – often made in the early years of our lives – have a profound impact on our future and on cultural life in general.
Thankfully, we seem to be remembering that these distinctions are artificial and that there is no need to choose between art and science when you can do both. Over the last ten years especially we have begun to see many more projects that either blur the lines between art and science or see artists borrowing from scientific advances and techniques to imagine creative works. And we’ve been seeing these developments across the fields of art – from music to painting to sculpture to theatre – and science – from astrophysics to neuroscience to information technology – enriching our lives as the technology in these areas progresses.
Music is often an unlikely area for science and music to co-exist. It’s true that many of the Progressive Rock bands of the 1970s were obsessed with science fiction and psychoanalysis but they were just as likely to sing about the distinctly non-scientific worlds of fairies and Lord of the Rings. Plus, the archetypal image of the rock star is of a rebellious school dropout rather than a well-qualified academic.
Yet, these worlds do collide. Many rock bands are formed in universities and colleges and their members are often more academically endowed than their biographies might hint at. Leading the way is Professor Brian Cox, a leading British particle physicist and broadcaster, who enjoyed an earlier, parallel career as keyboardist with chart-topping 90s pop group D:Ream.
He’s not the only rocking PhD., either. Brian May, lead guitarist of classic rock act Queen, writer of stadium anthems like ‘We Are The Champions’ and “We Will Rock You’, finally completed his doctoral studies in 2008, having begun it in the 1970s. And prior to that, in 2006, he co-authored the best-selling Bang!, a history of the Universe from the Big Bang onwards, along with famous astronomer Sir Patrick Moore and renowned astrophysicist Christ Lintott.
The world of Information Technology is a particularly rich vein for the collaboration of art and science. While some artists working in this medium rely on programs and apps – such as painter David Hockney whose 2010 based collection Fleurs Fraiches was created and exhibited on iPad screen – others are mining areas where expression and coding collide.
One of the pioneers of this field is new media and fine artist, technology writer, web programmer and professor at the School of Visual Artists, Joshua Davis. Davis has also been trying to break the walls between science, technology and art for more than a decade (http://www.joshuadavis.com). Based on the principles of Chaos Theory, Davis creates many of his artworks using Flash-programmed randomization engines on his computer.
After inputting the codes and algorithms that will output the motifs and themes in his work, the engine creates thousands of works per hour. Davis’ task is then to sift through and edit the pieces, pulling out the ones he feels best encapsulate his original vision as inspired by those equations.
Of course, it’s not only the computer screen that is bringing these collaborations between the sciences and the arts to life. Even in the performance space, artists are working hard to incorporate scientific advances, principles and techniques into their works. For his new touring theatrical work Electric Hotel, director David Rosenberg wanted to create divisions between the actors and the audience, recasting it as an onlooker and requiring theatre-goers to wear headphones to ‘eavesdrop’ on the performance.
More than that, he wanted to create effects that used sound to create emotional impacts. To do so, he turned to a neuroscientist, Professor David McAlpine of London University’s Ear Institute for assistance.1Professor McAlpine helped Rosenberg to create binaural effects that would combine music, speech and everyday sound effects that would blur the lines between the audience and the action.
The experience they tried to emulate was one that McAlpine had once had at the headquarters of sound designers Dolby Laboratories in the US: “They made me put on headphones, close my eyes and then you hear you're in an aeroplane and you crash into the ocean. I really felt a sense of the whoosh of water and the sense of going up on to a sandy beach. Those sensations were my brain filling in the experience from what it heard."2
Of course, these are only the tip of a proverbial iceberg of a mass of artists, designers, engineers, physicists and chemists who are working together to bring the foundations and discoveries of science into new areas of the public arena. But despite the very different results of these collaborations, it helps to demonstrate that we should all be looking at a world of art and science, not one where they compete for our attention.
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