User:Fheyligh/sandbox

= ArtScience = ArtScience is a new movement towards creating meaning and understanding that synthesizes the intuitive, imaginative methods of art and the rational, systematic exploration of science. ArtScientists build "metaphorms": models, representations or installations that help us to get a deeper insight into the relation between human and cosmos, using both science-based theories and technologies, and art-based renditions that appeal to feelings of beauty and wonder.

Background
Historically, the separation between art and science is relatively recent (Strosberg, 2001). For Renaissance figures like da Vinci, Dürer or Vesalius it was natural to combine precise scientific observations with aesthetic, imaginative renderings. Our modern idea of science as a purely objective, impersonal inquiry only became established in the 18th century.Reacting to the often rather cold and detached rationality of the Enlightenment thinkers, the 19th century philosophy of Romanticism then portrayed the artist as a creator driven mainly by personal passion, feelings and imagination. A growing separation was formalized with the development of academic institutions in which artistic and scientific disciplines were relegated to different departments and methods of teaching. This resulted in the still dominant picture of what C.P. Snow labeled the “two cultures”: the scientific one, based in abstract theories and precise observations, and the artistic/literary one, rooted in subjective experience and unbridled imagination (Snow, 1993).

More recently, the separation between the two cultures is increasingly questioned, both by artists seeking inspiration in new scientific developments, and by scientists presenting a much more creative, uncertain, and subject-centered picture of the world (Heylighen, 2012; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984). Two trends promote this rapprochement between art and science (Ede, 2005; Edwards, 2008). On the one hand, methods and tools that derive from scientific research, such as algorithms, simulations, robots, sensors, 3-D printers and laboratories, have become available to artists, extending their creativity to new, often science-inspired realms. On the other hand, a new science of complexity has arisen, which proposes notions such as self-organization, fractals, non-linearity and chaos to explain the intrinsic creativity of nature, thus fitting in much more smoothly with the worldview of the artist (Casti & Karlqvist, 2003; Gell-Mann, 2003; Heylighen, 2009; Heylighen, Cilliers, & Gershenson, 2007).

The ArtScience movement
This emerging reconciliation between art and science has incited a number of authors to propose a more radical merger: ArtScience (Dominiczak, 2015; Siler, 2011). Edwards (2008) describes ArtScience as a creative method that “combines the aesthetic and scientific, intuitive and deductive, sensual and analytical, and is comfortable with uncertainty, embracing nature in its complexity”. More generally, we can characterize ArtScience as a way to produce novel insights that could not be achieved through either art or science alone.

A number of institutions have already arisen to promote the practice of ArtScience, including “Le Laboratoire” in Paris and Harvard, the “Lab for Art and Science” at the Ars Electronica center in Linz, Austria, and the ArtScience Interfaculty at the University of the Arts in The Hague, which offers a Bachelors and Masters program in the subject. The peer-refereed journal Leonardo, published by MIT Press, has a long-standing section devoted specifically to papers on ArtScience.

While collaborations between artists and scientists are becoming increasingly common, these tend to be limited to artists visualizing or illustrating scientific results, or scientists providing laboratories and technical know-how to help artists build installations. ArtScience aims at a more fundamental synthesis, where the boundaries between the two domains are actually transcended. According to the ArtScience Manifesto, written by a number of scientists and artists (Root-Bernstein, Siler, Brown, & Snelson, 2011), this approach has a great potential for tackling the problems created by rigid institutions, disciplinary boundaries and outdated worldviews: “ArtScience involves understanding the human experience of nature through the synthesis of artistic and scientific modes of exploration and expression. [It] melds subjective, sensory, emotional and personal understanding with objective, analytical, rational, public understanding. [Its mission is]


 * the re-humanization of all knowledge …


 * the re-integration of all knowledge …


 * to cultivate a New Renaissance …


 * to inspire open-mindedness, curiosity, creativity, imagination, critical thinking and problem solving through innovation and collaboration!

ArtScience, in sum, connects. The future of humanity and civil society depends on these connections. ArtScience is a new way to explore culture, society and human experience that integrates synesthetic experience with analytical exploration. It is knowing, analyzing, experiencing and feeling simultaneously.”