From John Chalmers:
GATHERING STEAM: BRIDGING THE ARTS AND SCIENCES TO EXPAND PUBLIC INTEREST IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATH
Many of the world’s most important
innovations resulted from collaborations among specialists with
different backgrounds; almost all scientists and engineers recognize the
power of collaboration and communication across STEM disciplines. As in
STEM, creativity also flourishes in the arts and design. Brilliant and
highly original novels, plays, films, and artworks engage and inspire
audiences around the world, while people in all walks of life appreciate
the fields of architecture, graphics, and industrial design. Those
latter fields can translate directly into innovations. Even with steady
progress in interdisciplinarity generally, connections between STEM and
the arts and design remains limited, although they have been growing
over the past decade. The trend points to a historic opportunity for
experts from the Arts and the Sciences to begin a new series of
conversations and collaborations.
Bridging the Two Cultures is a grand
challenge. There is a fundamental asymmetry and complementarity between
them: the word Science comes from the Greek “to cut.” The word Art comes
from the Latin “to join.” The results can be extremely productive by
expanding public interest and engagement with both sectors, bringing new
topics to new audiences, and educating and inspiring the next
generation to transcend existing boundaries to discover and create the
future of innovations. STEM fields have always valued creative minds,
and the best artists excel at highly unconventional, unorthodox
thinking. Artists also are excellent at capturing and representing the
zeitgeist in elegant, compelling ways. That quality suggests that
fruitful collaboration between scientists and artists can yield not only
interesting ideas and “products,” they may also build in effective
modes of communicating the value of that work to a wide audience.
We endorse the acronym STEAM as a shorthand
to describe new collaborative initiatives that engage experts from both
the Arts and STEM.
1 A
key emphasis is new ways to achieve synthesis—connections among
disparate modes of thought, viewpoints, and cultures—as a means toward
the ends of discovery and innovation, as well as more effective
education and communication about the intrinsic value of STEM and the
Arts. We propose convening a cross-disciplinary committee to explore the
potential for STEAM, focusing initially on computer science and
engineering to formulate recommendations for action.
Background and Next Steps
In the early 2000s, the potential impact of
linking computer science and the arts was recognized beyond the niches
of computer graphics and computer music. The Rockefeller Foundation
commissioned a study by the Computer Science and Telecommunications
Board of the National Academies. Their report, Beyond Productivity
(2003),
2 introduced the term “information technology and creative practices” (ITCP) and spurred the Creative-IT program at NSF.
3 In the ensuing years, the political and technological landscapes have changed dramatically.
Understanding of both opportunities and
issues may be served by conducting STEAM case studies. A few recent
exemplary collaborations between scientists and artists include:
Doctor Atomic opera about the Manhattan Project
- Breaking the Code, Broadway play about Alan Turing
- A Beautiful Mind biography of John Nash
- Laurie Anderson as NASA Artist in Residence
- LOGICOMIX, graphical novel about the history of Logic
- Bruce Nauman’s installations using infrared surveillance cameras
- The Listening Post and Moveable Type collaborative projects of Mark Hansen (statistician) and Ben Rubin (artist)
We believe now is the time to:
- Define STEAM and characterize exemplary case studies
- understand where are the most promising and high-impact activities,
projects, programs, and domains and the roles of different kinds of
players, such as universities, not- and for-profit private-sector
organizations, government organizations, and philanthropy
- explore what it would take to engage the most talented scientists and artists in STEAM
- consider novel mechanisms, such as engaging “principal artists”
alongside “principal investigators” (as well as providing incentives to
engage people who are hybrids, skilled in both the arts/design and
computer science/engineering (or other STEM fields)
- engage leading artists (fine, applied, and performing) and designers
with experts from STEM fields to collaborate on new ideas and
approaches that can effectively reach the broader public and provide the
foundation for future innovation, education, and synthesis.
