Art and Science Inspirations

This art and science quotes by the great and good are meant to give you some inspiration to pursue your dreams.......or to distract you from them!

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these
aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the
sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards
freedom.
- Albert Einstein
'Moral Decay', Out of My Later Years (1937, 1995), 9.

Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this
advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with a good
conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is
leading the 'higher life.'
- Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
Ends and Means (1937), 320. In Collected Essays (1959), 369

Science and art, or by the same token, poetry and prose differ from one
another like a journey and an excursion. The purpose of the journey is its
goal, the purpose of an excursion is the process.
- Franz Grillparzer
Notebooks and Diaries (1838). In The Columbia World of Quotations (1996)

The faculty of art is to change events; the faculty of science is to foresee
them. The phenomena with which we deal are controlled by art; they are
predicted by science.
- Henry Thomas Buckle
'The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge,', a discourse
delivered at the Royal Institution (19 Mar 1858) reprinted from Fraser's
Magazine (Apr 1858) in The Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works of Henry
Thomas Buckle (1872), Vol. 1, 4. Quoted in James Wood, Dictionary of
Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893),
426:46

and from Dolores Kaufman, DAG member:

Carl Sagan said "The creative process is a partnership of the 
unconscious and conscious mind"

 Steven Hawking said, "I follow my nose, one thing leads to 
another and I don't know what I'll find next."




and from Joe Nalven, DAG founder

Georges Braque said, "Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain."


 

Revision DNA by Andrey Gorbunov opens at Erarta Galleries London

 London presents Revision DNA by Andrey Gorbunov. Marking a break with his earlier more painterly approach to image making, Gorbunov’s new work questions the relationship that links art and science and our lives with technology, asking if it is possible to assume that we are dealing with two opposing factors. On the one hand, the positive and confirmed structure of scientific knowledge and the ordered binary coding of the internet, and, on the other, the intuitive nature of art produced by the irrationality of biological man. Where science is to be considered the product of pure rationalism, the result of procedures amply verified, the search for unequivocal truths, certain and impossible to confute, Gorbunov asks if this rationalism translates to the virtual world of the Internet? Read the whole article here from ArtDaily.org


Revision DNA by Andrey Gorbunov opens at Erarta Galleries London

London presents Revision DNA by Andrey Gorbunov. Marking a break with his earlier more painterly approach to image making, Gorbunov’s new work questions the relationship that links art and science and our lives with technology, asking if it is possible to assume that we are dealing with two opposing factors. On the one hand, the positive and confirmed structure of scientific knowledge and the ordered binary coding of the internet, and, on the other, the intuitive nature of art produced by the irrationality of biological man.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58243#.UHcQYq5OSSo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

LONDON.- Erarta Galleries London presents Revision DNA by Andrey Gorbunov. Marking a break with his earlier more painterly approach to image making, Gorbunov’s new work questions the relationship that links art and science and our lives with technology, asking if it is possible to assume that we are dealing with two opposing factors. On the one hand, the positive and confirmed structure of scientific knowledge and the ordered binary coding of the internet, and, on the other, the intuitive nature of art produced by the irrationality of biological man. Where science is to be considered the product of pure rationalism, the result of procedures amply verified, the search for unequivocal truths, certain and impossible to confute, Gorbunov asks if this rationalism translates to the virtual world of the Internet? Are our verifiable virtual constructs of self more real than our physical bodily being, and should the Internet be evaluated as a product of mathematics and science or as an organism growing and evolving under its own initiative? Observing the monumental canvases of Gorbunov we can immediately and easily understand his vision of contemporary life and culture. The virtual world has become an integral part of each of us, similar to a new dimension influencing our social and biological rhythms. It is impossible to imagine the world without computer technologies today; everyday we immerse ourselves more and more deeply as network chats supersede actual human interaction and our Facebook and Twitter profiles grow. Not only have our moods, but also our lives, started to depend on the number of comments and “likes” our virtual egos successfully amass. Thus, contemporary culture is not a culture divided between ‘ars’ and ‘scientia’, or life and technology, but rather it is conflated into a ‘technoculture’ – a hybrid where diversity and quantity prevails over genuine identity. Gorbunov adopts a focused vision of the relationship between art and science, life and virtual life: No longer are we dealing with opposites in a dialectical vision, a view which appears more than ever superseded, but with complementary, interacting and intersecting aspects of a futuristic civilisation. The Virus paintings that make up the exhibition Revision DNA draw a parallel between biological and computer viruses, and Gorbunov highlights the similarities between man and the internet, both living entities that grow and change daily, and both vulnerable to infections. Scanning the QR codes in the paintings will reveal information about notorious computer viruses, but all computer specific terms have been removed – the affect of these viruses is human. Ironically, QR codes may become the malicious points of infection for future viruses, as reading the codes puts the privacy of the user at risk by “attagging” the identity of user. Though science has recognised the truths of nature, it had abstained from modifying them for instrumental aims, but in contemporary technoculture, in genetic engineering and biotechnologies, the object of scientific research is no longer sacred and untouchable, the essence of truth, but an object that can be manipulated and transformed, by means of experimentation by those studying it. Similarly, in the macrocosm of the Internet, and our engagement with it and use of it, Gorbunov questions the balance of power – who is using whom and to what end? Andrey Gorbunov is a graduate of the Nizhniy Novgorod Art College and St. Petersburg’s esteemed Mukhina Art Academy, where he now teaches in monumental and decorative painting departments. Gorbunov has exhibited extensively throughout Russia and his paintings can be found in private collections in Russia, the UK and the USA.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58243#.UHcQYq5OSSo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

LONDON.- Erarta Galleries London presents Revision DNA by Andrey Gorbunov. Marking a break with his earlier more painterly approach to image making, Gorbunov’s new work questions the relationship that links art and science and our lives with technology, asking if it is possible to assume that we are dealing with two opposing factors. On the one hand, the positive and confirmed structure of scientific knowledge and the ordered binary coding of the internet, and, on the other, the intuitive nature of art produced by the irrationality of biological man. Where science is to be considered the product of pure rationalism, the result of procedures amply verified, the search for unequivocal truths, certain and impossible to confute, Gorbunov asks if this rationalism translates to the virtual world of the Internet? Are our verifiable virtual constructs of self more real than our physical bodily being, and should the Internet be evaluated as a product of mathematics and science or as an organism growing and evolving under its own initiative? Observing the monumental canvases of Gorbunov we can immediately and easily understand his vision of contemporary life and culture. The virtual world has become an integral part of each of us, similar to a new dimension influencing our social and biological rhythms. It is impossible to imagine the world without computer technologies today; everyday we immerse ourselves more and more deeply as network chats supersede actual human interaction and our Facebook and Twitter profiles grow. Not only have our moods, but also our lives, started to depend on the number of comments and “likes” our virtual egos successfully amass. Thus, contemporary culture is not a culture divided between ‘ars’ and ‘scientia’, or life and technology, but rather it is conflated into a ‘technoculture’ – a hybrid where diversity and quantity prevails over genuine identity. Gorbunov adopts a focused vision of the relationship between art and science, life and virtual life: No longer are we dealing with opposites in a dialectical vision, a view which appears more than ever superseded, but with complementary, interacting and intersecting aspects of a futuristic civilisation. The Virus paintings that make up the exhibition Revision DNA draw a parallel between biological and computer viruses, and Gorbunov highlights the similarities between man and the internet, both living entities that grow and change daily, and both vulnerable to infections. Scanning the QR codes in the paintings will reveal information about notorious computer viruses, but all computer specific terms have been removed – the affect of these viruses is human. Ironically, QR codes may become the malicious points of infection for future viruses, as reading the codes puts the privacy of the user at risk by “attagging” the identity of user. Though science has recognised the truths of nature, it had abstained from modifying them for instrumental aims, but in contemporary technoculture, in genetic engineering and biotechnologies, the object of scientific research is no longer sacred and untouchable, the essence of truth, but an object that can be manipulated and transformed, by means of experimentation by those studying it. Similarly, in the macrocosm of the Internet, and our engagement with it and use of it, Gorbunov questions the balance of power – who is using whom and to what end? Andrey Gorbunov is a graduate of the Nizhniy Novgorod Art College and St. Petersburg’s esteemed Mukhina Art Academy, where he now teaches in monumental and decorative painting departments. Gorbunov has exhibited extensively throughout Russia and his paintings can be found in private collections in Russia, the UK and the USA.

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=58243#.UHcQYq5OSSo[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

Kaz Maslanka ASCI Featured Artist of the Month

The DNA of Creativity member, Kaz Maslanka, is the featured artist of the month at Art and Science Collaborations INC. You can check it out at this link

Innovation Incubatpr project

National Science Foundation awards a $2.6m grant to the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership to lead a national innovation incubator project integrating arts-based-learning and STEM (What we in SD call STEAM).  

On Tuesday, October 16, at 9:30 a.m. in the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center Community Forum, San Diego Innovation Alliance members are invited to join a special informational meeting with Harvey Seifter, Art of Science Learning founder and the project’s director and principal investigator. We have received a number of inquiries about the project, and this a great opportunity to ask questions and learn more now that it is beginning.

Call to Pioneers STEAM

This comes from John Chalmers via Roger Valina

Call to Pioneers in Collaboration between Science-Engineering and Arts-Design-Humanities

9 September 2012, 8:49 pm

Bronac Ferran is coordinating a SEAD white paper
http://seadnetwork.wordpress.com/white-paper-abstracts/abstracts/
looking at lessons learned by pioneers in collaboration between science/engineering and arts/design/collaboration. If you are such a pioneer- active in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and would like
to have your thoughts included in this white paper please contact Bronac directly
or contact me at rmalina(at)alum.mit.edu
SEAD: TO SUCCESS AND SUCCESSION. DRAWING ON PIONEERING WORKS
AND FORMING A NEW INFRASTRUCTURE
Coordinator: Bronac Ferran
Amnesia can dominate when it comes to building new forms of support for art/science/technology research and practice. Despite practical experiments and theoretical analysis stretching back for more than a century, there is often a ‘year zero’ assumption – a sense of building something entirely new. Structures and systems of support tend to come and go with few if any signs of critical accumulation. This White Paper will reference the lineage behind highly contemporary practices and argue that accessing the critical wisdom of earlier pioneers across arts and science borders is an important part of strengthening the seemingly new. Often these pioneers have had migratory careers, moving between institutions or even countries, which has contributed to a sense of dispersal of knowledge and a lack of integration into formal structures. We should explore some of the challenges involved with drawing together distributed viewpoints, disparate processes and (often) contrasting ideologies. We need to observe a continuum of ‘praxis’ alongside the joy in ‘discontinuity’ perfectly described by Jonathan Benthall when he commented, writing in Studio International in 1969, on how: ‘ discontinuities between science and modern art’…are….’as interesting as their interactions’. Benthall also wisely pinpointed the value of difference and divergence within SEAD practices. In his view: ‘there is no apparent correlation between the stature of a given artist and the validity of his scientific assumptions’. In 1969, also in Studio International, the great artist-engineer Naum Gabo wrote about how he had seen little success in terms of bringing together the arts and sciences. This leads to a second very important challenge and question for this White Paper which is to ask how might we choose to evaluate success across the breadth of the terrain signified by a framework such as SEAD? Without evaluative processes there can be no methodology for learning and passing on wisdom. As curricula and reading lists are being formed to underpin emerging Masters courses in ‘art and science’ might the SEAD initiative finally help signpost a stable direction in this productively unstable terrain? Is it feasible to produce a summative assessment of what constitutes success in the interdisciplinary domain and what might this mean for future institutions? How might art and science pioneers now define success? How might the value of preceding events and practitioners be more readily accessed? The SEAD community is invited to contribute to the development of proposals to address some of these fascinating challenges.

Gathering Steam

From John Chalmers:

GATHERING STEAM: BRIDGING THE ARTS AND SCIENCES TO EXPAND PUBLIC INTEREST IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATH

Coordinators: Marjory Blumenthal and Ken Goldberg
from http://seadnetwork.wordpress.com

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.

1 We recognize that some use STEAM to focus on educational activity; we use the term more broadly to cover research and other productive output as well as the education that enables it.

2  See http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10671 and
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/CSTB/CompletedProjects/CSTB_042322.

3 See http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=501096, solicitation 09-572.

Principals of Limited Sloppiness

Adam Brown and Robert Root-Bernstein Speaking in Vienna 2011

This fascinating lecture was sent to us by John Chalmers. It speak to the origins of the species and to the use of the arts in science in a profound way.