video: Janis Jeffries: In Collaboration

Presentation given at the Tesla Symposium 'Visions and Imagination: Advanced ICT in Art and Science', organized by Gordana Novakovic at the Department of Computer Science of UCL on 24 November 2007, and funded by AHRC Methods Network.

C.P. Snow’s commentary on the ‘two cultures’ of modern society (as popularized in the Rede lectures in Cambridge in 1959) is frequently cited as a challenge to establishing a meeting place for artists and scientists where stereotypical expectations might be broken down. 50 years later there are some significant art and science collaborations, which critically involve self-reflection in a new meeting space of intrinsic curiosity and artistic interpretation. Artist helps scientists improve communications between the public and research worlds. They discover ethnical and social issues, which can be explored afresh in research projects.

Normally, art does not evaluate empirical knowledge but it does rely on ‘situated knowledge’ as embedded in language, culture and traditions as well as methods of experience and interpretation. Art and Science collaborations can lead to the creation of new practices and innovative approaches in the social context of each other’s worlds. An experimental approach, the search for first hand information and experience, the development of models to explain what is observed can be dependent on place, economics and culture.

This presentation focuses on projects which explore this meeting place from the artists perpective. It looks at some case studies that have been produced by Goldsmiths Digital Studios over the last 2 years.