Art and Science at Flat Time House, London

Vision Forum has since 2009 been collaborating with curator and Flat Time House director Claire Louise Staunton on the New Cities Project. One of Vision Forum's three research fields is "Platforms for Meetings between art and Science." In order to make use of the network that we have developed in this field and draw inspiration from John Latham's work Vision Forum and Flat Time House together arrange a workshop on art and science on January 27 at Flat Time House in London - 210 Bellenden Rd, London SE15 4BW.


Invited participants:  Fatos Üstek, Claire Louise Staunton, Mauricio Dwek, Aurele Duda, Elena Nemkova, IMS project, John Hill, Stephen Whitmarsh, William Stafford and Per Hüttner.

Programme of the Day

11.00 Per Huttner introduces Vision Forum and art/science project
11.20 Stephen Whitmarsh speaks about art from the perspective of Neuroscience
11.30 Claire Louise Staunton introduces John Latham and Flat Time
11.50 Fatos Ustek and Mauricio Dwek will introduce the topic of discussion, 0/0
14.00 Lunch at The Begging Bowl thai restaurant, Bellenden Rd
15.30 Presentation and video from IMS
16.00 Discussions

Art & Science Workshop Why and for Whom?


The world population has recently surpassed 7 billion and the number of living souls on this planet has doubled since the 1970's. There are growing pressures on the environment, global food supplies, and energy resources and we need new solutions to manage such demands. The world is in need of new ideas, new thinking - creativity in short.



The amount of research, production and publication in all creative fields (artistic and scientific) inevitably leads to a process of a higher specialisation and will continue to specialise in the coming decades. Today’s research and production in a single field is so immense that it is impossible to have an overview of all the exploration that is being undertaken. So, we have to accept that art is art and science is science.


A dialogue between art and science has two important advantages (from an artistic point of view):



- A dialogue in specialized field always runs the risk of becoming too self-contained. When we move outside our comfort zones, we become aware of our own vulnerability – and I mean this in the best sense of the word. We become aware of the limits of our knowledge and working methods. We have to remain far humbler in our ignorance when approaching another genre or discipline. 



- Certain fields of mathematics and physics offer concepts that are counter-intuitive. They function contrary to what our experiences in everyday life and at the same time can be proven mathematically and through experiments. These ways of thinking offer mental gymnastics that open to new ways of perceiving the world. Whether we believe that our perception of the world is too anthropocentric or not - we can find inspiration to deal with problems in novel ways.



Why 0/0?

The number zero is considered to be one of man's most important conceptual breakthroughs. Depending on the the position, its meaning changes greatly (examples: 01, 10, 0.1 etc.). We have chosen to use the idea of 0/0 as a starting point for a dialogue between art and science, because it offers a very interesting paradox where science is compelled to deal with philosophical questions much like those that art grapples with. 0/0 offers a platform where we can discuss on relatively equal terms.

Already any natural number divided by zero (a/0) poses a problem with many different 'solutions.' And zero is said to be divided by all numbers but itself. In other words 0/0 is a trickster that allow us to prove virtually anything true. Have a look at this:

For more information visit Flat Time House and Vision Forum's websites.

Art and Science

Vision Forum has from the outset worked with researchers in the hard sciences to investigate how meetings between specialists in the two fields can inspire creativity on both sides. During one of the (In)visible Dialogue sessions organised by Vision Forum in 2011, Sandra Masur (Mount Sinai, New York) and Laurent Devèze (ISBA, Besançon) underlined how the scientific laboratory has gradually grown more into a communal working place for research and development over the last decade. The practice has shifted to larger research teams where the responsibilities are divided and tasks differentiated, but still retaining a common goal. On the other hand, the artist has retained his/her singular brand name and a more insular process. We have seen movements where artists form groups (Superflex, General Idea), but also artists like Olafur Eliasson and Tomàs Saraceno develop studios that emulate the working methods of architectural firms. But we our preparatory research suggests that by implicating methodologies from the sciences that this can develop further.

Vision Forum sees great potential developing parallel strategies to institutions like the Santa Fe Institute that look at large populations in major cities or the interactions in schools of fish. Here the extended specialization and at the same time demand for amassing and evaluating gigantic amounts of data has forced researchers to collaborate with researchers in the humanities and design. Vision Forum has developed both a practice and the theoretical and digital tools to create situations for true artistic research and production based on the above mentioned working methods.

Research in Contemporary Visual Art

The increased complexity and specialization in academic, scientific and artistic fields (along with the tightened demand on results) means that the dialogues between the disciplines have become increasingly important.

Art, philosophy, science and technology are tools that can help us to make sense of the chaos that surrounds us. However when similar problems are addressed in different fields and genres, they do so in very different ways. We cannot understand art; we can appreciate it; we can derive knowledge from it - art provokes reflection in its audiences. And yet this does not mean that the audiences understand what they experience. It does not even mean that the creator fully understands the finished work. The artist’s relationship to the artwork changes over time and the works that artists produce are like friends from whom we learn and among whom we develop over time. They are not fixed, they shapeshift. As artists, we co-create poetic knowledge together with the audience in the process of producing and living with our work. 

We cannot over-emphasise how art’s modes of production and functionality differ with respect to other processes found in contemporary society. Yet, this does not mean that art is disconnected from the worlds of commerce, science and technology – quite the opposite. It functions according to another logic.

This difference is also the reason why dialogue between genres remains essential. It allows us to stay focused on what we are doing. If you ask what an artist is, a good answer could be “a person who continuously leaves his/her comfort zone.” Maybe that goes for all creators? Dialogues between genres remain essential because they force us into a continual departure from what we know and remind us that we have to deal with the fundamental paradoxes of our lives. Not an easy task, but a deeply inspiring choice of life!

When the dialogue in a genre or discipline becomes too self-contained, it is bound to go stale. When we move outside our comfort zones, we become aware of our own vulnerability. We become aware of the limits of our knowledge and working methods. We have to remain far humbler when we approach another genre or discipline. 
 
The life of the artist has a poetic twist to it. We are always trying to undo what has been done before and to push the boundaries farther. But being an artist is a proposition, an evasive state/role that is activated like flashes in a thunderstorm. We cannot reduce “I travel” to “I am a travelling being” anymore than we can interchange “I think” with “I am a thinking person.” Thought is not a constant. It is a predicate that passes ceaselessly from one thought to another

Vision Forum working methods build on experience and has been developed in our networks, where members with eclectic backgrounds from all over Europe meet at regular intervals in different places and contexts. These meetings are meant for the members to inspire each other, provoke each others curiosity and to dialogue with the local artistic and scientific network. We aim to create knowledge that will travel in time and space - experiences that are valuable as you move through life and also as you travel across the globe.

In Vision Forum we have seen the importance that each participant formulates their own definition how art, philosophy and science operate (and how they interact). The discussions around definitions of disciplines remain some of the most exciting and also conflictual in all forms of cross-disciplinary exchanges - what art and democracy have in common is conflict.