Artists
in Labs: Processes Of Inquiry
by Jill
Scott, Editor
SpringerWienNewYork, NY, USA, 2006
136pp., illus., 24 b/w, 61 col. Paper,
$25.95
Includes DVD
ISBN: 10-3-211-27957-1.
Reviewed by Craig Hilton
Unitec, New Zealand, Mt Albert, Auckland,
New Zealand
HREF=mailto:chilton@unitec.ac.nz
The trans-disciplinary renaissance
artist may be more myth than fact suggests
Sigrid Schade in the forward to Artists
in LabsProcesses of Inquiry.
Likewise, this report addresses the notion
of contemporary trans-disciplinary practice
with honesty and skepticism, calling for
a more "critical analysis about the
roles of the artist and the scientist
in the lab context". The books
editor, Dr. Jill Scott (media artist and
professor at the Institute of Cultural
Studies in Art Media, Zurich) believes
that immersion in the lab context is a
"good starting point for a new educational
approach to trans-disciplinary practices".
Together with Professor Marille Hahne,
she founded Artists in Labs (AIL).
The six-month project involved placing
14 artists in 9 different science laboratories.
The laboratories varied significantly
in discipline and focus from pure research
to those that utilize scientific discovery
for technological advances. The AIL
project is documented thoroughly by this
book and accompanying DVD, which should
be considered an essential guide for artists
and scientists contemplating collaboration
in a laboratory environment.
Why it is so desirable to have "deep
art-science interaction"? asks astronomer
Roger Malina. That this is an education
opportunity for the artist is a given.
Malina says an artist is expected to be
cognizant of the contemporary world, but
it is also hoped that this interaction
will provoke science towards more collaboration
with art in the future. Quoted here, Robert
Root-Bernstein says the focus is on those
individual scientists who are "prepared
to work outside current paradigms",
and take "conceptual risks that sometimes
lead to outcomes that would not otherwise
have occurred". Inter-discipline
is not an end in itself, so what could
these "outcomes" be? This well-edited
collection of essays and artist reports
reads like a preliminary study of just
this question. It is apparent that it
is easier to identify potential outcomes
for art. However, the question does remain
(and this is articulated by some of the
AIL artists), what value, if any,
can art have in the advancement of scientific
knowledge? Perhaps here, the challenge
is for scientists to embark on knowledge
gathering of a different sort. But would
they then still be scientists?
The development of a common language between
artists and scientists and the negotiation
of mutually rewarding goals is essential
for any true collaboration between these
disparate disciplines, according to art
historian Edward Shanken. Shanken quotes
Robert Pepperell who says "the intellectual
traffic must pass in more than one direction".
Though, at least one AIL artist,
Shirley Soh, directly questions this;
"For an artist to get to grips with
doing good science, collaboration with
a scientist is absolutely necessary"
but she says "I am not sure how much
an artist can really contribute to new
discovery in the life sciences or if that
should be an important priority".
Rather, Sohs work, at the Centre
for Biosafety and Sustainability in Basel,
provides an important link between science
and the public. In this regard, it is
highly relevant that the AIL project
occurred in Switzerland where in 1998
a referendum (nicknamed The Gene Protection
Initiative), designed to ban the production
and distribution of transgenic animals,
was only narrowly defeated. This gave
scientists a serious shock at the time
as suggested in a Nature editorial:
"It is not often that a countrys
population deliberately commits a thriving
research and industrial activity to the
grave . . .. To do so as a result of ignorance
or political accident would be a tragic
folly."
Perhaps this came about partially
because of what Rene Stettler calls the
"objectivist attitude" of scientists,
"caused by an ignorance of human
language and communication skills which
neither help to humanize the sciences,
nor address moral or aesthetic values".
While there is some truth in this statement,
the writings of Richard Dawkins, Steven
Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, and Marvin
Minsky, to name a few, suggest that some
scientists can not be so easily categorized.
In this regard, Malina discusses the benefits
of pulling the scientist away from the
microscope for a less reductionist view,
pointing out that this is also a good
strategy for problem solving. The dominance
of the house metaphor in many of the AIL
artists works, noted by Priska Gisler,
suggesting that artists, like the public,
tend to look in at science from the outside.
For example, Isabel Rohners macro-performance,
on the facade of the Swiss Centre for
Electronics and Microtechnologys
main building, highlights the surface
of the structure that contains nano- and
microscopic technologies.
At times, the almost missionary zeal that
AIL brought to these isolated experiences
served to entertain certain stereotypes
about scientists. Thomas Isler expressed
surprise that scientists dealt with genetically
modified organisms in an emotional manner
even though this would be consistent as
a reflection of the general debate. Another
artist, N.S. Harsha had the impression
that scientists simply ask how things
work but never why. Perhaps if
he had interacted with evolutionary biologists,
behavioural scientists or indeed one of
the other AIL laboratories in this
project he would not have arrived at this
conclusion. Rohners isolated experience
in a microscopy facility, not surprisingly,
lead her to focus on the reductionist
traits of scientists, with her commenting
that scientists had a tendency to fragment
objects into small parts. Scientific knowledge
does advance slowly and methodically,
requiring multiple tests before it can
be considered well established. However,
recently in biology, advances in technology
have allowed the development of more "holistic"
approaches where large amounts of data
can be acquired, and analyzed as a whole
in order to better understand complex
systems. The recognition that reductionist
approaches tend to fail, because of complexity
and redundancy inherent in any biological
system, has lead to the development of
fields such as systems biology
and bioinformatics making genome-level
analysis possible. Prior to these developments,
biologists concentrated on single genes
and proteins, knowing this to be an important
initial step in understanding the overall
life process. This simple, linear approach
to experimentation might give observers
the false impression that scientists are
not concerned with the bigger picture.
Even within the AIL project itself,
the laboratories use a variety of methodological
approaches. For instance, the director
of the Artificial Intelligence Institute,
Dr Rolf Pfeifer, stresses the importance
of embodiment in their approach to understanding
the principles underlying intelligent
behaviour. In contrast, Priska Gisler
claims that as specialization increases,
researchers lose the overview. For those
who regularly read Nature (News and
Views) and Science, or attend
scientific meetings (keynote speeches),
this would not seem an entirely
accurate view of science. However, it
would be hard to dispute that artists
may be able to help scientists place their
research in a more human context.
Margarete Jahrmann and Moswitzers
ongoing project, GoApe, seems to
hint that science and technology are somewhat
out of control. Roger Malina insists that
art should play a role to redirect and
change technology. As an astronomer, he
notes that accidents are rare because
equipment is designed, and made at great
expense, to target very specific knowledge.
Be as that may, in other fields, there
is less control over the process of discovery.
While management of invention may be possible,
in basic research there are many accidents,
changes in direction, and novel uses of
technology that can lead to unforeseen
discoveries. This creative freedom is
valued by both artists and pure scientists
alike and without it; the advancement
of pure scientific knowledge would be
seriously hindered.
Perhaps contrary to the idea that art
could be employed to help control scientific
discovery, there is convincing argument
that artists may be able to teach scientists
something about creativity. Professor
Walter J. Gehring says "A person
who is creative is free from goals".
Whether it is possible to be free from
goals and still be human maybe debatable,
but it is the nature of the pure sciences
that they are less bound by goals than
their applied counterparts. The pursuit
of knowledge is not as goal-orientated
as the problem-solving strategies of technology
development. Perhaps then, it is as much
of a mistake to say that scientists are
not creative, as it would be to claim
that artists are not methodical. The separation
of these things may lead to misconceptions
about both art and science. This is not
to say that these disciplines do not have
much to learn from each other. For instance,
the AIL robotics scientists who
describe their methodology as "synthetic"
(understanding by building), report here
that their interaction with artists has
provided definitive insight into their
projects.
Artists may have more freedom to be creative
than scientistsscientists being
confined by method (whereas, perhaps artists
are more confined by tradition). However,
both live in a world of technology, which
is increasingly changing their respective
practices. This project, which has essentially
been an experiment, makes good argument
for art interaction with sciences, highlighting
potential benefits for both disciplines.
Furthermore, in many cases scientists
were indeed provoked into further or ongoing
interactions with artists. For artists
the collaborative potential of this interaction
is huge. Though, as Malina rightly cautions,
"The challenge is to do this with
enough rigour and in ways that can feedback
into science and engineering".