{"id":202,"date":"2008-03-05T22:08:54","date_gmt":"2008-03-05T22:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15bytes12\/2008\/03\/05\/david-edwards-artscience-reviewed\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T08:54:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:54:05","slug":"david-edwards-artscience-reviewed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/david-edwards-artscience-reviewed\/","title":{"rendered":"David Edwards’ Artscience reviewed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Artscience: Creativity in the post-Google Generation<\/em>
\nby David Edwards<\/p>\n

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I really want to like Artscience. I am totally in agreement with\u00a0 its premise that artists and scientists can benefit by immersing themselves in the other\u2019s discipline. The author David Edwards<\/a>, a biomedical engineering professor at Harvard,\u00a0is obviously excited by the idea, to the point of giddiness. The book indeed is a giddy collection of anecdotes recounting the experiences of various artists and scientists who have done just that.<\/p>\n

Edwards tries to make it clear that the process he is talking about is different from artists who \u201cborrow from science as your neighbor might borrow a tool.\u201d He characterizes the process he is interested in as \u201cidea translation.\u201d The multi-step process the book describes has much in common with what all artists and scientists go through in creating their work; the exception being that artscience idea translators \u201cstudy deeply and open themselves to invigorating new experience in science (if trained in the arts) or the arts (if trained in the sciences).\u201d\u00a0 Edwards talks about idea translation between areas of culture, industry, and academia. The central concept seems to be that an idea may arise in one sector, but needs to be \u201ctranslated\u201d in order to be implemented in another area. A common example of this is when an academic does some research which then needs to be translated to industry to become a product which may then in turn be translated into the cultural sector as it exerts a certain impact on society.<\/p>\n

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The most compelling cited example of this is Diana Dabby,\u00a0\u00a0a concert pianist who became an electrical engineer because she noticed, in the early 1980\u2019s, that articles about new trends in music were being written by electrical engineers rather than musicians. Although the use of fractals in music is now almost commonplace (see, for instance, FractMus<\/a>, a freeware fractal music composer) her thesis \u201cMusical Variations from a Chaotic Mapping\u201d was definitely cutting edge in 1995.\u00a0 You can see Dabby discuss her work in a video available here<\/a>. She is the last presenter in the sequence; the music and process are intriguing.<\/p>\n

One gets the idea, from the way they are introduced, that Edwards has used examples of artists and scientists with whom he was already familiar, and perhaps for this reason (he knew more scientists than artists), the quality of work produced by Edwards\u2019 group of artscientists seems uneven. Having not yet achieved the state of being \u201cpost Google,\u201d I used that search engine to view the work of a number of the people Edwards discusses.<\/p>\n

Sean Palfrey is a doctor who also photographs. Dr. Palfrey has obviously gone farther with photography than many physicians, having traveled over most of the world in pursuit of images. The book describes Dr. Palfrey\u2019s discovery of double exposures as somewhat of an epiphany. \u201cThe synthesis of multiple exposures would become, even if he did not think of it this way, a metaphor for the synthesis of the two lives he had lived since he had started medical school . . .\u201d\u00a0 Of course, many people make double exposures, and you don\u2019t have to be a doctor to learn how. The examples on Dr. Palfrey\u2019s website<\/a>\u00a0seem on the whole rather ordinary.<\/p>\n

Julio Ottino\u00a0is a chemical engineer who was also, earlier, an artist. Edwards says that Ottino credits his experience with observing the mixing of paint with helping him to develop his mathematical ideas about mixing of viscous fluids. I was not able to find any example of Ottino\u2019s artwork on the internet; his interest now seems to focus on research in fluid mechanics and he does not mention art on his web page or in his extensive resume.<\/p>\n

Eric Heller<\/a>,<\/u> a member of the Physics and Chemistry faculties of Harvard University, produces prints based on computer simulations of various phenomena which\u00a0 he is researching. Although certain manipulations are made to the images in Photoshop, and colors are decided by the \u201cartscientist,\u201d the underlying forms that make up the images are determined by the phenomena being simulated. Some of the resulting images are more interesting than others. Overall, they most closely resemble the sort of images you will find by Googling (we are still not yet post-) \u201cfractal art.\u201d It\u2019s one thing, however, to produce interesting patterns that seem \u201cartistic\u201d and another to use a scientific process to engage aesthetic ideas in such a way as to produce art which stands up in the larger context of contemporary art.<\/p>\n

In science, there are referees who decide whether a paper is worthy of publication; in art, we have curators who perform a similar function. Edwards shows us first class scientists whose work is recognized by being included in peer review journals and who have had, at some point in their life, at least some involvement with art. We are not shown any visual artists of similar stature. There is Scientific American<\/em>, but no Art in America<\/em>; Nature<\/em>, but no Artforum<\/em>. Edwards mentions in passing (without stating the title) Damien Hirst\u2019s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living<\/em>, but then, almost dismissively, places it outside the process he is considering by saying, \u201cThis is perhaps effective artscience, but Hirst did not need to study biology or think the way a biologist might about life and what it means to be alive in order to create his installation.\u201d So, Edwards seems to be more interested in his concept of idea translation than in artscience.<\/p>\n

The concepts of artscience and idea translation are really confounded together in Edward\u2019s book. It is, though, possible to have one without the other. Edwards cites several examples of artscience without idea translation. Anyone familiar with Christo\u2019s work knows of the difficulties of translating an idea from the artistic to the cultural\/social sector even with no science involved. And, no doubt examples of idea translation from, say, the academic to the industrial or cultural sectors could be found which did not involve art or science. Perhaps, since the realms of art and science are seen by many as so separate, idea translation involving those sectors is particularly difficult.\u00a0 The whole subject is certainly worthy of study and comment, but Edwards\u2019 ideas on the relationship of art and science seem somewhat fuzzy at this point.<\/p>\n

Edwards has started a center in Paris dedicated to the facilitation of artscience idea translation called Le Laboratoire<\/a>. Perhaps through the work which emerges from that venue, we will see a sharper vision and projects which are first rate in both artistic and scientific content and accomplishment.<\/p>\n

*NPR story<\/a> about Edwards and Le Laboratoire<\/p>\n

Artscience: Creativity in the post-Google Generation<\/em>
\nby David Edwards<\/p>\n