Interactions between
science & art
science & art
There are very old and deep rooted prejudices towards art. For example, there is the somewhat widespread opinion that art, is a discipline of the beautiful, almost as if aesthetics were the natural and exclusive expressive dimension of artistic experience. In the same way, the artist's work is frequently reflected in a romantic cliché composed of unconstrained intuition, almost as if his thinking were guided solely by sudden and striking visions, flashes of dazzling emotions and uncontrollable vital forces. In this simplified and superficial view, the image of art is usually set against that of science, described with the characteristics of a virtuous universe, committed to investigating not appearances but the constituent elements of reality.
In contrast to the artist, the scientist is an earnest and patient person who, in spite of having meticulously verified the data gathered in the laboratory, is always gallantly prepared to see his own result refuted when a colleague has followed a superior investigative method. We don't need to bother Aristotle or to reconstruct the etymology of the words technology or art - that most famous grimace of Albert Einstein, the portrait with long, rebellious hair and his tongue poking out at the camera lens is enough to destroy a similar landscape.
Or remember how Cézanne needed at least 150 sittings to transform his impression of a face into a portrait. Behind such gross simplifications there lies a recurring ambiguity, that of mistaking the end of artistic research with the means by which it was developed. Likewise, scientific research is identified as a journey intent on discovering the truth, rather than the exhausting struggle towards a potentially possible reality.
The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote: "In works of art or in theory. meaning is inseparable from the perception. Expression, therefore, is never complete. The highest level of rationality borders on irrationality". Associated with the search for meaning, for a sense, for a truth that has only been glimpsed, partially or hypothetically, artistic experience and the construction of an interpretive theory find they share the same destiny: artistic forms do not exhaust themselves in experience that is merely aesthetic, just as scientific hypotheses cannot manifest themselves without implying a formal, articulated universe. One has to admit that during the 20th century art has known how to appropriate scientific propositions for itself with more curiosity whereas science, by contrast, has not known how to profit from artistic procedures. The experiments in elementary physics prepared by Man Ray with dust and plate glass; the processes borne of Mandelbrot's fractal geometry; the conceptual rigour with which Joseph Beuys expresses the experience of existence through the decomposition of matter; the mathematical spatial rearrangements of Giulio Paolini; the perceptual distortions obtained by Nam June Paik with the obsessive use of televisual images: art has never stopped rewriting the models of science and technology in new contexts.
Only in recent years has scientific research appeared to have understood that procedures of artistic creativity can be usefully put in the service of innovation. Novelty must not always result from discovery: art teaches that invention can be in the eye of the observer, in the capacity to see beyond appearances. To recontextualize a thought, an idea, a method can turn out to be genuinely and practically revolutionary. Art and science are not alien notions but communicating vessels, exchangers of sense and energy which share the same interest towards the hidden structures of reality. The attention mondoBIOTECH is paying to the language of artistic creativity is based on recognition of this similarity of viewpoints. We are convinced that scientific research can enhance the efficacy of our own learning by varying new behavioural models. Marrying science and information, pharmaceutical research and design, communication and ex-perimentation to develop therapeutic forms which are born from the encounter between available knowledge and new treatment requirements. It's not about renouncing the classic models of science as much as appreciating their efficacy in unexpected contexts, adopting attitudes similar to those in art and creativity.
The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote: "In works of art or in theory. meaning is inseparable from the perception. Expression, therefore, is never complete. The highest level of rationality borders on irrationality". Associated with the search for meaning, for a sense, for a truth that has only been glimpsed, partially or hypothetically, artistic experience and the construction of an interpretive theory find they share the same destiny: artistic forms do not exhaust themselves in experience that is merely aesthetic, just as scientific hypotheses cannot manifest themselves without implying a formal, articulated universe. One has to admit that during the 20th century art has known how to appropriate scientific propositions for itself with more curiosity whereas science, by contrast, has not known how to profit from artistic procedures. The experiments in elementary physics prepared by Man Ray with dust and plate glass; the processes borne of Mandelbrot's fractal geometry; the conceptual rigour with which Joseph Beuys expresses the experience of existence through the decomposition of matter; the mathematical spatial rearrangements of Giulio Paolini; the perceptual distortions obtained by Nam June Paik with the obsessive use of televisual images: art has never stopped rewriting the models of science and technology in new contexts.
Only in recent years has scientific research appeared to have understood that procedures of artistic creativity can be usefully put in the service of innovation. Novelty must not always result from discovery: art teaches that invention can be in the eye of the observer, in the capacity to see beyond appearances. To recontextualize a thought, an idea, a method can turn out to be genuinely and practically revolutionary. Art and science are not alien notions but communicating vessels, exchangers of sense and energy which share the same interest towards the hidden structures of reality. The attention mondoBIOTECH is paying to the language of artistic creativity is based on recognition of this similarity of viewpoints. We are convinced that scientific research can enhance the efficacy of our own learning by varying new behavioural models. Marrying science and information, pharmaceutical research and design, communication and ex-perimentation to develop therapeutic forms which are born from the encounter between available knowledge and new treatment requirements. It's not about renouncing the classic models of science as much as appreciating their efficacy in unexpected contexts, adopting attitudes similar to those in art and creativity.
