By Fiona Marcelino
Science and art are often positioned at opposite ends of a
spectrum; science or art. There
exists the common combination of science with medicine, technology or nature;
and art with literature, culture, and music; but rarely do people collaborate
art with science.
It is that cultural divide that hinders art and science from
gaining new insights and perspectives.
The idea that artists and scientists can collaborate,
inspire and improve each other’s fields is one that Salt Lake City is running
with.
The Leonardo is a contemporary museum that explores the
unexpected ways that science, technology, art and creativity connect by holding
themed activities that combine art and science.
Previous projects have consisted of creating temporary water
art, exploring the science of bubbles, creating lenses out of gelatin to see
how it affects light, and drawing with light using a camera, lasers and light
bubs.
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has also found ways to
incorporate science with art by collaborating with the Clark Planetarium, The
University of Utah’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the
Utah Museum of Natural History. They have also organized Art and Science Artful
Afternoons, where families could enjoy a month of art and science by learning
about various science related topics through a series of free family art-making
festivals.
Often times the reaction of the science world is that art is
too imprecise for the scientific process, but science and art both ask the same
questions. What is everything? Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we
going?
String theorist, Brain Greene, recently wrote that the arts
have the ability to “give a vigorous shake to our sense of what’s real, jarring
the scientific imagination into imagining new things.” He also expressed his
thoughts on how artists can make the metaphors of physics tangible, which can
provide new mathematical meanings from a different perspective.
In a recent NPR interview with Cormac McCarthy (novelist), Werner Herzog (filmmaker) and
Lawrence Kruass (physicist) the idea of how science can be inspiration for art was examined.
Herzog and McCarthy both described their involvement in
science as inspiration for their films or novels. Both men explore themes of
science in arts and culture and each spoke of how they create an imaginary
world related to a real world.
