I’d like to respond to two points in Erich’s post. First, a story.

I was part of a visiting group of artists and scientists from Cambridge
University (UK) to MIT (Cambridge, USA). This was neither the first or last
time I visited MIT ­ but this was our experience on this particular visit.
They were very welcoming and gave us a lot of their time over a period of a
few days. However, one of the first meetings we had was with the person with
oversight of creative arts at MIT. Although MIT has the MediaLab, which has
a few artists working within it, the List gallery and CAVS (which runs a
research based visual arts graduate programme) it does not have a school or
department of creative arts. Therefore the person who oversees creative arts
at MIT is not an academic nor an artist. They are a marketing officer. She
was, like everyone, very welcoming. She effused about how important MIT
considered the creative arts to be and how wonderful it was that we were
visiting. She then went on to say that it was important that at the end of a
hard day doing very serious science MIT’s scientists really need to unwind ­
and that the art, music and performing arts are there to help them chill
out. Basically, it was a case of artists being important to scientists as
they offer the entertainment the scientists need when they aren’t doing
their serious work. She thought what she was telling us was wonderful.
Little did she know that, being English, we were all very politely and
secretly seething inside. We were appalled. I have encountered this same
attitude at many of the institutions I have worked in and am use to it ­ but
this one (as we say) took the biscuit. Not even a thought was given to how
art can be, and is, a form of inquiry, a means to ask some of the toughest
questions and to challenge the most sacred of cows.

Secondly, I fear that if you choose to wait for our education system to move
away from commercialisation and intrumentalisation then you could be
twiddling your thumbs for a very long time indeed. In the UK these
tendencies are rapidly accelerating in every subject area, with a negative
impact on both curiosity driven research and the creative arts. If you
cannot demonstrate a direct socio-economic outcome of your proposed work it
will not be funded. If you cannot show that your students will be employable
your course will not be accredited. The UK government has just published its
15 year framework for education. At its heart is industry involvement in
defining course content and delivery, the abolition of peer review for
assuring academic quality (to be replaced by an annual student survey and
evaluation of graduate employment rates) and the placing of industrialists
and business people on the peer review panels that evaluate research quality
and determine which research proposals are funded. A key criteria for
funding will be economic impact. In response to academics’ criticisms of the
new system the government has introduced measures for assessing the
long-term impact associated with blue skies slow burn research. They will
allow up to 5 years for the assessment window ­ the scientists were asking
for 20! Sorry to bring you this bad news.

The good news? More students will be permitted and a broader demographic
encouraged to complete a higher degree ­ although there will be less
resource per unit to fund this.

Best

Simon


Simon Biggs

Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
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www.eca.ac.uk

Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
CIRCLE research group
www.eca.ac.uk/circle/

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www.littlepig.org.uk
AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk



From: erich <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: erich <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 16:36:48 +0200
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Fwd: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Art-Science and
Science-Art Curricula: Call for Contributions

Hello list,

On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 12:23 +0000, Simon Biggs wrote:
> Hi Tom
> 
> Some scientists regard science as you do ­ as the best of a set of
> relatively better or worse options. However, many are absolutist.

This is also an experience i had during my 2 month stay in a biological
research station. There was quite a throughput of researchers during
this time and so a lot of possibility to talk with scientists which we
did not collaborate with.
I was specifically surprised by a few things which constantly came up:
For example the understanding of art, basically as entertainment, to
give pleasure and show beauty, something you engage with in your
leisure. This is not a generalization about scientists but it seems to
reflect the general opinion of what art is to about 90%(is it too
optimistic ?) of our fellow humans.
On the other hand a collaboration between artist and scientist was only
imaginable to an extent that art could be a vehicle to popularize
science (as in public relations not as in knowledge transfer). That
artists could take a role which would be different and not in behalf of
science was difficult to comprehend by most.
I think this might show quite well that the ideas we are discussing
do not reach very far into the scientific community.
Pointing towards what was brought up by Armin and defended by Tom I find
it rather difficult to navigate between the ideal of science and the
many faces of science I experience and that the "old arguments" are very
much alive.
At the end we have too choose our collaboration partners as being
individuals(doing science) and not as being scientist.
I also want to restate that there is much potential in education to find
new disciplines which stem from and coexist together with art and
science. A prerequisite is to get rid of the economization of education
our educational systems are still experiencing.

Best

erich

  


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