Introduction
“…a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today.” (Bohm, 1990)
Dialogues established in the field of art and science, through interdisciplinary projects, such as those established under the banner of the Wellcome Trust, the Arts Council, the Gulbenkian Foundation, Artakt at the University of the Arts, London, and other agencies, are subject to limitations that are similar in other interdisciplinary areas. The fundamental concepts that underpin interdisciplinary projects in art and science are of a nature that may also be useful for other interactions between different disciplines, using diverse approaches and aiming to create new meanings. Parallels and differences between professional activities and cultures are under the lens. Creativity, and issues of disciplinary rigour, are at the core of much collaboration in different subject areas. A fruitful Dialogue needs to be established to ensure a true exchange of ideas between artists and scientists. The idea of the Dialogue, as intended by physicist David Bohm (1917-1992), must be the leitmotif of any good interdisciplinary project.
“In a dialogue, when a person says something, the other person does not in general respond with exactly the same meaning as that seen by the first person. Rather, the meanings are only similar and not identical. Thus, when the second person replies, the first person sees a difference between what he meant to say and what the other person understood.
On considering this difference, he may then be able to see something new, which is relevant both to his own views and to those of the other person. And so it can go backward and forward, with the continual emergence of a new content that is common to both participants. Thus, in a dialogue, each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it may be said that the people are making something in common, i.e., creating something new together.“ (Bohm, 1990)
“Good” communication is often ailing and new forms of effective communication are sought in order to create connections between individuals or groups of individuals. The American theoretical physicist, David Bohm, who contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, philosophy of the mind and neuropsychology, advanced the view that the old Cartesian model of reality (with two interacting kinds of substance – mental and physical) was limited. Bohm established his thoughts in the light of contemporary advances in quantum physics. His contribution, amongst other things, was in the development of detailed mathematical and physical theory, of implicate and explicate order. Bohm believed that the workings of the brain, at the cellular level, obey the mathematics of quantum effects. Using the language of molecular dynamics, he postulated that thought was distributed and non-localised. The parallel with quantum entities is valid in that these do not readily fit into our conventional model of space and time. In a similar way, thought does not conform to such conventions. Bohm warned of the dangers of rampant reason and technology, advocating instead the need for genuine supportive dialogue, which, he claimed, could broaden and unify conflicting and troublesome divisions in the social world. In this his epistemology mirrored his ontological viewpoint. Bohm stated:
Dialogue can be considered as a free flow of meaning between people in communication, in the sense of a stream that flows between banks. It may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated. (Bohm, 1990)
These “banks”, were understood by Bohm as representing the various points of view of the participants.
It is apparent that the word “dialogue” has many connotations according to Bohm who gave it a particular meaning. According to the physicist, Dialogue is not about trying to make one’s points prevail. The challenge is to see when one is focused on prevailing, because, if anybody prevails, it means that the dialogue has failed. Or else, if a simple agreement emerges, the dialogue may also have failed because this means that one has not gone deeply enough into the process or into the consciousness behind it.
Meetings of Minds – Lens on Life
I would like to turn now to a specific example. In the field of art&science collaborations. Pairings were established between four sets of prominent artists and four distinguished scientists as part ofMitoSys, a European project devised by a scientific research consortium composed by twelve European scientific institutions. MitoSys, stands for Systems Biology of mitosis.
The broad aim was to identify a common ground for a new form of communication aimed at the general public about the research carried out over five years by molecular biologists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians and computer modellers in a number of high-level European scientific institutions. The brief, given by the EU and by the consortium of scientists, included explaining to the general public, the meaning of Systems Biology, an emerging approach applied to biomedical and biological scientific research.
The initial proposal included an exhibition, Lens on Life, in three European cities. The final proposal had the added element of a documentary, Meetings of Minds, filmed in the scientific laboratories and in the artists’ studios, narrating the process and the outcomes of the dialogue established between the scientists and the artists. The first intuition, taking into account current research but also referring to the history of the discovery of the cell, was that looking and seeing are fundamental to the understanding that there are very small parts, invisible to the naked eye, that compose our bodies, plants and all living things. These small units, seen for the first time with the use of a microscope – hence the title of the exhibition, Lens on Life – were named cells by Robert Hooke in the 17th century, and have been the main subject of modern biology since their discovery. This new way of seeing revolutionised how the world of living things had been previously perceived. New theories have since developed that have depended on the physical and sensory act of looking and experimenting. Against this background, the parallels between creative processes in science and in the arts, became a fundamental part of the Lens on Life project.
The question that generally arises whenever a science & art project is devised with the inclusion of artists functioning in a scientific background, and scientists in an artistic environment, is: what do scientists gain from exposure to artists? How can artists mingle within science environments? And how can scientists merge within an artistic environment? It is apparent that one is not concerned with the individual, but with the system that produces artists and scientists, even though the question is not framed as such. Systems of knowledge shift with the times. Up to the 19th century art and science were not as separate as they are now, and technology had a place that was indicative of a link between the arts and science. In the Renaissance there was no such thing as an “artist”. There were painters, architects, sculptors, etc., but the term “artist” was not invoked.
Science itself is a generic term: there are different types of science and different kinds of investigation into the natural world. A better term might in fact have been the one used up to the 19th century, Natural Science, that did not exclude individuals or groups of individuals who were fascinated by the classification of natural phenomena, either experimenting with painting and sculpture or with chemistry and physics.
Paradoxically, contemporary artists may fit better the category of Natural Scientists: contemporary art has, significantly since the 1930s, broken boundaries and created new paradigms. Technology, coupled with science and with art, often serves as a useful link between disciplines that would, otherwise, be separate.
Throughout the project, as the definitions of cell division, mitosis and cell parts, of movement and statics were being sought, so were the meanings of creativity, invention and experiment. It became increasingly clear that it was not possible to give a single, comprehensive meaning to any of the big ideas examined in the project. If the meaning could be known to everyone, the project would have been redundant, and the Dialogue between the scientists and the artists superfluous. As it happens, through the Meetings of Minds and Lens on Life project, we got close to meanings and ideas that were common to thought processes, with different outcomes. The dialogue was not aimed at settling anything in particular, as Bohm himself predicated. Meanings were explored together – the creative perception of meaning – thinking together, looking and feeling together and, last but not least,making together (the art works, the exhibition, the documentary, the films, etc.).
The restless movement of cells, and thus of our bodies, is the driving force of the piece. Working with only pencil and paper as a starting point this work has emerged from hundreds of drawings that grow, evolve and mutate. The motion appears as random, yet it is controlled and contained by a process of refinement, and suggests ambiguity of scale between the intimacy of the cell and vastness of the universe. The drawings have been inverted and painstakingly animated in a film, evoking laboratory images and the unique beauty of mitotic shapes. (Lens on Life, 2014-15)
The word “beauty” appears unapologetically, as it does in the works produced by artists Lucy and Jorge Orta in dialogue with Dresden based scientist, Tony Hyman, by artist, Rob Kesseler, in dialogue with Cambridge based scientist, Melina Schuh, and by choreographer, Shobana Jeyasingh, in dialogue with Oxford based scientist, Kim Nasmyth.
The idea of making a documentary, so as to record the exchanges taking place between the artists and the scientists, was paramount vis-à-vis the idea of establishing effective communication of the knowledge of cell division and scientific research for a general public. The traditional device would have been that of explaining, in more or less successful terms, facts that are already contained in textbooks or that may be extracted from laboratory papers. The sections devised for the Meetings of Minds, Ways of Saying, Ways of Being, Ways of Seeing, Ways of Growing, were intentionally chosen for their poetic nuances, and were instrumental for punctuating the process and for attributing “portions of meaning” to the whole. Once the Dialogue between the artists and the scientists had been established, the question of the chunks of knowledge that needed to be imparted to the general public evaporated. The sense of creating a new system of communication between the project participants emerged. This communication became, as it increasingly appeared, a means for “talking” to the general public through the Dialogue established between the artists and the scientists. The Dialogue ensured that, in spite of the fixed task of producing an exhibition that explained cell division, and mitosis, process and outcome would not be static. As David Bohm stated, “the meaning is naturally, spontaneously active and transformative”.
Melina Schuh (Laboratory of Molecular Biology, MRC, Cambridge) who investigates meiosis in mammalian oocytes, was paired with artist Rob Kesseler. They aimed to establish a common territory where images of science overlapped with art and design.
An oocyte is the beginning of life; the oocyte develops into an egg. Surrounding the egg is the zona pellucida, a membrane that binds spermatozoa. As with life, so it is with art, a point of contact, the moment of inception triggered by a fertile observation.
Under the microscope the intangibility of an oocyte belies it’s latent life perpetuating properties. The crucible of molten glass in the furnace is likewise formless, radiating light and heat; it requires the eye of the artist and the hand of the craftsman working together through a process of alchemical genesis in pursuit of the realisation of an idea.
Tony Hyman (The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden) who works on the molecular mechanism of conserved cytoskeletal processes, established a dialogue with artists Lucy and Jorge Orta. Their sculptural work investigated the boundaries of the body as a metaphorical supportive structure. The artists created glass sculptures representing the transformations of the immensely complex structures of human cells.
Finally, Kim Nasmyth, who researches chromosomes segregation in mitosis and meiosis, established a dialogue with choreographer, Shobana Jeyasingh, to find common metaphors for a piece of dance for film.
In Flagrante reflects on the flux of movement from the margins to the centre. The piece establishes a parallel with the movement of the microtubular structures involved during mitosis presenting a physical journey filled with tension and instability, hits and misses, of search and hard won capture. The music was treated so that the tension was condensed and the words were carved out in keeping with the extreme instability of both the microtubules and the dancer’s body.
At the end of the project it appeared that the successful dialogue between the artists and the scientists reflected closely Bohm’s thought:
Dialogue is not to communicate. It is much deeper. It addresses the blocks in communication, not merely to understand them, but to meet them directly. It is aimed at seeing resistances to communication. In Dialogue we are ready to raise topics serious enough to cause trouble. But while we are talking we are interested in being aware of what’s going on inside us and between us.
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References
Bohm, D., (1992) “Thought as a System” (transcript of seminar held in Ojai, California, from 30 November to 2 December 1990), Routledge, London.
Bohm, D. (2013) On Dialogue, Routledge, London
MitoSys, see www.MitoSys
Lens on Life, exhibitions in Rome, London and Heidelberg, 2014-2015, see www.artakt.co.uk
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Marina Wallace, former Professor of Curation and Director of Artakt, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London, has a background in classics, fine art, art history and journalism. She curated a number of groundbreaking exhibitions including Seduced, Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2007/8); Spectacular Bodies: the Art and Science of the Human Body, from Leonardo to Now (Hayward Gallery, 2000/01); Head On, Art with the Brain in Mind (Science Museum, London, 2002); Mendel, The Genius of Genetics (Mendel Museum, Brno, 2003).
She is the author of a number of publications, including John Hilliard, 1969-1996 (Verlag Das Wunderhorn, 1999); Spectacular Bodies. The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now (Yale University Press, 2000); Head On, Art with the Brain in Mind (2003); Mendel, the Genius of Genetics (2003); Seduced, Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now (2007); Acts of Seeing, Zidane Press, 2009; La Cultura Italiana, Volume X (UTET, 2010), The Lives of Paintings (2011). Her latest art&science project is a visual interpretation for the public dissemination of scientific knowledge for an EU project, MItoSys (2010-2015), the exhibition, Lens on Life, and the documentary Meetings of Minds, (2012-2015). The latest exhibition she curated is Spellbound, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, Ashmolean Museum, 13 August 2018- 6 January 2019. Marina is currently living in Rome, Italy, where she is teaching yoga, and planning a documentary on science & art, present and past.
First published in Interalia Magazine, ‘Convergent Territories’, July 2014) - https://www.interaliamag.org/articles/dialogue-in-art-and-science/