Science Meets Art

This book explores collaboration between artists and scientists and examines the ways in which scientific data and research findings can be communicated, translated and transformed using the techniques of contemporary art and information technology. Contemporary art forms—including installation, sculpture, painting, computer-based art, Internet art and interactive electronic artworks—are able to provide new and creative outlets, with expanded audiences, for scientific research. The book, which features 75 illustrations of works created as a result of art–science collaboration between scientists and artists, is important in the field because it presents a thorough account of the collaboration through the eyes of a leading creative practitioner and a leading cultural theorist. It contains a wide range of in-detail examples of successful collaborative works that illustrate the breadth and depth of contemporary interdisciplinary creative-research approaches.

1. A Brief History of Science/Art 2. Artists Working with Science 3. Environmental Science Meets Art 4. Culturescape: Environment, Science, andArt at Bundanon 5. Heavy Metal: Paintingand Chemistry 6. Genemusik 7. Waterworks 8. Insects 9. Sounds of Science

John Potts is a professor of media and director of the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University, Australia. He has published widely in culture and technology, digital media, media history, contemporary arts and intellectual history. Prof. Potts has authored or edited 12 books, including The New Time and Space, A History of Charisma, Ideas in Time, Use and Reuse of the Digital Archive and The Future of Writing. Nigel Helyer is a sculptor and sound artist whose work links art and science in a strong embrace of the environment, identity and cultural history. He has an international reputation for his large-scale public artworks, sound sculptures, environmental projects and interactive installations that prompt the community to engage with their cultural histories, identity and sense of place, inviting us to examine the abstract conditions of our world and our complex relationshipswith it.