Art and Science

Vision Forum has from the outset worked with researchers in the hard sciences to investigate how meetings between specialists in the two fields can inspire creativity on both sides. During one of the (In)visible Dialogue sessions organised by Vision Forum in 2011, Sandra Masur (Mount Sinai, New York) and Laurent Devèze (ISBA, Besançon) underlined how the scientific laboratory has gradually grown more into a communal working place for research and development over the last decade. The practice has shifted to larger research teams where the responsibilities are divided and tasks differentiated, but still retaining a common goal. On the other hand, the artist has retained his/her singular brand name and a more insular process. We have seen movements where artists form groups (Superflex, General Idea), but also artists like Olafur Eliasson and Tomàs Saraceno develop studios that emulate the working methods of architectural firms. But we our preparatory research suggests that by implicating methodologies from the sciences that this can develop further.

Vision Forum sees great potential developing parallel strategies to institutions like the Santa Fe Institute that look at large populations in major cities or the interactions in schools of fish. Here the extended specialization and at the same time demand for amassing and evaluating gigantic amounts of data has forced researchers to collaborate with researchers in the humanities and design. Vision Forum has developed both a practice and the theoretical and digital tools to create situations for true artistic research and production based on the above mentioned working methods.