Description
Art is often seen as useful for science communication, visualising concepts for public engagement. This view underestimates significant epistemic contributions of art to scientific knowledge. Art challenges disciplinary assumptions, introduces alternative methodologies, and fosters novel ways of engaging with material phenomena.
This talk explores how art-science collaborations advance scientific research through artistic processes and motivations. Examples are presented where art has directly contributed to breakthroughs across fields, from astrophysics to material science.
Drawing on new materialist perspectives from Bennett, Barad, and Nail, I argue that art-science encounters are inherently valuable, even when their outcomes are unpredictable or not immediately measurable. Nail’s concept of "indeterminate relational processes" resonates with Bennett’s material agency and Barad’s "intra-action," emphasising the entanglement of subject and observer. Collaborations, shaped by both material and conceptual entanglements, push knowledge production beyond traditional disciplinary frameworks.
I compare digital and material encounters, drawing on my experience as both a digital visual effects and a glassblowing artist. While digital technologies like VR provide intuitive understandings, material engagement utilises natural perception and fosters emergent discoveries. This parallels the contrast between simulations and analogue experiments, where unpredictable physical processes reveal the unexpected.
I draw connections between my own work with caustics - structural geometries created by light and glass - and the formation of the cosmic web. Caustic catastrophe singularities form the large-scale structure of the universe, where galaxies and dark matter cluster in a caustic skeleton. This analogy reveals how art can illuminate the fundamental networks and interconnectedness that shape the cosmos.
