- ArtSciConverge is a movement;
- ArtSciConverge is an international effort, driven by regional nodes centered around scientific field stations and marine labs (FSML), in partnership with museums, universities, artist residencies, arts councils, and many other cultural institutions.
- ArtSciConverge is an umbrella for anyone who wants to participate or use the name to advance their own art/sci programs and/or events to connect them to a larger effort;
- We began as individual art programs that coalesced over a Lunch Table Discussion at the 2014 Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS) / National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML) joint meeting in Wood’s Hole, MA;
- We organized and named ourselves in 2015 during a Reno, NV workshop funded by an NSF Planning Grant;
- We became an official ad-hoc committee of OBFS in 2016;
- We promote artist participation in land management, policy, and cultural change around environmental and ecological issues;
- We attempt to share successes, and address holes inhibiting art/sci collaboration within FSML and artist residencies.
Why?
Discovery is the creation of new knowledge. Both art and science are ways of combining previously unrelated elements to create this new knowledge.
Scientific thinking is almost synonymous with recognizing and forming patterns. Every hypothesis and theory is the discovery of a pattern within some set of observations. For this reason, artists, choreographers, and musicians, whose works invariably invent and play with patterns, have a great deal to teach scientists…
Our own study of Nobel Prize winners indicates that these eminent scientists are 15 to 25 times more likely than the average scientist to engage as an adult in [the] arts…
Arts don’t just prettify science or make technology more aesthetic; they often make both possible.
Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 1999, 2011, 2013.
Our task is to find a way to more formally connect art and science at FSML. ArtSciConverge encourages field research stations to include arts and humanities in their program for the following reasons:
- Art creates emotional connections that science–by design—just can’t;
- Art improves scientific creativity;
- Art detects patterns and creates tools useful as raw material for science;
- Art can actually change human perception;
- Art offers expanded communities of support for field stations;
- Art can create controversy that leads to deeper thought;
- Art explores–and even creates–the values surrounding scientific results that impact how those results will be used in the culture.
Science is fantastic at collecting data and turning it into knowledge. But it’s terrible at creating the empathy needed to move to policy and action. Art is good at that.
Who are we?
ArtSciConverge is an association of regional nodes. See the links in the navigation menu at top of page to learn more about each node.