AHRC-NSF MOU: Art-Science Collaborations, Bodies, and Environments

科学和艺术之间的区别有着漫长的历史轨迹，其间不时出现一系列关于两者相对优点的辩论。关于它们的分类边界的不渗透性的明显共识有两个根源。第一次是文艺复兴时期的科学革命，它在很大程度上是基于哥白尼宇宙论、经验主义的兴起，以及现代数学、物理学、生物学和化学的系统发展。第二个是现代大学院系的学科划分逐渐制度化，这在19世纪达到了欧洲教育体系在古典研究和科学技术培训之间的分离的顶峰。尽管现代制度划分的遗产试图将艺术（以及人文学科，它们是其中的一部分）与自然科学拉开距离，但它们围绕着一个共同的历史，这个历史以协商、相互学习和共生为特征，并以宣告根本差异为特征。对这段共同历史的认识，以及将其作为智力资源和原始材料的渴望，有助于推动所谓的“新达芬奇”和“文艺复兴团队”的出现，这是一种松散的运动，在艺术家和科学家之间的合作中蓬勃发展。这些合作的参与者已经形成了新的智力途径，通常阐明了结合科学和人文科学见解的研究领域。这个国际合作研究项目将探索制度、政治、认知和技术矩阵，这些矩阵都允许这些界面的出现，并塑造它们的发展和更广泛的影响。调查人员将对涉及美国和英国不同科学家和艺术家群体的当代合作项目进行多地点研究。研究人员提出的主要问题包括：哪些资源（物质、财务和监管）是为合作而编组的？艺术家如何以及为什么参与并重新诠释一系列科学实践？为什么科学家对他们工作的艺术表现感兴趣？当科学家向艺术家开放他们的实验室时，创造了什么新的公共访问形式？这种合作如何解决复杂问题的伦理和政治层面？这些合作是如何允许参与者和他们的不同观众如何理解艺术和科学的内容和目的以及他们在社会中的地位的转变发生的？为了解决这些问题，研究者将采用参与者观察、访谈、焦点小组、调查和视觉解释方法，以便对五个艺术科学合作场所的日常活动和产品进行详细的描述和分析。除了以前使用的方法外，研究者将特别关注科学家和艺术家之间互动的地理方面，以认识人、物的空间情境以及约束和转化它们的关系。该项目将为理解如何将“经验教训”转换到其他环境中做出重大贡献，从而开发和实现不同地点的公共推广模式。由于科学与艺术合作的研究往往需要提高公众对许多当代世界危机和发现的认识，因此该项目将作为一项创新战略发展的研究，以提供大众教育和知识转移，致力于及时解决与更大公众利益有关的政策相关问题。该项目将有助于绘制一个广泛的新兴资源网络，以促进人文科学、社会科学和物理科学之间的进一步合作，使其成为寻求开发研究合作新方向的研究人员和资助机构的资源。该项目也有可能对供资机构产生变革性影响。随着由公共和私人基金会资助的跨学科合作项目在学术界范围内外越来越普遍，这样的项目可以帮助提供一个调查模型和评估其效果和有效性的基线。

The distinctions drawn between scientific and artistic endeavors have a long, historical trajectory, punctuated by a series of debates on the relative merits of each. T he apparent consensus regarding the impermeability of their categorical boundaries has two roots. The first was the scientific revolution of the Renaissance, predicated in large part upon the rise of Copernican cosmology, empiricism, and the systematic development of modern mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry. The second was the gradual institutionalization of disciplinary divisions in the faculties of the modern university, which in the 19th century culminated in the segregation of the European educational system between classical studies and scientific and technical training. Despite the legacy of a modern-day institutional compartmentalization that seeks to distance the arts (and the humanities of which they are a part) from the natural sciences, they revolve within a shared history characterized as much by negotiation, mutual learning, and symbiosis as by pronouncements of fundamental difference. The recognition of this shared history as well as a desire to draw upon it as both intellectual resource and source material helps drive the emergence of what has been termed the "new Leonardos" and "Renaissance teams," a loosely held movement that thrives upon the collaboration between artists and scientists. The participants in these collaborations have forged new intellectual pathways, often articulating areas of study that combine insights from the sciences and humanities. This international collaborative research project will explore the institutional, political, epistemic, and technological matrices that both allow for these interfaces to emerge and that shape their development and wider impact. The investigators will conduct a multi-sited study of contemporary collaborative projects involving diverse groups of scientists and artists in the United States and the United Kingdom. Major questions that the investigators address include: What sorts of resources (material, financial, and regulatory) are marshaled for the collaborations? How and why do artists engage with and reinterpret a range of scientific practices? Why are scientists interested in artistic representations of their work? What new forms of public access are created when scientists open their laboratories to artists? How do such collaborations tackle the ethical and political dimensions of complex problems? How do these collaborations allow for a shift to occur regarding how participants and their various audiences understand the content and purpose of art and science as well as their place within society? In pursuing these questions, the investigators will employ participant observation, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and visual interpretative methods in order to generate detailed descriptions and analyses of the day-to-day activities and products of five sites of art-science collaboration. In addition to previously used approaches, the investigators will focus particular attention on geographic aspects of the interactions among scientists and artists in order to recognize the spatial situatedness of people, things and the relations that bind and transform them.The project will make a substantial contribution toward understanding how "lessons learned" can be transposed into other contexts, thereby developing and realizing models for public outreach at different sites. Because the examination of science-art collaborations often entails the advancement of public knowledge about a number of contemporary world-wide crises and discoveries, the project will serve as a study of the development of innovative strategies for the delivery of popular education and knowledge transfer devoted to timely, policy-related issues of the larger public interest. The project will aid in the mapping of a broad network of emerging resources for further collaborations across the humanities and social and physical sciences, making it a resource for researchers and funding agencies seeking to develop new directions in research collaboration. The project also has the potential to have a transformative impact upon funding agencies. As interdisciplinary, collaborative projects, funded by both public and private foundations and occurring both inside and outside the bounds of the academy become more widespread, projects like this one can help provide a model for investigation and a baseline for assessing their effects and effectiveness.