SCIENCE.AM is a project by Alistair McClymont to document ongoing research into art and science. To investigate the similarity between scientists and artists. The hypothesis is that both ultimately search for truth and both see beauty in that truth.

Based in the arena of looking at creativity in multiple disciplines, this project is an exercise in generating questions, or creating branches.

There’s a greater area of investigation thats impossible to see at present. It feels like i’m at a seed stage currently, though it is one i’ve been undertaking tacitly for many years already. Each new question is like a branch or a root growing. They are not independent, each new growth is necessary to understand the whole.

The methods of the art/designer/scientist are much more interesting than the outcomes.

The process by which we define a person has huge consequences on that person and what they should and can do.

The methods of cognition and creativity between fields relate more strongly to core human abilities and concerns. The kind of outcome is secondary. 

A university education pays undue significance on the kind of outcome they should be producing and place that ahead of the kind of thinking/doing they should be doing.

How does the scientist move in the direction of an artist

How does the artist move in the direction of a scientist.

In working with scientists there are so many moments where I saw them working creatively in a very similar manner to an artist. The laboratory of an experimental physicist is so similar to the studio of a sculptor, the difference is only in the level of cleanliness and expense of materials.

The notion of defining an area of design is ultimately unhelpful. In doing so however one achieves useful purposes.

For a student of design these new definitions, such as speculative design give validation to work that they thought wasn’t viable. Students are scared to leave the confines of their own field, these fields are defined for them by their degrees. 

Naim June Paik: Nixon
Chris Burden: The Speed of Light Machine
Edwin Abbott: Flatland

These 3 works show ideas and creativity fluidly moving between realms of culture and science. They are by no means more important than many other examples. But I find all quite compelling at this moment in time.

Critical design practice - quotes from the book

Dunne and Raby's A/B list shows:

"Design as it is usually understood" / "Kind of design that one finds oneself doing"

B is not intended to replace A, it simply adds another dimension.

These texts influenced the diagram:

Quantum Gravity, Carlo Rovelli
The Blind Watchmaker and Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins
The Island of the Colour-Blind, Oliver Sacks
plus a lot of online articles on artificial intelligence

A recent art/design work has been centred on artificial intelligence (Of machines learning to see lemon). I've been very interested in looking at how real and artificial neurons function. Oliver sacks talks at length about how the brain works, often by using examples and patients who've non-normal functions.

The goal was always to confound certain opinions. To create something that was at once a piece of art and science simultaneously. 

Focus on the object, not the background, the rest follows.

The object in question is the artwork What if we could look at the sun with x-ray vision. This is the result of a project that began in 2014. The ABOUT page gives a background on the project.

Literature and Science by Huxley (also discussed here) touches on things that we know, and things that we can't. I wanted to expand this into a diagram. 

Both the arts and sciences look at things that we don't know both make things, both try to then add to the things that we know.

As each discovery, invention, creation tends to bring up new questions I propose a formula...

IF:

A = Things that we know

B = Things that we don't know

THEN:

A<B
As A increases B increases by a greater factor.