Beverly has asked me to introduce this months topic, as penance for noising it up last month.
She asked me to talk about 'sciart', as I deliver a lot of workshops to schools for the Edinburgh Science Festival and Aberdeen Techfest. These have proven to be far more compelling platforms for me to express my own ideas, than any gallery or screening. New media art owes some of its existence to the artist/scientists who sought early access to powerful computers. I'm thinking of a couple of comparitively unknown artists like Donna Cox and John Lewis with their 3-d mathematical imaging, and later and more famously William Latham. A lot of the tools we use, particularly software like Photoshop, 3-d software and vector graphics are all creative developments of remote-sensing equipment. Many of you will be familiar with the Sciart initiative, now in its final year. Behind the cheesy logo seems to lie an exciting opportunity for collaborations between artists and scientists. Check out: http://www.sciart.org/site/ to browse the 2002 commissions and see what you think. Again, some of the language is unecessarily hazy, and they only give money to posh people ;-) but there are some interesting possibilities there - I'm glad to see they're supporting MakroLab, we could do with a podule in every country. Leigh argued last month that the art has become 'attendant' to the science in this kind of project - simply illustrating or mediating it. I think this is a really interesting observation. Mark Lawton hinted that art activities have become a tool of social inclusion too - lots of us here are delivering art workshops to apparently mediate the whims of social engineers rather than promoting art for its own sake. Has art been co-opted then to serve the needs of others at its own expense and sciart is just another example of this? Or are the motivations of the people doing art and science identical, driven by a different way of seeing the world, investigating hidden landscapes, and sometimes trying to encourage others to do the same? Is anyone here influenced by scientific investigation or visualisation - or have you come across a good piece of 'sciart'. Is there such a thing? Anyhoo - its a really sunny day here in Edinburgh so I'm off outside for a non-digital experience. Might see some of you at Burning Bush in Dundee next weekend, (whatever it is Andy! ;-) ). Regards Cavan ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
