L'art et la science

One third of the attendees at this weekend’s SciBarCamp in Toronto were visual artists and musicians. The aim of the event was to not only be the first Science BarCamp but also to bring together artists, scientists and technologists.

Impetus for Collaboration
Some assumptions about art and science seemed to underlie the conference sessions. The main assumption was that artists and scientists should collaborate, not just inform and inspire each others work, but collaborate. There was also the assumption that artists are interested in science and technology and in being involved as science and technology become more pervasive in society. Another assumption was that art-science collaboration is somehow quite obvious, necessary and desirable in ways that art-politics, art-economics, art-markets, art-education, art-sports, etc. are not.

Why would collaboration between art and science be obvious and natural? Abstractly, there seems to be some overlap in the goals of art and science regarding the need to create, explore, probe, understand, explain and inspire. Both also have a degree of inherent universality, a need to communicate and a use of concept and metaphor.

Concretely, there are other reasons why a collaboration of art and science would be natural:

• To provide useful information display of scientific results, even if only to scientific audiences, particularly given the very large and very small scales at which contemporary science is conducted

• To respond to the hastening pace of science and technology change making the role of artists as interpreters, translators, experiencers and arbiters more imperative. Artists have a key role in the discussion of science and technology’s impact on life and culture

• To facilitate the increasingly audio-visual multimedia world of today with streaming video, 3d web and virtual worlds all seeking innovative data display tools and metaphors

Towards meaningful collaboration…

ArtBarCamp
Would an art BarCamp work? ArtBarCamp could be a standalone event or co-located at BarCamps or SciBarCamps. ArtBarCamp could have an emphasis on doing art in workshop formats, experiencing different kinds of art and talking about art. TED and SciBarCamp include artists and the audience has an opportunity to experience art, it would be wonderful to create art as well.

Which sciences are important now and why?

This is a quick and dirty look at which sciences are most important right now. These sciences are: physics, astronomy, nanotechnology, biotechnology, semiconductors, computation and information theory.

The important areas of physics are particle physics at accelerator and detector labs, and anything related to quantum theory/unified field theory/many worlds theory. These areas will help us to understand more about and control the properties of the smallest pieces of matter which are not atoms, not quarks but strings or other.

Astronomy is important because we need to find out more about the rest of the universe, how it works, more about black holes, dark energy and dark matter and how to harness them. Understanding the physics of that which we do not currently understand. This is important for many reasons including our eventual need to move off the Earth (4.5 billion years to the Earth's engulfment by the sun) and out of the galaxy (10 billion years until Andromeda collides with the Milky Way).

Nanotechnology is important because it will allow us to build and create objects from the ground up, truly mastering our world by creating matter. In addition there are interesting novel properties of atomic level matter which may offer better knowledge of quantum behavior.

Biotechnology is important in being able to improve and redesign ourselves as humans, in the near term to get to baseline by eradicating disease and then to expand from baseline into new enhanced capabilities and forms. As we look to immigrating to other worlds and space colonies, biological transformation will be key.

Semiconductors and computation are important as we need to reach successive tiers of computing capability to further master knowledge about how our universe works, especially regarding large phenomenon like galaxies and small phenomenon like brains. Software is a harder problem than hardware and with greater processing, a lot of results can be achieved by brute force computation and don't need to wait for and rely on more complicated human team work dependent software.

Information theory is increasingly critical as a new conceptual model by which the universe is being explained. Seth Lloyd is one of the foremost authors on this. The idea is that there are many forms of information storage and computation in the universe, including life (plants, animals, etc.) who store DNA and compute from it, even rocks reacting to their environment are said to process information. Black holes also take in information, process it and return output, but this phenomenon is tested or understood yet.

These sciences share the theme of helping us answer the biggest remaining outstanding questions the fastest. Who are we? Where did we come from? What is the nature of this universe? Are there other universes? What are the physical laws that govern all matter and phenomenon of this universe?

How to contribute to tech world

The science world is changing faster than ever now and will continue to speed up. One action for an individual to do is to try to keep up by learning about the technologies, innovation, changes, trends, current solutions and future problems in key areas like semiconductors, biotech, nanotech, physics and cosmology. Given the possible constraints of a non-science educational background, a generalist/macro not micro skillset and purview (e.g.; non-technical background, competence and interest) what are the obvious, useful and meaningful ways for an individual to participate in the massively evolving technology future?

Any role with a macro (e.g.; multi-topic) purview required is an interesting possibility. One category of roles is the popularizers, educators, explainers and evangelists/cheerleaders. Writers, synthesizers, presenters and thought-leaders with agendas are another category of roles, somehow a little more active, adding their views/vision to the explication role. Both of these categories involve other people as the consumer/observer of the content.

What are higher level categories that are more creative and content/info-generating, thereby potentially more worthwhile to certain value systems? Other forms of writing/creation: considering the implications of the technologies (though still may be heavily people/society-related), making a list of detailed predictions, adjusting life in expectation of the arrival of the technologies, drawing or other graphical abstraction of the technology or the implications of the technology. Inventing a new use or a new technology, like text-to-speech files for the iPod, is actively creating and participating. These days its easy to make or get a new technology idea made. Think about what you'd like to fix in your life and what are potential solutions. Keep a list of daily invention ideas.

Higher-level active writing, invention, ....more to come....