Where arts and sciences collide

Disciplines like arts and science have their unique way of examining and understating the world. They have their own language, journals and cultures. They not only seem poles apart, they are.

In school we often find ourselves with a leaning towards one or the other. And full immersion can become inaccessible to the point where even a visit to a science museum or art gallery is usually by default and not intent.

Arts and sciences, however you define them, seem like insufferable neighbours but there are many occasions where they can’t live without the other.

Daniel Glaser, director of the Science Gallery at London’s King’s College, alludes to something magical that happens when art and science collide, not just in the research sector but also in the public arena. The science and art collision becomes an effective portal for people to access the issues of our times in a recreational setting.

Dr Glaser heads up this new type of interdisciplinary public institution aimed at engaging 15 to 25-year-olds. It won’t have a building until 2017 but it’s already running programs. He recently visited Melbourne as a guest of Carlton Connect, The Florey Institute and University of Melbourne, and spoke about the rise of the public Sci-Art movement and insights into functional interdisciplinary research.

He says the Science Gallery is “is a place where anyone can come in and see the world in their own terms.

“We have a program at the moment called Fed up - the future of food. It’s more like a performing arts activity than a museum. Each of our shows has a different curator with an open curatorial policy that is informed by the audience. It’s not about scientists who do art and it’s not a new temple to culture,” he says.

A former neuroscientist, Glaser recounts a research project where his team wanted to examine the instructions for movements in the brain using functional MRI. Glaser sought the expertise of a dance choreographer.

He describes his Dionysian frenzy, in which the two disciplines enter a neutral zone, normal rules of engagement are suspended and parties feel safe to question each other’s assumptions and disruption is welcome. “You end up in space which neither of you could have got to without the other, ” he says.

In other words, a space that’s inspiration, creativity, resolution and innovation.

Glaser further describes the collaborative project: “We ended up using classical ballet and capoeira (a Brazilian martial art) experts to examine the brain’s response to movement instructions and the results showed actual areas of movement lit up when given similar movement instructions.’’

What was more interesting – and the moral of the story for Dr Glaser -– was the fact they both went back to their respective fields and both added new knowledge to their disciplines. Dr Glaser wrote up the scientific paper but the choreographer went on to develop a dance piece influenced by his dalliance in brain science.