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The nature of the relationship between science and art seems
almost exclusively to involve a one-way exchange of
knowledge and technology from the sciences to the arts. Yet
the central question in this relationship is nearly always: what has
art to offer science, and what can art do for science? The answer
is often to help us (and science) understand or become critically
aware of the implications of science or to help us (and science)
reshape culture in the face of technological developments. That
seems to be art’s gift to science: to culturally embed science,
whether critically or not. And there is also of course the rhetoric
of art’s gift to science as hybrid vigor: for instance, when it is said
that the use of new technologies in art often acts as a laboratory
for subsequent industrial and commercial applications. A rhetoric
reiterated over and over again: art really can add something to
science that science itself cannot achieve on its own. This might
well be true. My argument, however, is that we should also ask
what science can do for art above and beyond providing new
artistic media and technological knowledge. What is science’s gift
to art? To make such a gift possible requires a fundamental
rethink of the role and position of science relative to art, a change
in the hierarchal relationship between science and art. And this
rethink is ultimately a question about the specificity of art.
Science’s gift to art should be to allow and help create a space for
art in the practice of science itself in order to develop and
understand art’s specificity within the practice of science. This
sounds simple, but it is not, as I see it happening only rarely...
Only in an undefined open space that allows for conflict
and differences of opinions can fruitful and nonhierarchical exchange and understanding arise between
scientists and artists. In a society where the position of art
relative to science is unclear, a situation that is perpetuated by the
overwhelming presence of science and technology in today’s
society, it is important that both art and science 7G&