Artists and Scientists: More Alike Than Different
Art and science. To those who practice neither, they seem like polar
opposites, one data-driven, the other driven by emotion. One dominated
by technical introverts, the other by expressive eccentrics. For those
of us involved in either field today (and many of us have a hand in
both), we know that the similarities between how artists and scientists
work far outweigh their stereotypical differences. Both are dedicated to
asking the big questions placed before us: “What is true? Why does it
matter? How can we move society forward?” Both search deeply, and often
wanderingly, for these answers. We know that the scientist’s laboratory
and the artist’s studio are two of the last places reserved for
open-ended inquiry, for failure to be a welcome part of the process, for
learning to occur by a continuous feedback loop between thinking and
doing.
I have always bridged art and design, science and
technology, navigating both poles and the space that lies between them,
with degrees in EECS from MIT and a PhD in classical design from Tsukuba
University in Japan. In elementary school, my parents were told at a
parent-teacher conference that I was “good at math and art” (but went on
to tell their friends I was good at math). My work combining computer
codes and traditional artistic technique was one attempt to carve out a
space in the middle, and I find I’m always trying to find others in my
tribe, hybrids who seek to marry disparate fields as a way of life.
In
DaVinci’s time when expertise in art and science had not yet matured to
the polarized state in which they exist today, they coexisted
naturally. Of course, science’s level of sophistication back then was
quite different. But from where I sit as the president of the Rhode
Island School of Design, it is clear to me that even current practices
in scientific research have much to gain by involving artists in the
process early and often. Artists serve as great partners in the
communication of scientific research; moreover, they can serve as great
partners in the navigation of the scientific unknown.
