arts and science symposium

HYBRID: arts and science symposium

How does the space between art and science manifest itself?

Saturday 20 March 2010 at the Thackray Museum, Leeds.

Speakers and discussion.

Keynote Speaker 1: Siân Ede, Arts Director UK Branch Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, author of Art & Science and Strange and Charmed: science and the contemporary visual arts.

LIGHT  ECHOES IN ART AND SCIENCE 

Investigative approaches in art and science have little in common but co-exist in the same human context and may unwittingly reflect each other’s thought processes and imagery. In this talk I will venture to explore how far images in contemporary art and science reflect each other’s aesthetic and epistemological currencies. 

Keynote Speaker 2: Dr Mary Midgley, Philosopher.

SCIENCE AND POETRY

Science and Poetry are not rival concerns competing for our attention. They are complementary aspects of our lives. The same imaginative faculties forge both of them, providing the basic structures round which they grow. In every age, scientists need to have a suitable guiding vision, a vision which is adapted both to new data and to changes in the background culture.

Speaker 3: James Peto, Senior Curator, Wellcome Collection.

THE CULTURE OF MEDICINE: EXHIBITIONS AT THE WELLCOME COLLECTION 

Since the Wellcome Collection opened two years ago, its exhibitions have covered such diverse subjects as the relationship between medicine and warfare; what we understand - or imagine - is happening in our brains and bodies while we sleep; how artists and scientists have grappled with the question of human identity; the history of our understanding of the anatomical and symbolic role of the human heart; the relationship between mental illness and the visual arts in Freud's Vienna.

Speaker 4: Professor Mike Vanden Heuvel is author of Performing Drama/Dramatizing Performance: Alternative Theater and the Dramatic Text and Elmer Rice: A Research and Production Sourcebook.

TO INFINITY, AND BEYOND!’ CAN THEATRE PLAY WITH SCIENCE?

Given the recent appearance of a number of well-received plays with scientific themes, characters, and metaphors, it is no surprise that critical discourse is just beginning to assess the quality and accomplishments of science plays. A leading spokesperson for one critical approach is Carl Djerassi, an award-winning chemist who, after retiring from academia, has published a number of plays on science themes (Oxygen; An Immaculate Misconception). As well, Djerassi has become a respected polemicist for adjudicating which plays belong to the category of what he terms “science-in-theatre.”

£20/£15 (includes lunch) Reservations required –for further details and booking form contact pj.digby@ntlworld.com