Impact of exchange: axis of collaboration between the arts and sciences
10 December 2021 at 3:00:00 am
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Session Convenors
Dr Erica Seccombe, Australian National University
Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland
Session Moderators
Dr Erica Seccombe, Australian National University
Session Speakers
Dr Helen Pynor, ANAT resident, SAHMRI Bioinformatics Platform
Dr Jimmy Breen, Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide
Dr Svenja J. Kratz, University of Tasmania
Dr Baden Pailthorpe, Australian National University
Dr Tony Curran, Independent Artist and Scholar
Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland
What is a partnership between an artist and a scientist? What new knowledge do they impart on each other’s discipline, and does it change the way they work and think? This panel will bring to light the kinds of relationships that artists and scientist have, generating new knowledge, ideas and processes resulting in transdisciplinary outcomes that have continuing impacts in both the sciences and art. What can we learn from these relationships and how do we recognise that art/science interdisciplinary and collaborative practice has equal value in both fields? This panel will bring together researchers to discuss how these relationships form, and the kinds of questions artists and scientists bring to the table in order to collaborate. Therefore, we will address the challenges and problems of these experiences, but also how these partnerships redefine the parameters of interdisciplinary engagement and the future of such intersections.
THIS SESSION IS A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Biographies
Dr Erica Seccombe, Australian National University
Erica is a visual artist based in the Canberra region, living in semi-rural NSW. Her interdisciplinary arts practice spans from traditional lens-based imaging, print media and drawing, to experimental digital platforms using frontier scientific visualisation software. A senior lecturer at the ANU School of Art & Design, Erica convenes and teaches the course, Art in the Digital Age for the Centre for Art History and Art Theory. A 2010 recipient of the Synapse Residency, she is currently a member of the ANAT Board of Directors, and has served as a Selection Committee Panel Member for the Synapse Residency from 2015-17.
Dr Helen Pynor, ANAT resident, SAHMRI Bioinformatics Platform
Helen Pynor is an Artist and Researcher whose practice explores philosophically and experientially ambiguous zones, such as the life-death boundary, the inter-subjective nature of organ transplantation, and the animate-inanimate boundary in relation to prosthetics. As an ANAT SAHMRI resident Helen is a collaborative researcher with Dr Jimmy Breen, leader of the SAHMRI Bioinformatics Platform. Helen and Jimmy are exploring ideas around the body’s porosity, the way the body ‘leaks’ out into the world in ways we don’t necessarily think about, and that DNA is part of that story.
Dr Jimmy Breen, Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide
Jimmy Breen is the head of the Bioinformatics facility at the Robinson Research Institute and member of the University of Adelaide's Bioinformatics Hub.His expertise is primarily in next-generation sequencing and genomics research. He has over 10 years experience dealing with data in a wide variety of fields such as cereal genomics, ancient DNA, evolutionary biology, metagenomics and epigenetics. A lecturer in Bioinformatics in the Faculty of Sciences's Master of Biotechnology course, Jimmy was previously a Bioinformatician and genomics researcher at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA and the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.
Dr Svenja J. Kratz, University of Tasmania
Svenja Kratz is a contemporary Australian new media artist interested in transdisciplinary creative practice, particularly the intersections between science and art. As a recipient of the 2021 ANAT Synapse Residency, Svanja is collaborating with Scientific researchers on Posthuman Genetic Legacies that will examine the scientific potential and legal implications of securing alternative genetic offspring via biotechnological intervention. The project draws on the artist’s recent experience of uterine pathology and impending menopause to consider alternative conceptions of motherhood and reproduction. Svenja is also lecturer in Interdisciplinary Creative Practice at the Creative Exchange Institute, University of Tasmania.
Dr Baden Pailthorpe, Australian National University
Dr Baden Pailthorpe is a contemporary artist who works with emerging and experimental technologies. He is the Convenor of Hybrid Art Practice at the ANU School of Art & Design, Canberra. His artistic practice interrogates the relationship between aesthetics and power, interrogating the politics of technological and economic structures across Sport, Finance and the Military-Industrial Complex. As a 2017 ANAT Synapse resident, Baden partnered with UTS Sport and Exercise Science Professor Aaron Coutts and his team, to develop a method for quantifying the influence of crowd behaviour on AFL and NFL player performance.
Dr Tony Curran, Independent Artist and Scholar
Tony Curran is a Canberra based artist and researcher in painting, drawing, video and coding. His work combines painterly approaches and web 2.0 aesthetics through GUI (Graphical-User-Interface) abstraction. The digital wiggle is an enduring motif in Curran’s work and pivots around mobile devices as a pressure point of visual culture. His attention to colour, combined with the digital ‘wiggle’ provides an improvisational foil for systems-based, process-oriented art making. His expertise in digital colour and creative coding has contributed to the field of computational science and biology through collaborations and residencies.
Gregory Minissale, University of Auckland
Gregory Minissale is Professor of contemporary art and theory at the University of Auckland. He specialises in empirical aesthetics and philosophical approaches to art, and is the author of Rhythm in Art, Psychology and New Materialism (Cambridge University Press, 2021); The Psychology of Contemporary Art (Cambridge University Press, 2013, paperback, 2015). He has also published studies on queer and schizoanalytical approaches to art, and on the topic of Mughal art.