Art and the Moral (Con)Science
While scientists and engineers are often discouraged for financial and empirical reasons, from examining their work through a political lens, artists have the opportunity, and perhaps a mandate, to do so.
In my work I reflect on the conditions in which scientific work is undertaken and the social implications that result. In her New York Times Article “The Body Electric,” Kim Tingley profiles University of Illinois scientist and engineer (and MacArthur Genius) John Rogers, whose groundbreaking work in bioelectronics would allow for greater integration of circuitry in human tissue. Asked about the social consequences of his project, Rogers responded, “That’s a good thing to think about, and people should think about it. But I’m just an engineer, basically.”
In his response to Rogers in The Guardian (UK), Abbas El-Zein, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Sydney, calls on fellow engineers to broaden the ethical dimension. “Our ethics have become mostly technical: how to design properly, how to not cut corners, how to serve our clients well. We work hard to prevent failure of the systems we build, but only in relation to what these systems are meant to do, rather than the way they might actually be utilised, or whether they should have been built at all. We are not amoral, far from it; it's just that we have steered ourselves into a place where our morality has a smaller scope.”
Antonio Damasio argues that ethics, though, are the realm of art. “The foundations of creativity and constructions of art were crucial to the formation of society and to the evolution of humanity in not only the aesthetic sense, but also one of ethics. They promoted a sense of communal organization, and directly provided a mode of exercising moral judgment and moral action.” Damasio, Professor of Neuroscience and head of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, argues that the ethical dimension is art’s greatest contribution to society. In my presentation I will share my own work as I ask a question I personally wrestle with- can art act as the moral conscience of science? Should it?
Artist
Lauren Marie Taylor is the Bay Area Director of Educator Associates for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Her recent exhibitions include T Minus Ten Minutes at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and No Man’s Land at Southern Exposure. Taylor was the first artist in residence at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, from which Carl Sagan broadcast earth’s first message to extraterrestrials. She is currently working on a project begun with the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.
