The Laboratory of the Untouchable Unknowable
The linguistics of arts practices and their associated metaphors are performed, presented and created in the studio, in the black box, on the stage and in the field. These languages transfer, communicate and translate knowledge and scientists have embraced the potential for the arts to carry and translate complex ideas. Years of funding for art and science research projects has established the role of the arts as an important vehicle of exchange.
Many point to the similarities of the sciences and the arts: problem solving, investigation, discovery, the pedagogies of both rely on analogy, metaphor and imagination. Examples of new knowledge and insights wrought from the combined and collaborative practices of both do exist, but they are surprisingly and frustratingly few. The measured impact of these collaborations is open-ended and un-satisfyingly unspecific. So where and what is the continuous energy and curiosity that keeps drawing the artist and scientist together? Is it actually difference that continually creates the vital spark? Or is it the common iterative process divided by the boundaries and expectations of both? Whilst one discipline is bound by strict ethical codes, the search for truth, accuracy, reality and an understanding of the orders and physical properties that might help us build a better world. The other can be comfortable with abstraction, serendipity, appropriation, fantasy, the manifesto and the antihuman. These sometimes wildly differing working practices contain the cultural perspectives, the empirical insights and multiplying pluralities that circle around our ability to understand to learn and to know.
Provost and VPAA
Cornish College of the Arts
Moira Scott Payne received her BA from the Glasgow School of Art, in Scotland, and her post-graduate diploma from the Dundee College of Education. She has taught at the Glasgow School of Art; University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale; and the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, Scotland. She has worked as a program director in various departments at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and her work has been funded by the Scottish Arts Council, Heritage Lottery, Gruntvig Award, and the British Council.
