Science-Art Collaboration 1

00:00:00 I want to first start by thanking all the participants for this roundtable some of whom have come from far away and I very much appreciate their willingness to come and participate in these two and a half day event I also want to thank the helix Executive Board that has been involved with the planning and the associate director of the center Robert Panzer finally I want to thank Julia

00:00:35 Banton who has been instrumental in first having the idea of this roundtable and then being extremely active in organizing it it has allowed for a very seamless relationship between the two organizations and very thankful to her I will not ask Mike to work thank you [Music]

00:01:06 Thank You Edie my out so as Edie mentioned this has been an amazing collaboration between cyrus center in the helix center my name is julia von tain i'm the founding director of science center and i'm so thrilled that you can all be here tonight to join us in this conference of conversation we have digital attendees as well so welcome if you hear us on the livestream tonight we're going to be talking and for the rest of the weekend about art science culture education technology and

00:01:38 our collective futures so I had the idea for this weekend about a year and a half ago after attending a conference where all the discussion was very wonderful but there was very little time for kind of free spontaneous conversation so what we're gonna do here this weekend is a little bit different than your typical conference as you may have gathered with the goal of evolving a collective conversation over the course of three days we are cutting out pre-scripted presentations entirely and we've invited

00:02:10 36 innovative leaders in the art science technology and education realms to share their current work talk about the problems they're facing solutions they may have come up with two common problems talk about issues big and small talk about where we are and where we want to be not only in the worlds of art and science but at the points where they converge so importantly and I want to emphasize this from the start the interaction between art and science and technology in our culture industry and

00:02:41 education is well established we're not here to justify that interaction I think it speaks for itself rather we're going to over the course of six roundtable discussions on three central topics be talking about questions like what are the potentials of science our collaboration beyond art about science how do we build models for education in the 21st century how do we repair and build upon the multi-directional relationship between art science and society so I'm so

00:03:14 grateful to have found the perfect partner for this type of conversation the helix Center the helix centers motto encourages us to engage in an unhurried search for wisdom and I think it's high time guided by wisdom to really evolve these conversations that we're gonna have to the next level so I hope you enjoy this evening and join us for the rest of the weekend we will now our we have invited up our roundtable participants they're already there and I will introduce them to you all but yes thank you for being

00:03:46 here okay and please raise your hand when I say your name so everyone can know who you are we have mark Rosen who is a professor of physics at Pratt and he's also the director of gorillas science Shane miok is the director of the LIGO project Tyler Volk is a professor of biology and environmental studies at NYU and is also an author Noah Hutton is the director of

00:04:18 the beautiful brain and is also a filmmaker Jamie McCray is a conservation scientist and a dancer and Monica Aiello is the co-founder of Eureka's and also an artist so this first panel as you guys know from your handout is all about science art collaboration so we're just going to jump in here with some questions about what is the nature of art science collaboration who's the owner of a collaborative project do does art need to influence science as science

00:04:49 influences art those are those are the questions okay I I feel like at the place where I always like to start asking these these

00:05:19 are really big questions but I I am curious to hear from all of y'all what what doesn't what isn't good in collaboration I think starting from a place of like criticizing what can go wrong from a collaboration because I've just I've been to too many events like this and to too many I've seen too many collaborations happen where it all seems like when a science and an artist come together magically we receive less than

00:05:50 the sum of the parts somehow if both things get diluted and I'm something negative to start here but yet but like both things get diluted the scientist ends up feeling like they have to dumb down their work to to reach somewhere in the muddy middle and the artist feels like they have to give a sketchbook account of the science or somehow just give an aesthetic rendition of scientific objects and as a result I'm not sure what's added I would I'm always

00:06:21 interested in interdisciplinary interdisciplinarity that ends up feeling like it's more than the sum of its parts and I just wonder if you guys feel the same or if you've seen anything if you've seen the one i'm describing happen where there's a diluting process to this kind of muddy middle ground well I think that that happens to some degree in any interdisciplinary collaboration I

00:06:52 don't know what to do about that right it's my mic not on okay so what I was saying is I think that can happen in any interdisciplinary collaboration and I think part of the problem is a lack of resources to a lot of what we're doing that makes some of the work difficult to sustain and even begin to some degree even

00:07:23 though a lot of us are trying to begin it does that make any sense right so you're saying you're saying this lack of funding creates an environment where it's it's tough even get going to a rich level yeah yeah I don't think you need funding to create a rich collaboration I really like though the term transdisciplinary because with that it's not hey I'm going to bring my art and

00:07:56 you're gonna bring your science and we're gonna walk along two parallel paths together for some time then we're gonna split up but where we're going to work together and build a collaboration so why are you going to do that because the scheme of because of the grand scheme of things the questions that we're trying to answer now are so large that one discipline can't can't handle

00:08:26 it no absolutely right so so that's why we're gonna that's why we want to collaborate together so now we're going to have to take time to build relationships and you know that I mean time is a resource that that can be short but it's not necessarily a resource that you always need a grant for so if you have trust if you have a

00:08:57 scientist sharing their process and their knowledge and an artist sharing their process and their knowledge so one is not more than the other I feel like you can create a space where both of them are creating something wholly new that you wouldn't be able to get alone yeah I agree with all of those things but I do think it's a bit idealistic not and I don't want to focus this whole

00:09:27 discussion on funding because I think that would not be beneficial but that in the grand scheme of priorities that all of us in this room have it's very very difficult to support rich meaningful work without having a financial structure to do so yeah I would agree with that I I wouldn't I

00:09:58 would frame it slightly differently and say that probably thank you I would say that the incentive structure is such that in science there is a wealth of funding and there is a professionalization of sharing your work is part of your formal duties as a scientist to disseminate your work into the wider community whether people actually do that in practice or not is by the by whereas for artists as a kind

00:10:33 of early or mid-career artist there isn't a formal infrastructure that will pay you to do that work and so when the norms of the scientific community are brought into an artistic realm and people ask you to as an artist do things for free because it's assumed it's part of your professional work then it's there's an inequity in that situation and so there's a disincentive for the artist I guess to contribute at the same

00:11:05 level as the scientist and that is fundamentally I think tied to funding and kind of the resources that are tied with those professions and there's can I keep speaking or monopolizing so I think that's true I think like there's an inequity and resources and that creates a incentive structure that's imbalanced and so I really like the term incentivization too I think that's like an excellent way to put it so I think

00:11:35 that you'll find because of that financial incentive structure there are artists that need money and they are going to basically be chasing money they they may in the worst case scenario that maybe no is referring to you they may try and retrofit their work to access a pot of science funding to allow them to do a project they want to in a worst-case scenario does that make sense I'm seeing blank faces but it's also a problem on the

00:12:07 science side right where there isn't any or very little incentive ization in academia in science to be part of these sorts of things you don't get any if if you're trying to get to the next level and academia you don't get points for working with an artist you don't but I feel like we're trying to fix that and NSF broader impacts right there's

00:12:39 they're aligned items in grants that you can use now you need to use them creatively but that can be a way for for you to have those broader impacts and that is a structure that has been set up that we can make use of now always like let's how do we do this creatively how do I not say my brother impacts that I'm going to you know give a talk to to some school children again and have that be

00:13:12 the way that I'm disseminating the information so let me bring up an example because Noah was asking something about difficulties in collaboration in the funding bill so somebody it really struck me and maybe it relates to right of the audience if you saw Al Gore's original movie the original movie not the newest one but the the Inconvenient Truth what a lot people I saw that so that really struck me a you know I'm

00:13:44 scientist do work on climate in the car cycle primarily but I'm interested in levels of organization and pattern formation on different scales and night.i I love art and working with artists when I can but that particular movie was very popular you know and it had it struck it changed you know got people waking up to issues about global warming I don't think they covered the carbon cycle quite as well as I would have liked but

00:14:18 but it really struck me that there was a collaboration that you know if we include filmmaking as art is the artist right and it struck me so okay with that and it struck me is that you know Gore had this powerpoint that he was going around and giving talks with and he had developed over a series of time but how much more powerful that was when the artists when the professional filmmakers came in and and thought about scripting

00:14:48 that in a certain kind of way and it still had a certain Al Gore on stage with his PowerPoint a little bit aspect of it but then he had all these other things that were coming in that were I just I just was really blown away at the skillfulness of the artists that were coming on to that situation in which and where the science was probably no more detailed than it had been I mean I'm sure there were some changes I don't know what the original PowerPoint was but that really struck me as a great

00:15:19 example of the kind of communication that could happen to millions where the scientists is going to you know if I write books and they sell in the thousands less today right that's not reaching you know the millions that I think is that are needed to be reached in with the problems with the global problems that are going on and the the amount of ignorance in the United States scientifically that happens the amount that needs to be changed is so vast so to me that kind of thing is the gore

00:15:51 film is the example is important and there's been a lot of environmental films now about about fish about ice about meat so it's almost like a genre that's that's coming out as a result so I'm just putting it out as a example of something that struck me as particularly powerful instance of success so I don't know what I mean so I guess I guess you know how can more that happen how can the funding

00:16:22 for more that happen right yeah I mean I think I don't I'm gonna just be really romantic but I don't think that any of this should be taken as negative I think that particularly a group like this should be thinking about the barriers and I think one barrier is how do you get people to be really invested in these collaborations it's a huge barrier and if we don't think about it everybody in this room we're not doing our jobs

00:16:53 why would you because I have to say just being invited to do something like this is so exciting because when we started doing art and science programming artwork engagement activities 15 years ago people's eyes with glass over they would ask us why and we spent most of our early part of our careers just convincing people of the relevancy of this conversation so assuming that most people in this room are interested in the topic then I do think bringing up challenges and the nitty-gritty as a

00:17:24 real key aspect I will say from the artists perspective artists are really used to doing things for no money like we put in all of our sweat equity and our capital upfront and artists that are working with scientists you know go out there and try to find a scientist that's going to like give us their time so we can ask the crazy questions and come up with things and then a lot of times the economic reward comes at the end whether you're you know selling a piece of artwork or doing an exhibition or for us

00:17:54 kind of distilling that into the public engagement forum but what I find to be the most challenging from my standpoint is institutional barriers working with institutions whether it's art museum science museums libraries schools that don't yet have that framework in place to foster the collaboration or fund it in a way that really makes sense so you're really largely depending on other people that really have similar objectives and goals

00:18:25 in life to give their good will and and not to switch the subject too much but I did want to speech your your point about transdisciplinary because that's definitely a word that is very much the language we're trying to foster because I think that is really the point of what you bring up if when the the some of the parts are greater then it's actually transdisciplinary you're creating something new out of that experience yeah I totally agree and Shane I just wanted to respond to what you said because I I do agree that barriers are

00:18:57 everywhere and they're institutional and they're funding of course but I just think that I think that we are at a place now in this conversation where we can we can actually maybe say that there's some good collaborations and bad collaborations because I think we can get more we can have more barriers lifted if we articulate better what this is all about like what the hell are we doing with transdisciplinary projects what what can we is it about awareness like is it making products like maybe

00:19:28 not good this is about communication no I disagree they're not all good I what it depends on what the goal I agree yeah totally so I think maybe we can we should talk about goals a little bit of what why do a collaboration what's the UH what's the utmost goal I think Tyler brings up well and that example right they are the artist comes in as the as the guide to the communication is the one that's going to translate near the visuals into into public communication

00:20:00 in a meaningful way or in a way that's acceptable to the to the math of the human brain that fits the sort of fits our our receptivity or but there there be another aspect of something julia was asking about the mind of the artist you know that that might have different ideas about something totally and that I don't know if that's a different Avenue to this transdisciplinarity I don't what do you mean by transdisciplinarity I'm okay with the term lots of people have that

00:20:35 question definition was very very succinct I looked it up today transdisciplinary interdisciplinary multidisciplinary and of course there's argument on what all this means transdisciplinary is supposed to be about transcending discipline and so that when you have people coming from disciplines together you're creating something that's new as opposed to just

00:21:05 fusing disciplines or somebody being a scientist and me being an artist and us using our individual practice together we're actually trying to create something that hasn't existed out of that mix hmm all right and I think I'm a good piece of mystic is part of that holistic and and not having within it that hierarchy that we've been talking about where you know where have the sciences it's bringing the artists to come you know and and help with with the

00:21:36 science but that's the communication right and and I mean that is a part of it but as as an artist as well as a scientist as an artist you are I look for something to base my my work on you know I think both disciplines at their heart are looking to express a truth of the universe you know what is how are we describing things what is you know how

00:22:07 can we distill it and some of the questioning happens in different ways but if you you're like okay we're working towards this thing to together how can we meld our our disciplines and transdisciplinary manner to get at the truth of the universe so I feel like that that's what a lot of scientific questions are are asking right we want to explain the the world that we subscribe the Civic truth yeah specific yes so a specific

00:22:38 truth and science frames those with hypotheses and artists have a little different language but they are both modes of questioning what's what's happening and so I think you can have those really work well together may I make what I think is an empirical observation about like the landscape and that observation is that the majority of the work that I'm familiar with at this interface is from the scientific

00:23:10 institutions perspective about building science literacy so the example you gave the justification for that is building science literacy in the general public please lead others there the functions that's round that's how the NSF justifies funding the projects it's fund it's how the Wellcome Trust justifies funding the project it's ones it's about building science literacy from the scientists scientific institutions they called her that's not searching for truths in the kind of scientific questioning sense and in from where I sit that is a much

00:23:41 smaller piece of this intersection and I think we're gonna hear a bit about it tomorrow like where scientific research meets artistic practice but I think the main part of what I'm familiar with is is not about those questions it's about kind of some outcome in the broader public so my question kind of for the more practicing artists is like what is the like artistic institutional motivation for doing something like creating a nice

00:24:12 movie that's trying to tell a scientific literacy story or you know like your work no I like what is what is it that you get out of it when the brain institute might be getting something about the public understanding the brain yeah that does that make sense mmhmm yeah absolutely because might you're saying my goals might be different than theirs yeah yeah well yeah I mean I'm not going to assume artistic goals that are about building scientific literacy in the general public there might be but I mean I don't assume

00:24:43 so those your goals no they're they're part of my goal are you yeah yeah yeah but not entirely otherwise I would just be making promotional videos for the Institute so I I assume a role which is I think a little different which is I play the role of this outside independent critic who comes in to film in interviews and ask questions that they wouldn't be asked in promotional video shoots and then I go and I ask

00:25:13 other projects similar questions to get them talking to each other and then I I try to construct a film out of that that arrives at a truth that is mitigated by my own subjective approach to the story it's not inconvenient truth because I'm not trying to get the word out there about this press I'm actually just trying to show a side of science that doesn't usually get shown because I believe that a lot of the a lot of the projects that I've been shooting with for my film for example have I I feel an

00:25:48 ethos that has had ads Greg gradually shifted more towards Silicon Valley than the kind of like original qahal neuroscientists let's say there's kind of this ethos that in the projects that I follow that is super technocratic is believing that computers are the end-all be-all for understanding the brain and that simulations will soon reveal the truths on supercomputers anyway that all those murky issues aside I just feel

00:26:18 like we're giving a free pass too often that anjana and mainstream culture to science when in fact there's been great criticism of Silicon Valley areas and I just like some of the same criticism applied into some aspects of present-day science began and I just worry that there's a pervading ethos of science is cool and great and we just need to parse that a little bit because there is kind of scientific the scientific question in the beginning the origin story of science is good there's so much good science going on but there's also

00:26:50 science that's serving other aimes in this in this world you know I I just want to mention very quickly there was a conference that Julie and I rat and there was a presentation by someone from a large arts body and Europe that had just done a collaboration with a drone technology maker and and one of the outputs of this was a big display over a town square in Europe set to music and then I also signed their slides that they were also like doing

00:27:22 Pepsi logos over the Superbowl and stuff with the drones and I just thought like this is interesting because this is being billed is that really as a great technological collaboration scientific collaboration at this at the very same moment it's being just served right into this corporate advertising culture and so I these are the things I want to parse a little bit about collaboration because there are many aims so is this the this is this would be another one if I'm trying to I I would tend to start looking for types of cloud typology of

00:27:54 collaboration right maybe this is sort of to get rid of you know yeah do this okay question I I'm kind of a concrete person and so I would be interested in hearing from you guys of giving like an analogy of an collaboration that you have done within the Arts and Sciences that maybe was successful or had failure but kind of epitomized what your role or your goals are with the type of work that you

00:28:25 do so that we have something to kind of ground maybe our conversation because what he just described I would Claire I would do every class as a the function the art the artist as a as a critic almost yeah communication and the Al Gore film that's roles like that's not being that's our second yeah but I think they're connected and of course this is all how we individually define what collaboration is or what we're doing but

00:28:55 I would have never viewed it as a promotional thing in fact I think that's what we want to get away from because the PR arms of all the academic institutions but I mean they're fine but of course they're serving a purpose like we want their critical eye we want a secondary view particularly from someone who can create a narrative that we as scientists aren't that good at creating

00:29:26 I mean it's absolutely not about being a promotional video or a promotional arm but I think if I can just segue into your question I mean I think what for LIGO project so in case any of you are confused I'm a scientist by training and I work at Memorial sloan-kettering Cancer Center during the day but then I also started a nonprofit that's interested in connecting science art and community and so in that work in terms

00:30:01 of collaborations that we've had with artists and scientists I think the ones that have been the most successful if you will are those that have focused on the process science and what what it means what science means what science does what is the process what is the scientific scientific method mean how does one start from a question and get to an answer I think those have been the most successful I would still argue that we've also had a lot of collaborations

00:30:33 that have resulted in you know pictures of beakers and I mean I would honestly argue if if your goal is to communicate something to the public about what science is and what science does there's some of the public that doesn't ever see a beaker and you know maybe that's interesting and informative in some way and that though in a way where the judge and the jury maybe were not we shouldn't

00:31:06 be the judge in the jury and that we have to be sort of open even within our own work in our own collaborations to what the results of that ends up being it seems like you're doing some really cool work with those residency programs that I was looking up the website and what I loved most about it is it seemed like you're giving that space that that enriching space for the collaboration but there's also that practicality aspect too of you know you need this

00:31:37 format you need funding you need space exhibition opportunity whatever so that it's a fully thought-out collaboration engagement and community outreach scenarios yeah absolutely yeah mark I have a question for you gorilla science is so such like on the ground level of this stuff you're liking the streets with with collaborations it really so we're asking for a concrete example I don't necessarily have one

00:32:08 because I I've just described what I do and I don't think it's a good example to give really although I think I collaborate in some way but I'm keeping my question for you is what what like what's the goal what's the but most goal of gorilla science what's the best thing that you've seen happen or what like what is a really the question of like you know it meaning can be a truth example which was a great example but what's your example of something that's happened that's great there's a project I really like called the intergalactic

00:32:40 travel Bureau which is party at Racal production and part exploration of kind of techno optimistic space science so the project it's a it's a pop-up travel agency and we've worked with Shoshana allowed to take over spaces in like the fashion district in New York and we take over a shop and we set up what looks like a retro futuristic travel agency where you you know I think most of us are old enough to have remembered and

00:33:10 used to go to a physical place to buy a ticket somewhere so the aesthetic is kind of think Jetsons meets madmen so you go into this place as a person off the street and it looks like a travel agency you interact with a travel agent and you'll have a dialogue which will kind of know what what kind of vacations do you like it scuba diver ok scuba diving great so you know you might be interested in buying a package to go to like ia you know I oh it's a great destination got lots of like liquid

00:33:42 materials we go scuba diving you'll die hypothermia but you know whatever offer but so it's this kind of this world building around future space travel but it's very heavily drawing on interactive theatre and like the dramatization and using sciencists kind of part of the story the story world so kind of almost science-fiction and it involves directly both like theatrical elements and actors and life scientists you play the role of these

00:34:12 travel agents so that's a really good project it's got like it ticks a lot of boxes it's like really creative it's open-ended like there's a lot of respect given to both the theatrical elements of it as well as the like scientific and scientific integrity is key like it doesn't work if you get your facts wrong it doesn't work if you're not like respecting the fact that speed equals distance over time and that's how long it takes to get to informally so that's

00:34:45 a really good project I like that one a lot and I think it's got a really good element in it which is like it's it's very democratizing like it's accessible to all it's free it shows the relevance of science to everyone's life like everyone can imagine taking a vacation like even if no one's ever going to be able to afford to take an Elon Musk shuttle to the moon like it's easily identifiable and so I think like in the way that like part of

00:35:15 the power of art is to like inspire people and to see relevance to their lives it does that quite well and what was the process behind the the collaboration so was there a structure that you guys came up with for how the science and artists work together yeah so guerrilla science it's kind of the structure of the organization is it's kind of semi curatorial there's like a core team of about 10 people and a lot of us come from like museum backgrounds

00:35:49 or I'm trying to remember what it's called in the UK but basically like exhibit development backgrounds and we often come up with like a core idea and then bring together these other people from like a scientific discipline or an artistic discipline and have them kind of flesh out and explore that story world but it's definitely like a guided process it's not just like a fruit and we just ran a a 20-person eight-week

00:36:21 residency program where we didn't provide much structure and we just tried to pair people and gave them resources and that the outputs of that were not us from the public's perspective as successful so it's a it's a guided process what are the things that you feel like you need to make sure happen for a fruitful collaboration so we're writing a guide to that come back in two years time and I will

00:36:52 tell you one takeaway I will sit actually there's a reference identity Leah can you if I had send you a link can you tweet it we've written a conference proceedings about this that I'm happy to for Julia to share so I guess Julie old tweet out some of like there were ten key lessons for how to do the kind of collaborations I think I think the one that was that stuck best was advice for a collaboration is don't

00:37:25 try and force it like everyone needs to be want to be in it like if you've got a pot of money and you're a science institution don't like insist you have to spend that money and like get an artist and try to shoehorn them into what you want to do and if you're an artist and you desperately want to do your project don't just look around for any pot of money that will let you do your project because you might upset the people who fund you if they're a scientist scientific organization so that was the what that was the one that stuck most in my mind but there to start

00:37:57 with a core idea such as this intergalactic travel agency would be an organizing idea or yeah there's a theme there's a theme that guides it you know like I don't know a ton about how science gallery works but I think you know they also work off themes and then there's an open call and it works off that but so what's the feeling you want people to like what what is the thing you want people to walk out of there it was the best possible result for someone for some of them because they're you

00:38:28 also mentioned that the other project didn't go so well from the general public's point of view I would curious to hear why but if you can but but they can can we start with like what took the intergalactic travel agency someone walking out of there well you what's is it like is it for you a younger audience to get into a career later on or is it could be for any age and where you want them to feel so I'll answer this but then I'm gonna stop it cuz I feel I'm dominating that has a but you know so our vision is like to

00:38:59 make science for the people so it's like a democratization of science it's going back to like there's like an Enlightenment ideal that like asking questions in the way that science does is a good in of itself irrespective of the answer so it's not like techno optimism like you're just critical of the world you know like really good rationalist way so that that's kind of the vision in terms of the kind of science literacy building elements it is not about like building work capacity it's not like there's no economic justification from what we do it's like

00:39:31 very much about the value that science brings us an element of culture you know in the same way so you want people reading the great works of literature you know people should understand that space is varied and interesting it's about one of the four strands of science literacy economic development cultural development empowerment it's very important for people to feel empowered in their lives to make the best decisions for them in their community so I think these are the kind of things that matter to me and I'm pleased trying

00:40:04 to give up the floor well I will take it I wanted to talk about the superhero Clubhouse it is an organization of theater artists and in scientists that I work very closely with I came upon them through the magic of Google because I was looking for a space that provided some structure for collaboration over

00:40:37 relatively long time that was focused on asking environmental questions so they have a science and stage fellowship open call we want you guys to come up with a theater piece about climate change now climate changes is huge and we all know the discussions that usually happen around climate change they're more like

00:41:09 these are the facts no you're lying no these are the fact and and it's not it's not fruitful so the idea behind superhero Clubhouse is to put on performances that have people ask questions so it's not didactic but it is is science-based and in the fellowship three theater artists three scientists for months and they the the structure of

00:41:40 the program is basically based on models for building good collaboration so forming storming norming and performing if you've heard heard of that it is the model so you you come together and you spend you spend you spend time together you build relationships the scientists I like I gave a talk about my research on sea turtle lighting laws and other

00:42:12 people gave their talks about their research it's genetics and and genetically modified crops the artists also gave workshops so we're we're learning and about each other's disciplines and and we're creating some some common language and so once you're kind of you know you have that common language and you're friends with people you can then start to to build something together and you know lots of brainstorming what what part of climate

00:42:44 change are we gonna are we going to talk about and we ended up 20 minute 30 minute um theater piece we've got you know there's that there are songs about climate change in there and the the video will be tomorrow if you guys want to check out some of that but in in that we've got a piece that has has a narrative but is also grounded in in

00:43:15 science so what does the world that we're building look like like you were your and having that be true to the facts that we have come up with through scientific research but also having a good artistic value as as well but the the process you know it takes a lot of face time I I think and so I really

00:43:45 think that the superhero clubhouses is a space that that allows people to come together and you want to come out with something but what that thing looks like isn't super specified like you know we I guess we we could have done a Mayan piece or something you know it what what it is is could could be different for for a different group but having activities that allow you to form a

00:44:20 collaboration with another another person is something that I think is really really important I also I would also really love to see that that space become more more normal do you know what I mean so there are are more pockets of okay let's let's work together over a long term and let me try and understand what your artistic perspective is you

00:44:50 know just people could be so siloed exactly and and it sounds like you're really you're like you want to create a community center almost that's can go anywhere and I think that's what what good effective collaborations are there is micro micro communities a shame question for you - yes you ran this pretty hip conference space in between new school this year what a part of what

00:45:22 you did with that was you kind of asked for policy out you asked for outputs takeaways from these working groups what what was your thinking with constructing it that way what will as an output why did you want to do what's come of it maybe since then if there's been any reverberations yeah so I mean my thinking and doing malice because I think it's really important as this conference does for those of us working in this space in-between as I refer to it or many of us have referred

00:45:53 to it to kind of come together and talk about what we're all doing as individual organizations or practitioners how we can more effectively work together especially those of us working in New York City but even beyond that I just think there's such a big group of us in New York City who are doing things that sound and look alike that my thinking was that we could potentially be a much

00:46:25 more powerful voice if we came together and work together more effectively while still keeping our own individual practices whatever those are and so that was the idea I think what's happened since then is I hope it's spawned a lot of other ideas for bringing this community together more often there was afterwards a push to kind of

00:46:59 form a coalition called a space in-between which Daniel Kohn was here somewhere spearheaded and exists kind of as a platform and and they continue to meet we we were all continuing to meet for a while and I think were I anyway opening to continue in LA and I think again

00:47:29 that's why I've held that conference and that's something I'm still interested in potentially even more interested in than doing science and art collaborations because I worry and or potentially I've become really focused on how we take all the work that everybody in this room has already done and all the great things that have come

00:48:01 from that and really create a larger voice and a larger impact with it and I think one of the ways we do that is by really coming together some sort of coalition or force or however you want to label it and I'd be happy to talk to anybody about moving forward with that

00:48:31 and say well maybe Monica could say a few words about your educational work oh oh you can see with everybody else work in the k-12 community on the group I yep I work in across ok say yes it might I don't know my role is kind of weird and I'm listening to a lot of the conversations I think you know gosh we self-initiate almost everything we do

00:49:02 like there's no format we're always out there you know thinking of new ideas in our world I'm a painter who works with the NASA community exploring space lines and I painted I over the last 12 years so it's really funny you brought that up working with high as my Antos i was really cool guys and working with David Grinspoon who's going to be talking tomorrow and but there has been these loose coalition's of the you know artists and space scientists and NASA working together they have an education

00:49:33 and public outreach component to what they do at NASA although fundings kind of tricky right now so my role is really as an artist but also as a distiller is to work within the space science community and then distill that into engagement programs for k12 lifelong learners and I can never really expect it to be an education right but somehow this has taken on a life of its own with their group Eureka's now that's extending into other aspects of science and so I very much feel as

00:50:04 artists we're still about science literacy but we're doing it through the lens of art and culture and I think it's not just about the student learner it's about the adult learner because if you can get the adults in the room excited about open inquiry transdisciplinary investigation then that filters down to the youth and the room too and so we do everything from maker nights and Pinedale Wyoming with ranching communities to Boys and Girls Clubs to teachers in LA and so that network that

00:50:36 you're talking about I feel like this is really a national thing and that was one of the questions I wrote for the group was I feel like there's almost like a thought renaissance happening with this conversation and I was curious if any of you guys experienced or thought the same and if so why like why is there this renewed interest that's permeating all facets of society education artists scientists in working and thinking

00:51:09 differently about this type of collaborative work so I have an opinion on that which is based on a lot of conjecture and not a ton of facts is if there is a international historian of science in the room you know do a deep literature dive so I have a transatlantic perspective of having spent the first

00:51:39 half of my life and training in the UK and done a lot of work through Wellcome Trust and then moving to the United States so Britain is about 15 years ahead of America in the institutional support that has provided for this kind of work driven largely by the Wellcome Trust which is then pressured the government in the UK to support analogous things I think that is the main driver it's kind of come from one big player in the country you know the Wellcome Trust is the second largest nonprofit in the

00:52:09 world after the it's foundation so it's huge so I think that's the driver I'd be really curious to know if the reason the United States seems to be doing more of that is because like carefully and the sloan Foundation recently the Simons Foundation and people like this are starting to like really push it out there and they're a good example so I think that's one thing I think there's also it's to do with kind of the the justification and the raison d'etre for

00:52:41 scientific research I think if you look at the justification in the United States for doing science a lot of it is to do with it being an economic driver and so the reason you might want to fund science communication or science literacy building has also got to be tied to that economic driver whereas in Europe for example debatably like it's got more of a cultural raison d'être it's not kind of quite us like nakedly capitalistic and that means that

00:53:15 it's easier to translate it into an artistic format so that's my really like not that well informed but not totally ignorant opinion I'd love it if someone actually had done a literature review or a sociological study of this and they can refine or correct me get on the mic so our live streamers can hear us we'd love to open it up to the audience for questions now we have a lot of time for questions if whoever wants

00:53:47 to be the brave first person got a volunteer over here all right and state your question clearly and loudly this was 17 you know I love the idea of you kind of touched upon I wanted to emphasize it now the the collaboration of organizations who are doing our science collaboration work it's very interesting and I think we should revisit it at some point this weekend so yes open to questions now maybe people could say who they are if they want to and light I create these

00:54:32 environments to create phenomenological environments to to work with the ideas of the psychological the psychology of perception really and what kind of experiences we have so I have an interest in water and I'm working on teaching a class co-teaching my first class this year at Hampshire College on

00:55:06 watershed hydrology so I'm not a watershed hydrologist I'm not a scientist I have a lot of interest in science but I was invited into two of the things that really hit it in this conversation for me our science literacy and transdisciplinarity there are two very different things one is how do we communicate ideas of science and one is how do we maybe use the processes and the language and the dialogue and the materials and of art and science and finding the commonalities to help each

00:55:39 other you know find more truths or more interesting elements so I want to just describe a little bit and that I will have a question so Chris the professor ash asked me to come in and after the data was collected and visualized that helped visualize the data and I said let me come in in the beginning of the course and I'm going I want to show my work and my process on

00:56:10 how I think and then I want to get the students to start thinking about how they're going to approach the experiment to go out and measure these two watersheds in the area so that all happened and I said why don't you go out there before you do anything and do some meditation or if you play the flute take your fluid out dance do some writing do something engage with the environment before you start collecting data they did that and they came back and they

00:56:41 brought some really interesting stuff back one in particular someone at this woman do these watercolors and they were gradients and it was really critical for me to understand gradients and how you know the idea of sedimentation or importance of information in gradients somebody did a board game which was fascinating somebody came in two people dressed up in waders and like they were doing a camp camp lesson and then my the the the third part of this is that I'm

00:57:12 going to engage by making a sculpture that articulates what I've seen in what I've learned in this process and so just two things that really stuck out one is the the stream distribution patterns so I'm going to take those patterns and sandblast them onto glass and then do this other this other element to it using glass and then when I talked to

00:57:42 Chris about she's a professor when I asked her about this what are the critical things or what are you trying to do or how are you what are you really trying to get the students to do she said I want them to understand flow and I want them to understand what's going on with water and I'm asking them to go into the environment and before they collect data that have experienced the environment which is a different way than a lot of scientists would say you know go in and collect the data we wanted turbidity and

00:58:12 we want the flow rates and we want this sedimentation they plant life and all these different things and that's really critical information so to the question can you articulate you and the crew articulate what motivates you to want to merge a science and art so the artists why do you want to work with scientists and the scientists why do you want to work with artists are you looking for the science literacy or you're looking to change the dynamic of scientific

00:58:44 process in questioning at its core I think it's really interesting your point about going into an environment and experiencing it and viewing it at first so as a as a scientist how I ended up coming up with my my dissertation project was because I was experiencing the the beach environment you know doing

00:59:17 a tagging study with sea turtles walking walking up and down and having that experience and then coming up with a question about it so I feel like for a lot of the environmental sciences and the Natural Sciences there's like that naturalist history in there that that does get a at some of which you were we're talking about so that's science hat as a as a dancer I

00:59:49 am looking to interface with other scientists scientists to explore and think about what their what their research is and what does that look like on the body and in sort of an abstract manner but also looking at it in terms of how can we use the body as a vehicle for learning like a kinesthetic learner so I feel like I

01:00:19 kind of bounce back and forth between those those two so it's science communication but it's also exploration of of different environments and different scientific research I was gonna say that I started because I've always been interested in planets but I've always been interested in art too and everybody always said growing up I grew up in Central Texas so both were

01:00:51 like weird right so they're like you can't use those but I started because I personally as an artist was interested in a subject space science as I started to explore that and working with these NASA scientists I got so excited about the types of conversations that were emerging I'm also a parent and then when I started kind of translating those into the classroom and seeing how engaged learners could get about science if they

01:01:23 looked at it through a different lens that they might not be able to address a technical topic with the confidence that they could unless they had that creative lens I felt like it was so transformative that it actually that collaboration transformed my identity as the artist so instead of now now instead of being interested in creating what I want to create I'm interested in hearing the question that the learner has and then taking that back to engage with the

01:01:54 scientists to try to come up with an experience that everybody can learn so my role I feel as an artist has shifted she really being more interested in how I can facilitate the creativity and learning of others so collaboration has completely changed my identity really as a being it sounds really good to me I fully agree with this this concept of getting

01:02:26 people into I try to do that with students sometimes but it's harder in Manhattan but still possible but getting them into the reality and experiencing it before too much knowledge comes in because then it helps ask the questions that you're that you're talking about Monica you know kind of formulate the questions that that deepen the the personal quest for the inquiry that could come later rather than just expecting a lot of data is going to naturally do that I think it sounds great what you're doing thank you I will

01:03:04 not ask about situations in which which I haven't heard too much about here where the artists contribution has a real impact on the scientist and I have two things in mind one is visualizations that were done inside cave environments that do you know what we're talking about here computer yes sort of thing and I know when those were done maybe 20 years ago of the beginning sense of the universe there were things that were found in

01:03:35 that visualization which suggested to scientists to look at various points in which they looked and actually found things that they had not otherwise found so that the point about a different type of representation was helpful to them and exploring because it was a different way of exploring than the grids on which they were already exploring and another [Music] know in the cave a cave is like a

01:04:07 virtual reality environment and there used to be where you go in and it's like um yes you have to wear a headset and it's a separate sort of a kind of room and this was like a long ago when you I mean now they're more sophisticated than they were but some of the very early uses of these the first one was at the University of Illinois Champaign so what do you do it and some scientific visualizations is the beginning of that kind of practice as well was using some of the data

01:04:40 around how do you envision the beginning of the universe as it was being told the story it was being told by physics at that time and the vision and so the assumptions that she was making as a graphic artist to put this up were different than the ones that they were using but she was obviously using their data and what would happen is that what would the visual session that was put up had things in it that weren't directly obvious in their data and led them to go look for things that they hadn't looked

01:05:11 at before and they then did find them so that's what I'm talking about and another example is Diana type Pamina a Cornell who used crochet to make hyperbolic forms that were not possible to for instance make on a computer for reasons that David Hilbert explained and so this is she has an entire project now with people who are doing making fake coral reefs sort of do you know buy this

01:05:43 kind of crocheting procedure right so again this is a way of something somebody coming in with that and she's also a mathematician right but though this particular thing that she's doing is making this crochet which is useful to mathematicians who had not actually envisioned this particular kind of shape before which they're now able to grasp in material way and people who aren't mathematicians are able to grasp in a non mathematical way so I think that it's not just that you know somebody

01:06:15 coming in to serve scientific literacy like you tell me what you know and I'll tart it up for you right I think that there's also the point about there's different ways of knowing things that people can bring forward that actually has an impact on scientific knowledge and so that's all I say thank you yeah no there's there's another example and I'm blanking on who does this but there are a couple of TED talks

01:06:46 dancers are given instructions where they're able to it's like modeling of molecules so these you can only do this you can only do that and then the dancers interact and the scientists are able to much more quickly see what would happen in given situations and so it happens at a faster rate than if they

01:07:17 were to then have to go back and do the computer programming so they can work on things quicker and then you know create the the longer mathematical models that that happen so there there definitely some other good examples of that as well I think kind of to provide a slightly conceptual framework the literature that I'm kind of familiar with word kind of sites the benefit of artists a way of

01:07:48 knowing in terms of its benefits driving scientific research forward and so I'm kind of thinking of the kind of framework that John Dewey put forward in terms of the benefits of an artistic education there's a good conference proceeding that came out of the Exploratorium a few years ago called artists a way of knowing by semper Evan and mcdougal that kind of touches on some of these good things and I think David root Bernstein is there's a review

01:08:20 paper that a lot of people on the seed networker pulling together now that I think has a lot of good examples but I've not actually seen it but I think that's like a good conceptual framework to think about yeah these kind of things but sorry I had a fun little antidote not to go back to IO but and say we were working with NASA scientists to develop this kind of curriculum where you use the elements of art line shape color value texture the basic elements of Arts

01:08:50 you analyze and understand geologic stories on planets and moons and I was working with this ayah scientist and we were working with a group of learners and these learners were working on pieces that kept referencing some shapes that were very interesting compositionally and she looked at it the scientist and said wow why do they keep drawing that I'm like well look at the composition it's very interesting compositionally she said that's a region we don't study because it's not hot so is covered in volcanoes

01:09:22 the scientists are studying the regions that are hot but the composition that was interested to the artists students in the room that was not hot but then she's like wow we should look at that closer because the layers were actually very interesting in terms of understanding geologic time and the history of lava flows on the planet it just wasn't something that was active currently so using the observational skills through the drawing process having the artists and the scientists the room I thought that that was a really interesting place where both were

01:09:55 informing each other equally at that moment in time so I just wanted to add that I mean these are really beautiful concrete examples of how art can influence science but I think it's important for us to remember and appreciate the the less concrete examples right that science in particular can work very very slowly and

01:10:25 the dialogue between a scientist and an artist and and the infusion of a different way of thinking about a set of questions or a set of problems is really really profound you can you may not immediately be able to put concrete language around what that resulted in but I think that we should not forget that these are happening and everything that we're all doing

01:10:55 great question it kind of preempted a little bit of what I was going to ask but I love this idea that got brought up earlier about a taxonomy of different types of collaborations and I found it very conceptually helpful especially because this conference is going to continue into the weekend and have more discussions so as far as I understand it the taxonomy that's kind of been presented today by all the people doing actual collaborations seems to be one that the scientist helps in a sorry that

01:11:29 the artist in a sense helps to promote some sort of scientific idea maybe like a movie like Inconvenient Truth would be a bit of a extremely you know blunt example of that but to some degree that happens or alternatively maybe this the artist as a critic to some scientific idea or process seems also like a legitimate form of sight to me at least and and then third possibly the idea of almost an artistic project like the interstellar travel Bureau which in a

01:11:59 sense like a pop up interactive experience is a little bit more on the artistic side but it's drawing very much from science and then the fourth which was just brought up which is exactly what I was going to ask about which is when the scientist it's almost like science forward instead of art Ford and the scientist gets something out of this artistic collaboration maybe noticing something new or having their thinking change and I just wanted to ask two things one of which was this taxonomy

01:12:31 that I've kind of walked away from from this conversation does everyone kind of those categories make sense to people as possible modes to interpret what we mean by sayare and then - are there any extra categories that you can think of I it might be a little bit of a reach but I just wanted to kind of see what your opinion of of that was given that this is kind of what I've taken away from this and what I'm going to be thinking about as people

01:13:02 continue to present and talk about say art over the next few days yeah I sort of started off with this as the typology guy I yeah I when I was following the conversations and I didn't keep bringing up other examples of classes of collaborations but I would have come up with the four that you just had the third about the witch mark and Jamie brought up with these the

01:13:34 intergalactic Club and I've offered sorry I just forgot your title they superhero Club superhero Clubhouse I guess I yeah they even though you said they were in a way started with art I almost saw the master starting with life or something about engaging people in a holistic way about issues of life or more they almost ethics and and a transdisciplinary mind that was maybe neither science nor our maybe I would put it a little bit as you framed it on

01:14:04 they work toward the outside but but almost a goal for for for doing scenarios about life expanding people a consciousness expansion maybe more more more broadly construed and then the fourth one I would say yes you framed it well as the artistic mind as having new insights and I agree that science has to do that scientists have to do that themselves but but some the idea of

01:14:35 multiple Minds thinking in patterns in different ways so I would have I would say you're saying for whether there's more I don't know I don't see it at this point but I'm definitely open to it but I think that's really great that you saw the four that I did I saw also I'd like to just add a little bit on to your fourth category I think is really good but I think we should not just think about that the collaborations as an artist it can be any member of the

01:15:07 community it can be anyone who comes to a scientist with something and I just want to throw an example out which is yeah I'm do I'm gonna do this film this short film about this lab in Nova Scotia led by this awesome scientist named Max LeBron and she is its ocean plastics lab and she what she does is she actually begins the process of hypothesis creation with a community meeting in the town or the lavas and sort of gives her like a rough presentation of what she is

01:15:38 interested in what what they can do in the lab and then they just have an open hypothesis generation session and it's super engaged in the community and what part of the things come out of it is they've created these little trawls that can go behind people's fishing boats that can collect plastic and then making each person as a boat can do their own experiments at home and feed data back into the lab but all of that like all those interests and those kind of experiments come from the community members and I just think that's such a great model moving forward it both gets

01:16:09 scientists out of their silo a little bit and it - Shane's playing earlier about like how do we have a bigger impact above and beyond meetings and and ivory tower collaborations it's that stuff it's like it's like getting scientists to to come out into the into the community a little bit more and also going to them and bringing the bringing it to them but I just love what what they're doing up there I mean I would add to that a little bit and say and I don't know if this is a different category or a nuance of the category but

01:16:42 that I think another really important thing for this group to be thinking about and talking about is how do we reach people were not currently reaching right because I mean I'll just speak for a lego project we've amassed a really wonderful community of people but I think to some degree we're speaking to the choir and how do you start to reach beyond that group of people and that I do think in a way is a special category because potentially we have to work or think or at least talk a little

01:17:15 bit differently about what we're doing in order to engage some people that were not currently engaging for example the word transdisciplinary there are some people that that word is just gonna lose immediately there are a lot of people that that word is going to lose immediately thank you so much hey my name is Nick I'm a scientist most of the time I am an artist very rarely and I've

01:17:48 done a little bit about science collaboration I thought was a really interesting discussion but something that struck me about it it's also something that struck me about my interactions with the art community and especially the interactions between scientists and artists is that a large majority of them are very science focused so the subject of the whole thing is science whether it's science communication or the artists bringing

01:18:20 some observation that helps the scientist understand things is the science that we're trying to understand although somehow the question of the universe that is the science that we're trying to understand rarely is do we see science doing science of art and trying to use science to understand art now this does happen but it's a lot rarer than art trying to serve science and I wonder why if you have any opinions on why that is I think mark touched on it a little bit with the inequality between

01:18:53 funding but also I think maybe there the science of art is sometimes seen as a little bit frivolous in science like you know it's not a serious question that scientists are asking so I wonder if you have any kind of opinions on that maybe it's like a fifth category to your tale I can make a empirical observation because I work with and know lots of people who work in conservation science say this chemistry that is looking at

01:19:24 art preservation so fine art this is not a well-respected or well-funded subfield of chemistry and spectroscopy for whatever reason I don't understand bit but it is an empirically true statement this is not something where there is a ton of money in a ton of respect heading I would also kind of kind of caveat it and push back against this conception that like science doesn't do a lot of job in art I think it's really easy to

01:19:55 lose sight of our place in history when we forget that many of the kind of tools we take to be everyday run-of-the-mill things were in fact 20 30 50 years ago cutting-edge science and they've now been so democratized and mass-marketed that we don't even realize that this is fundamentally like a scientific product it's probably more technological now and

01:20:26 these are completely ubiquitous like the Met is digitizing its entire collection like Google is transcribing every work of literature onto the web and and it's somewhat semantics but you know you could argue that like science is doing a really good job of like disseminating and promoting art it just doesn't sit within the academies in the way it does it now every just a thought yeah to comment on that I guess it's not cutting edge anymore so it's not you know it's become engineering not science yeah I

01:20:56 mean yeah that's why I said maybe it's semantics adjustment just which is a quick responses to some degree science as a processes is more confined in a certain way than art but in general I would clasp your question under cognitive sciences you know is it's asking asking how people think and why they think and how respond and in and that is being investigated in different ways obviously

01:21:27 in a big big way by I know it was a year or two ago where there was some artificial intelligence is also investigating this like what makes people respond in certain ways and there was some pop song that was created by a computer and in a way that I don't there's a negative side to that as there was a side that that scares me when the the human mind is is understood in that way and the the artistic process is well it depends on what kind of art you're talking about but in this case it was a song that contains properties to it that

01:22:02 they think will be popular to the mind and I don't know whether that fits with your question at all yeah absolutely I mean I think music is the one is one of the areas where this is most prevalent the a scientific understanding of music but it is so it seems that it's not that this doesn't happen it just seems very one it's very unequal right there is this imbalance and I wonder if it's to do with funding or to do with the lack of respect for those kind of fields yeah I mean another reason might simply be

01:22:33 that in a way it's the opposite of what it feels like that the artists are actually more evolved and have already come to the table and part of the discussion is how to get the scientists at the table and therefore there may be a little bit of a focus on the science this will add one more thing from like the artists perspective you know as an artist you have a subject right and so many artists are interested in the subject of science and that subject in art can be so varied whereas often in

01:23:05 science you're an expert you're a master in a certain field or question so you don't necessarily have the breadth in your starting point what you learn one simple to be Eric Kandel and you wrote a book about Mark Rothko and trying to understand from a neuroscientist perspective what makes Rothko's those aren't so it is it is happening I mean yeah you're maybe it's not happening as a formal away but yeah so I'm happy with that as

01:23:37 another category that needs to be expanded more maybe even more consciously to make more conscious just really quickly.i from my perspective and I'm I might just be too caught up in it and I write all about neuro aesthetics on my website the beautiful brain and and and I just feel like it is happening a lot and there's like the Max Planck Empire for example for example just created the Max Planck Institute of empirical science of empirical aesthetics and it's all about that and there's kind of that I went to the International Association of empirical

01:24:09 aesthetics meeting here at Hunter College a couple of years like these are big bodies that are only studying what happens when you look at a painting what and it really is going on but it's it's it's it's a lot of it rubs people artists the wrong way for good reason but there is an issue of of the artists being having an intuitive understanding what they were they're already doing this is a longer conversation I just the day there is a lot of work out there yeah yeah so if I could just add to that

01:24:39 a little bit and I am talking tomorrow sorry but there is actually a science to the arts and I think oftentimes that's overlooked and there is a lot of work being done on aesthetic science but there's also a lot being done on the neuroscience of what happens in the brain when you're making stuff even looking at when did civilization really take off with knowledge and there's a professor and I forget what university that's actually having people Flint knives and Spears and seeing what is

01:25:12 happening because there was a point patient where the use of simple machines and building these things actually led to more knowledge and I think oftentimes what's happening at least in this country is that we look at art in many ways as vocational skills and if you look at metallurgy or ceramics or chemistry you know that there are really hard sciences there how do you build how do you engineer typically the artists were the ones that were doing that a

01:25:43 hundred years ago we really started device disciplines and so I think that was kind of the thought behind this whole weekend - and some of you talked about the transdisciplinary nature but in many ways people have become so specialized in their fields that they're not looking at the bigger picture and I'm not gonna say scientists in general because I I would say that what we have is we we have a problem with how we value knowledge and things in this country and

01:26:16 so it's not necessarily the scientist but its culture as a whole places things at different levels and so I would like to think that it's more about our values I'd second that my name is cynthia Panucci and thirty years ago i started an organization called art and science collaborations so I think we have to look at the fact that art

01:26:47 education in this country is valued nil it's just not funded so that means that the scientists don't haven't appreciate the scientists to be the ones that are in control now don't have an appreciation of the arts or what an artist can bring to the table they don't know anything about it they don't know how to craft engineer visualize I mean some of them do yeah of course this is

01:27:17 an exception but so we have to look at the fact that funding the NEA funding is this pitiful I mean in the UK it's the lottery that funds the Arts Council I mean forever that's why they can do these wonderful collaborations and the Wellcome Trust you know the most highly funded medical institution in the world yeah they're way ahead of us and Australia is catching up really nicely

01:27:49 so so education it if it doesn't come fundamentally and the parents don't value that I happen to think after-school programs are an incredible place because the structure of the classroom is impossible to do project learning and I think that's where art and science has to be to be appreciated and to bring the science and alive in ways that the science is normally don't

01:28:20 do so that after after-school programs are everything is so structured so it's - it's got to be a passion of yours on the part of the artist and the scientist has got to love art as well I mean I've traveled all over the world and I can't tell you how many times I'll be sitting down on a bench in a city I don't know and there'll be a woman sitting there and yeah we're talking yep she's an artist yeah and her husband is a

01:28:52 scientist I mean I could probably write a book about this there is this natural connection it's very very interesting it's really there and I think the reason why it's happening these collaborations are happening more and more more projects like Lego Lego are happening I get it it's through my email I mean practically once a month I hear about new artists and scientists don't leave

01:29:22 institutions or organizations anymore they need to be passionate about the science they're involved in and and respect and enjoy art and then if it takes ten years to form a personal relationship over this concept that they want to bring about through a transdisciplinary collaboration well you just work on it and you just do it I mean it's not like you know anyway but I wanted to say that I think digital tools

01:29:54 they're more children born digital many of us are older so we weren't born digital but I think it has been a big enabler so scientists like Tyler VOC if I was doing a project I could find his email and I know his books and I can you know email him and ask him a question so that kind of accessibility to scientists was never around in the olden days unless you were there personally going to the University but

01:30:28 it's there today yeah but you've got to build as an artist a body of work that people that's not so obtuse that the general public and that people can really understand and appreciate it and that that scientist is going to really get into you know and want to work with you so that mutual respect has totally got to be there and that takes time you

01:30:59 can't put a graduate student together with a scientist and expect that you know anyway I'm a little off the topic thank you very much thank you for your comment cynthia i feel like you touched upon a lot of the things that we talked about tonight especially what makes for a good collaboration definitely dedication passion our evening is over it went really fast thank you guys so much for the panel tonight we are

01:31:30 starting at 9:30 tomorrow the doors are going to open at 9:00 so come in with your coffee and I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow

01:32:02 [Music] I feel like we couldn't talk [Music]