“A lot of sound and light, signifying nothing.” That was The Guardian’s notoriously acerbic art critic Jonathan Jones’s by Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda, whose installation Supersymmetry resulted from a stint as artist-in-residence at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva.
Jones concluded that the array of beeps, whooshes, dazzling strobes and light pulses basically seems to be rubbing its head and groaning: “Blow me, this is complicated stuff.”
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And what else should we expect when an artist unschooled in science comes face to face with cutting-edge physics? “Art and science, we feel, should have something to say to each other,” said Jones. “But perhaps they speak different languages after all.”
Sci-art scepticism
It’s a sentiment shared with biologist Lewis Wolpert, .
But Jones seemed to be under the impression that Ikeda’s agenda, as one of the participants in the project established in 2010, was to explain to us what the physicists are doing. It wasn’t. Artists taking part in the programme were free to develop their own responses to the particle-smashing, and to take inspiration wherever they found it. “kidnapped” scientists and held them hostage underground in the pitch dark; set dancers loose among readers in the CERN library.
Packaging science, not making art
Jones’s response to Supersymmetry shouldn’t surprise us, though, because it’s not so different to that of many scientists who come across artist-in-residence schemes at their institution. Many artists have complained that scientists assume they are there to help disseminate their research: to find attractive ways of packaging the science in a public-relations exercise.
I’ve heard one artist lament that scientists imagined her role was to help them prepare their diagrams. And I recall seeing a “sci-art veteran” (a scientist) argue that, because scientists have the money and artists have the glamour, what a great job they could do together selling science!
In an article in a double issue of that I coedited with Siân Ede on art and science collaborations, Ariane Koek, who founded the Arts at CERN scheme, recounts some of the other obstacles she encountered when she began working at the lab. żěè¶ĚĘÓƵs would expect the artists to conjure up work virtually overnight – because how long does it take to invent a bit of art? It’s not as though it’s the theory of supersymmetry, after all.
A still yawning gap
Other papers in these issues reveal more of the dark underbelly of sci-art: conflicts about ownership of the work, artists’ insecurities about their lack of institutional affiliation or secure source of funding, and scientists deciding that (perhaps enraptured by how pretty their microscopy images look when blown up to poster scale) they can be artists too – because you don’t need qualifications for that, right?
This is the side of sci-art that you don’t get to hear so much about. It’s often assumed that anything that brings science and art together, bridging C. P. Snow’s hoary old Two Cultures gap, can only be a Good Thing. There’s also an expectation that both sides will benefit, irrespective of the asymmetry that commonly exists in such relationships.
In reality, the collision can be anything but creative. As well as a tendency to view the arts as handmaid of the sciences, there exist some unreconstructed scientists whose view of art stops at the Impressionists and who persist in thinking that it is about making something nice to look at.
I remember a meeting on “chemistry and art” some years ago at which the instigator, a distinguished chemist, was baffled beyond belief that an artist would make what were allegedly sealed cans of his own faeces. (That artist was , way back in the 1960s.)
Grasping the science
Does this mean that Jones was right after all – that artists and scientists speak different languages? Perhaps, on the whole – but this misses the point. When artists take inspiration from science, they need to get to grips with what the science is about; no one is served well by naive misrepresentations. And many put in a great deal of effort to achieve that understanding.
But then they must be free to do with it what they will, because what otherwise is the point of art? This might mean that what interests the artist is not what the scientist thought was important, and indeed it’s not unusual for an artist to become fixated on some aspect of the research that the scientist barely noticed or cared about: semi-legible theoretical noodlings on a blackboard, say.
The artist might even want to criticise the science, to the possible consternation of the scientists or funders expecting something celebratory or bedazzling. Little of value, at any rate, tends to emerge from brief encounters; it takes time to foster rich, productive and mutually sympathetic collaborations.
The question – perhaps the only important one – should be: is the art any good? Lots of sci-art is not, and its worthiness doesn’t compensate. Critics like Jones are still as likely to ignore it as to slate it. The only answer is to make work that’s too good to ignore.
