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Ralph Windle’s Blog on Science & The Arts

is about some big, interconnected issues:-

The long-running Arts / Science / Two cultures Debate. Why the old clichés have to STOP...

How Creative Synthesis - the bringing together of separated (Arts/Science?) modes of thought is now top-priority for Innovation...

About Ralph Windle

ARTSCIENCE: ON THE 2010 AGENDA


Following on an exhilarating Darwin bi-centenary year, there is already much to look forward to in 2010 and some big issues looming.
Among others, we will be trying to bring the Arts/Science dialogue a bit closer to the ‘real world’ dramas of economic melt-down and global warming etc from which it has often seemed strangely detached…..
And asking, 10 years later, whatever happened to ‘Imagination and Understanding’: the major ‘Report on the Arts and Humanities in relation to Science and Technology’ which was to usher in the brave new ArtScience world; and engaged so many Very Important People in soirees at the Royal Society, Royal Institution and other august locations?
First, however, we need to give an update on a number of projects with which we already have contacts and on which we will be commenting more fully early in 2010. They include:

Sheffield University Arts/Science Encounters


The 2009 Series was a great success and introduced some important new elements to the dialogue. I was asked by their initiator, Professor Rachel Falconer, and other key people involved, to write a special report on the experience. This I hope to publish on this site in due course. Meanwhile, the good news is that there is to be a 2010 follow-up ‘Encounters’ series.


Music and the Conference of Birds


Music and birdsong are proving to be prolific catalysts of arts/ science interdisciplinary projects.
One of the most creatively vigorous is the Conference of Birds, formed by composer/ pianist Peter Cowdrey with a talented group of performers and very knowledgable bird-science enthusiasts. They are currently on a research and performance mission to the Brazilian rain forest and I will be interviewing and reporting on their work on their return. Dance, film and video are also involved.
http://www.theconferenceofbirds.com
The Comedy of Change: (ballet by dancer/scientist Nicky Clayton).


Nicky Clayton is professor of comparative cognition at the University of Cambridge where she studies the cognitive capacity of corvids - rooks, jays and crows. She is also scientific advisor to the Rambert Dance Company with whom she has produced a new ballet, inspired by evolution and natural selection. It is now on tour. (New Scientist 7 November: Dancing with Darwin).
The hope is that she may be talking about the project during the 2010 season of arts/science ‘Encounters’ and we will be reporting.

The Fragmented Orchestra

We have been trying, so far without much success, to learn more about this fascinating project described as ‘a huge distributed musical structure modelled on the firing of the human brain’s neurons’ orchestrated, over a wide geography of 24 sites ,from Liverpool. It is the brainchild of Jane Grant, John Matthias and Nick Ryan.


The website http://thefragmentedorchestra.com has been a little volatile of late. If you have information, please tell  ralph@ralphwindle.com

LOST IN LEARNING

This is an unusual ‘learning and creativity’ project and travelling exhibition being built around a very impressive photographic monograph shortly to be published in the USA by Boston based photographer/writer Eva Timothy. The highly evocative images all derive from historic artefacts associated with key figures in the fields of exploration, science and the arts. CVN has been invited to supply a ‘foreword’, and we will be following and reporting on the book and the project in 2010.

Eva Timothy’s brilliant existing portfolio, which includes earlier sequences in Oxford and Venice during a recent European year, and her stunning images of childhood curiosity, can be seen at www.illumea.com

The Halo and the Noose -  The Power of Storytelling and Story listening … Graham Williams and Dorian Haarhoff (Graysonian Press, Johannesburg, 2009)

This is a South African project, soon also to be available as an e-book with accompanying web-site. Dorian Haarhoff is a poet, mentor and cross-disciplinarian with an unusually deep and wide knowledge of live ‘story’ in many cultures. His co-writer and project collaborator, Graham Williams, is a training specialist from a psychology/economic background ( who contributed an early piece to this website on the arts/science gap.)
The CVN interest, which led the authors to request a special ‘afterword’ to their work, is that – although mainly written into a business context – the ‘story ’medium is becoming an area of great interest and practical involvement in several approaches to the arts/science interactive learning field.
We’ll be returning to this during 2010.

The Identity Project ( The Wellcome Trust)

CVN has no current direct involvement with this project – a nine-month season of exhibitions, live events, films etc being presented in London and various other venues across the UK –though we will be visiting and commenting on some activities. See

www.wellcomecollection.org

We are mainly interested in, and plan to follow up, one related event - the well-publicised ( ‘Inside the mind of an Actor’ Guardian 24 Nov.) brain scan of actress Fiona Shaw reciting Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’ for an audience of cognitive neuroscientists in the basement of London University’s psychology department.

We are hoping - as no doubt Professor Tallis - that no self-styled ‘neuro-aesheticians’ were allowed in.

More to come.           RW.