Extra-Ordinary Collusion

For this exhibition, artists were paired with scientists from the Salk Institute and invited to tour the scientists’ labs and learn about their state-of-the-art research. Using this visit as the impetus for the exhibition, artists created new work based on their conversations and interactions with the scientists. The artists in Extra-Ordinary Collusion come from various disciplines including painting, sculpture, installation, new media, and conceptual art.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go,  Art and Science is an abundantly illustrated history of the dynamic interaction between the arts and sciences, and how it has shaped our world.

Today, art and science are often defined in opposition to each other: one involves the creation of individual aesthetic objects, and the other the discovery of general laws of nature. Throughout human history, however, the boundaries have been less clearly drawn: knowledge and artifacts have often issued from the same source, the head and hands of the artisan. And artists and scientists have always been linked, on a fundamental level, by their reliance on creative thinking.

Art and Science surveys the vital relationship between these two fields of endeavor in its full scope, from prehistory to the present day. Individual chapters explore how science has shaped architecture in every culture and civilization; how mathematical principles and materials science have underpinned the decorative arts; how the psychology of perception has spurred the development of painting; how graphic design and illustration have evolved in tandem with methods of scientific research; and how breakthroughs in the physical sciences have transformed the performing arts. Some 265 illustrations, ranging from masterworks by Dürer and Leonardo to the dazzling vistas revealed by fractal geometry, complement the wide-ranging text.

This new edition has been updated to cover the ongoing convergence of art and technology in the digital age, a convergence that has led to the emergence of a new type of creator, the “cultural explorer” whose hybrid artworks defy all traditional categorization. 

Art and Science - 2nd Edition