Corner of Art Place and Tech Lane
4 December 2001

A new book by San Francisco State University professor and digital artist Stephen Wilson examines the ways in which contemporary artists use science and technology to explore their ideas.

And while art and science have been intertwined for centuries, it looks like it's going to be a while before artists and scientists collaborate on an equal footing.

"When art and technology come together, magical things happen," said Andy Cunningham, founder of ZeroOne, a nonprofit art and technology organization. From the San Francisco group SRL's robotics projects to Wilson's work with telepresence, it's apparent that contemporary artists are using technology and science in intriguing ways.

"It's my belief that technology is a cultural form as much as religion or art," said multimedia artist and Stanford professor Paul DeMarinis.

DeMarinis specializes in putting a new spin on old or obsolete technologies. In his Edison Effect (1993), old phonograph players are brought back to life using lasers. In Rain Dance (1998), DeMarinis modulates the way in which water droplets fall onto a surface, making them play a tune when they hit an umbrella.

Yet as members of the digital culture community gathered at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus Monday night to celebrate the launch of Wilson's book, Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology (MIT Press), it seems that the cross-fertilization between science and the arts does not cut both ways.

"When an artist walks into a lab and sees equations written on the board, his usual response is to say, 'I don't understand any of this -- it must be brilliant,'" said Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "But when an engineer wanders into an art gallery and sees stuffed animals, he's very likely to say, 'I don't understand any of this -- it must be garbage.'"

Wilson says that most scientists don't see the relevance of art in their work.

"Science and technology have always had a great deal of influence on the arts, but the arts have not had much influence on science and technology. It's disappointing," Wilson said.

Although certain technology research centers, such as Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, have had an artist-in-residence on their team, few commercial organizations are willing to sponsor arts-based research. Microsoft may have sponsored Wilson's book launch, but Dan'l Lewin, the Microsoft executive who hosted the event, said that the company has no immediate plans to hire artists for its research center. "This event is really just about community support."

Wilson hopes research organizations will pay more attention to the arts in the future. "Science organizations should think about the broader cultural implications of their work," he said. "It's crucial to the long-term success of enterprise that it reach outside its disciplinary boundaries."

Art and science have always been closely related. Even though some purists insist that the two disciplines have always been at opposite poles, designers such as the British architect and engineer Christopher Wren and the Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci were working at the intersection of art and science centuries ago. While da Vinci made detailed illustrations based on patterns in water and created prototypes of a flying machine, Wren set new standards in engineering with his revolutionary design for St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

Several generations later, the impact of science and technology on the arts is as strong as it has ever been.

Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish architect famous for his bridge designs, trained both as an architect and an engineer. Meanwhile, art museums such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis devote substantial exhibition space to art inspired by technology and science.

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