Each year, we work with external partners and cultural collaborators on a range of projects including residencies, educational workshops and exploratory exchanges.
Recent collaborations include Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Iskratsch Lab at Queen Mary University; Animate Projects and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Medical Research Council, Tranquil City, CERN, the Royal Society, the Biochemical Society, The CUBE London, iScience Magazine at Imperial College University, Soapbox Science, and Tate Exchange.
Browse through our blog posts for more information and see some examples below…
GO SCIENCE – WASTELANDS
Report of the Government Chief Scientific Adviser 2016, From Waste to Resource Productivity, The Government Office for Science, London.The Government Office for Science (GO Science), in partnership with DEFRA, has released a report focusing on waste and resource productivity. Drawing on diverse expertise and providing evidence from multiple perspectives, the report explores the potential for change in the use and reuse of waste. The report aims to engage policy makers, regulators, local authorities and a wide range of business people, professionals, researchers and other individuals with an interest in exploiting the potential to unlock productivity by moving from creating waste to valuing resources. MA Art and Science students collaborated with the Government Office for Science throughout the scoping and preparation of this report in visualising, debating and communicating the key themes and emerging issues. This was complemented by an exhibition Tracing Wastelands at The Depot, London, in November 2016, featuring artwork by Beckie Leach, Hannah Scott, Jennifer Crouch, Julius Colwyn, Silvia Krupinska, and Stephanie Wong.The report is also illustrated with photographs by Hannah Scott. View the full report here.
THE CUBE LONDON – EM•EM
The em•em (embodiment and emotion) residency is a seven month long collaboration, started in March 2017, between seven Central Saint Martins MA Art and Science students and THECUBE in East London. Participating artists are: Monika Dorniak, Virginie Serneels, Allison Barclay, Julie Light, Jill Mueller, Lisa Pettibone, and Eleonora Sher.For this residency each artist explored a unique aspect of embodiment and emotion relevant to their ongoing practice, including topics such as gravity, sensory perception, objects and memory, and our emotional identity. The work and interests were shared through an exhibition and a series of public events. Through the em•em residency, the artists aimed to bring new perspectives to current dialogues around mind and body, building bridges between disciplines.Read the blog posts about the residency as it developed, on the Cube website.
TATE EXCHANGE
Tate Exchange, at Tate Modern, is an international learning project about collaboration and exchange, connecting schools, galleries, artists and cultural institutions all over the world.Nine students from three different Masters courses at Central Saint Martins were selected to take part in a two year collaboration that started in 2015 at Tate Britain and continued until 2017 at Tate Modern. The selected students were Iting Shih, Neus Torres Tamarit and Jana Valencic from MA Art and Science, Boram Jang from MRes Art Theory and Philosophy, Pablo Castaneda and Camille Leherpeur from MA Fine Art, and Victoria Batt, Juan Covelli and Neale Willis from MA Photography. The collaboration consisted of performances at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, creating artworks in collaboration with the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, taking part in the online platform for cultural exchange all over the world, and creating a workshop to activate artworks exhibited at the Tate galleries, as part of the opening events for the Tate Exchange.
Neus Torres Tamarit was inspired by Ophelia, by Sir John Everett-Millais and the micro-biome of an environment. She created a series of artworks and workshops for the event ‘Activating Art through Science and Technology’ at Tate Modern, that involved cutting up reproductions of iconic Tate artworks featuring life and death into strips and reorganising them according to genetic sequences from the NCBI metagenome database. Iting Shih explored the contradiction and conflict of boundaries in cultures, and classic and modern art through a performance at Tate Britain, in which she invited the public to reflect about current cultural issues whilst standing on a plinth.
ANIMATE PROJECTS – INVISIBLE SIGNALS
Invisible Signals is a creative response to the Silent Signal project (commissioned by Animate Projects), where artists and scientists collaborated to create animations that explore new ways of thinking about the human body. Students from Central Saint Martins MA Art and Science and MA Character Animation programmes worked with Silent Signal collaborators Genetic Moo, Dr. Neil Dufton (Battle of Blister), Samantha Moore and Dr. Serge Mostowy (Loop) to interpret and extend ideas addressed in their animations.A workshop for young people, designed and delivered by Central Saint Martins students under the guidance of Heather Barnett (Pathway Leader on MA Art and Science), included a talk on the science behind emotions, a game relating to art and emotion, and the possibility for participants to try different animation techniques such as stop motion, the use of projected light through drawing on over-head projectors, and live digital drawings with video projectors.The project ended with a symposium held at Central Saint Martins on 16 June 2016, and included a presentation by the students and a Q&A. Participating students from the MA Art and Science were Virginie Serneels and Marta Pinilla, and from MA Character Animation Emanuele Romano, Aurora Suriel Melchor and Jiani Zhao. Watch a short film of the workshop made by Jill Damatac Futter.
Find out more about Silent Signal, devised and produced by Animate Projects with scientist Bentley Crudgington, and supported by a Wellcome Trust Large Arts Award and the Garfield Weston Foundation.
ARTS CATALYST – SIDE EFFECTS
‘Side Effects’ and ‘Why Make it Simple ,When You Can Make It Complex?’ A collaboration between Arts Catalyst, Robert Whitman, The Performance Studio and MA Art and Science at Central Saint Martins ‘Why Make it Simple, When You Can Make it Complex?’ came into being as a result of a two month collaboration between Central Saint Martins and Arts Catalyst. Our temporary artist group consisted of students Monika Dorniak, Virginie Serneels and Nicolas Strappini from MA Art & Science, and external alumni Verena Hermann and Mary Simmons, MA Fine Art at UCA Farnham. The project developed out of Arts Catalyst’s exhibition about the revolutionary ‘9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering’ project presented in New York in 1966, involving artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Yvonne Rainer and John Cage.In the first stage of our project we worked together with one of the original participants, Robert Whitman, helping to develop his performance presented on October 7, 2016. His 1966 piece reinvented the rules of theatre and performance by including elements of engineering, and integrating off-stage activities with live video footage. We attempted to retain and reimagine those elements.In the second stage of the project we were asked to develop new works that questioned the idea of performance in the 21st century. Marita Solberg, a visual artist and musician based in Norway, developed a workshop with us to help facilitate the generation of ideas. For our group show we worked with David Thorne, the founder of The Performance Studio in Peckham. In response to the performance we presented our artistic interpretations at Arts Catalyst (October 29, 2016) and The Performance Studio (November 9, 2016).
LEONARDO – LASER TALKS
The MA Art and Science is proud to be affiliated with Leonardo and a partner in the LASER series of art and science talks.The Leonardo Affiliate Program provides a collaborative environment where leaders from top-ranked universities and independent nonprofits in the cross-disciplinary field of art, science and technology can interface and share best practices, research and opportunities with their peers across institutional boundaries.Affiliates are Leonardo’s strategic partners, valued members of an exclusive international network of innovative institutions, academic departments, museums, science labs and research centers that are leading the advancement of art, science and technology. Affiliates engage with their peers and Leonardo’s leadership in multiple new areas of research, creative work and programs at the forefront of the field that Leonardo helped launch nearly 50 years ago.
LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) is Leonardo/ISAST’s international program of evening gatherings that bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversation with an audience. Launched in 2008 in the San Francisco Bay Area, LASERs are now presented at over 30 host organisations internationally.
THE CUBE LONDON – IDEOGRAPHIC
Ideographic is a residency with The Cube London (a curated, interdisciplinary community). Comprised of six students from MA Art & Science – Mandy Hreus, Marta Pinilla, Julius Colwyn, Jared Vaughan Davies, Mary Helen Mack, Stephanie Herbert – the ideographic team explored the question: Is there a correlation between spikes in human evolution and cultures with an alliance of art and science? Working between January – June 2015, the students explored the relationships between interdisciplinary behaviour in social organisms and periods of change, innovation and growth. Looking at biological, cultural and technological evolutions in historic societies and contemporary ones, they tried to identify shared principles for periods of social dynamism and progress. The residency involved public discussion events, exhibitions and interventions.Read several blog posts about the residency as it developed, on the Cube website.
THE BRITISH LIBRARY – ENCOUNTERS
Encounters between Art and Science at the British Library
Reflecting the cross-disciplinary nature of the British Library as an institution that spans the arts and sciences, in 2013 MA Art & Science presented an exhibition of works inspired by the Library and its science collections.Addressing all who visit, research and work there, the artistic interventions installed across public spaces highlighted how science and art have more in common than may seem apparent. Directed by a map, visitors could navigate the public spaces to encounter the thought-provoking artworks. Reflecting on Encounters between Art and Science, by Johanna Kieniewicz