Here is a brief overview of different perspectives we are investigating, ordered by increasing depth of dialogue and integration:

Complementarity & humanism

At a first level, art and science can simply happen next to each other, connected through making our lives more rounded, following the humanist ideal of polymathy.

This idea underlies some of our residencies with non-research activities.

One's end product as an instrument for the other

A second level of integration sees either art or science as a valuable instrumental contribution to the other, i.e. one's end product is helpful for the other's goals.

This entails a form of subordination, because the interaction can be derailed and become unsatisfactory if the goals of the instrumental field are fulfilled at the expense of the other's. Most obviously, the goals on the scientific side will be more cognitive or efficacy-driven and impersonal, while those on the artistic side will be more expressive and subjective, but other tensions can exist.

This is perhaps the most common level for collaboration between experts from each side of the divide, since it does not require the same person to practice or understand the two fields beyond some entry level.

This can include, not exhaustively:

Art to express science

Art as a way to communicate scientific results and insights is the most classic form of interaction, the one most easily promoted by existing institutions and habits, but certainly also highly valuable and with vast possibilties to explore:

• Artistic expertise helps facilitate the cognitive or practical efficacy of the science, e.g. infographics


• Art to afford non-cognitive (or unusual cognitive modes of) relations to the content or practice of science, e.g. emotional or embodied connection to the object of study


• The art itself, in how it is done or what it uses, conveys some of the results of the science (this borders on the third level of integration below) e.g. a videogame that is also a simplified simulation



Science to make tools for art

New tools, techniques, approaches for art is another very classic form of articulation, though it is more restricted in the kinds of science and arts it involves: it is usually more specifically restricted to technology, materials science, etc. but can also include e.g. neuroscience or social science.

One's process as inspiration for the other

A third level of integration has the same people practice both art and science, or experts of one understand enough about the other that the process itself, despite having different goals or contents, becomes an inspiration.

Art to inspire science



• Drawing on the way that art practices foster creativity


• Using artistic processes as innovative ways to acquire abstract intuitions about objects, using unusual cognitive modules (beyond symbolic and geometric) to develop insights that are ultimately formalizable, e.g. sonification or expression through movement



Science to inspire art



• Metaphorical or analogical use of scientific concepts to identify techniques or subjective contents worth expressing, e.g. algebraic notions of projection as a way of inspiring new relations to light and shadow in photography



Goal convergence

At this fourth and very rare level of integration, while we admit that the goals of science and art must ultimately diverge, we try to figure out how to push back this divergence as far as we can, and take steps that are both artistically and scientifically meaningful for the same reason.




• Identifying joint concerns that are incomplete when addressed only from one side, e.g. perhaps abstraction, intuition


• Developing enough of an aesthetics of science and a formalization of art for the same act or aim to have value as both (partial examples may be found music theory)