Science + Culture
2 June 2011
This event has now happened. You can take a look at the documentation here.
An ideas exchange -
What happens when art and science meet?
Join us to explore astounding work that emerges from the overlap.
Quickfire talks, debate, discussion and ideas.
An event with and for the cultural and science sectors.
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Thursday 2 June 2011, 2 to 6pm
Glasgow Science Centre
50 Pacific Quay
Glasgow G51 1EA
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Culture + Science is produced by Trigger and commissioned by Creative Scotland’s Creative Futures programme: promoting, connecting and developing Scotland’s creative practitioners.
In association with Glasgow Science Centre.
This event is free but space is limited. Register here.
Speakers
The line-up for Science + Culture includes a range of leading artists and scientists working across the two sectors.
We’ll be announcing them here in the run up to the event.
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Ansuman Biswas was born in Calcutta and trained in the UK. He has an international practice encompassing music, film, live art, installation, writing and theatre. He is interested in hybridity and interdisciplinarity – often working between science, art and industry, for instance, or between music, dance and visual art.
Over the last few years his work has included directing Shakespeare in America, translating Tagore’s poetry from the Bengali, designing underwater sculptures in the Red Sea, living with wandering minstrels in India, being employed as an ornamental hermit in the English countryside, touring with Björk, spending two days blindfolded in an unknown place, travelling with shamans in the Gobi Desert, playing with Oasis, collaborating with neuroscientists in Arizona, living for a week with absolutely nothing but what spectators chose to give him, co-ordinating grassroots activists in Soweto, being sealed in a box for ten days with no food or light, making a musical in a maximum security prison, re-designing Maidstone High Street, being a soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, bathing strangers, running seminars on democracy for monks in a Burmese monastery, making a radio telescope sing and dance, being locked in a Gothic Tower alone for forty days and nights, and even flying on a real magic carpet in Star City, Moscow.
Ansuman is a trustee of Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency. He has had a leading role in developing new models of interdisciplinary collaboration at Hewlett-Packard’s research lab in Bangalore and has been artist-in-residence at the National Institute of Medical Research in London. He has been part of a pioneering study group for the European Space Agency on Cultural Utilization of the International Space Station, and he has been involved in setting up cultural initiatives with the Indian Space Research Organization and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, India.
www.ansuman.com
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Anna Furse is an award-winning professional theatre director, writer and academic, directing the MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths where she is incoming Head of Department. She has worked in a wide range of contexts from repertory theatres and applied theatre contexts to ‘sci-art’ and experimental laboratory environments. Her Artistic Directorships include the pioneering international-touring Bloodgroup (1979 – 1986), new writing company Paines Plough (1990 – 1995) and her current company Athletes of the Heart.
Anna has received many Arts Council England Writers Awards, Bursaries and Grants over the years, as well as Awards from The Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England and The Kings Fund for her work in bio-medical fields.
Her current production SEA/WOMAN with DAH Teatar, is part of the Pinter Centre for Performance and Creative Writing’s Fractured Narratives project, funded by the AHRC. This premiered in Belgrade in December 2010 and toured with British Council support to Beirut and in the UK in 2011. It also received an ACE grant.
In 2007 her performance installation for Chelsea and Westminster Hospital GLASS BODY: REFLECTING ON BECOMING TRANSPARENT (Wellcome Trust People Award and Arts Council England) toured the UK . MY GLASS BODY, her radio debut as writer/director (Sweet Talk Productions) was commissioned and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Wire.
Current publications includes editing a new anthology of experimental texts, THEATRE IN PIECES: Politics, Poetics and Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Methuen. She has also edited an issue on Gender and Performance for GenderForum, University of Koln, and contributed chapters to forthcoming books A LIFE OF ETHICS AND PERFORMANCE, ed John Matthews and DANCE AND CHOREOMANIA eds Johannes Birringer and Josephine Fenger.
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Kat Nilsson had every intention of being a scientist but left lab life to grow real plants that wouldn’t end up mashed-up for measuring free radical metabolism. She continued to express her love for science through jokes on the comedy circuit. Then she landed a job at Science Line which answered the public’s science questions, created shows and web content.
In 2003 Kat joined the Science Museum as an exhibition content developer. She also took the opportunity to join the Punk Science team. This big-ing-up science with the boys was short lived. By the end of 2004 she began programming the Dana Centre. With 120 bespoke events a year she took great joy in putting a multidisciplinary spin on science.
In 2008 Kat became the Contemporary Science Manager and her duties included managing the Dana Centre and the reinvention of Antenna, the Museum’s science news gallery. Through her experience at Dana she was able to help redevelop the Antenna gallery to now have a greater flexibility for the future and the content delivery is more cost effective.
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Dr Jenny Rodgers received a DPhil in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford in 2004 before moving in 2006 to work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Chemistry and Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions (CSEC) at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focused on the synthesis and characterisation of new solid-state oxides at high pressures and temperatures, and she has developed techniques for preparing new materials at pressures up to 120,000 atmospheres and temperatures up to 1300 °C. These materials have interesting electronic and magnetic properties, and several have been shown to be novel superconductors. In March 2011 Jenny took up a new position as the Royal Society of Chemistry Regional Coordinator for Scotland, based at the School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh. Within this post she is supporting and promoting the Royal Society of Chemistry’s educational resources for schools and universities.
She has a strong interest in public engagement with science and since January 2009 has been involved in ‘The Big Squeeze’ project that seeks to highlight the research conducted at CSEC and at large-scale facilities. She designed and delivered lectures and hands-on workshops to schools, in addition to encouraging other members of CSEC to become involved in explaining their research to public audiences. She led a team from CSEC highlighting high-pressure research to members of the public at the prestigious Royal Society Summer Exhibition in June 2010.
This year she was involved in a project called ‘Music at Extreme Conditions.’ This was a collaborative project with composer Julian Wagstaff and the researchers in CSEC. Julian composed a piece of music inspired by the research carried out at the centre and it premiered at a concert performed by the Edinburgh String Quartet during the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
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Image credit:
Pattern created by Rydo from Lorenz Attractor trajectory, licensed under Creative Commons.
