[Sci-tech-public] New subject: "The Art/Science Thing"

[David Mindell]

Here's a new course by Professor Caroline Jones with a real sts-type flavor.
A great way to build bridges between architecture and STS!

d

>>>Art and Science are contemporary pursuits that look at each other 
>>>across an epistemological divide created in the crucible of 
>>>modernity.  As Aristotle once theorized the sexes, the two domains 
>>>act like divided halves of a once unified soul - in this case, we 
>>>might call that prior soul philosophy.  This course investigates the 
>>>long history of "the Art/Science thing," and its chosen objects:
>>>the production of "fine" arts and
>>>investigations of natural phenomena as twin Liberal Arts in the 
>>>Renaissance, the artist as "natural philosopher" during the 
>>>Enlightenment, the production of subjectivity/objectivity with the 
>>>Scientific Method, the division of science from "the liberal arts" in 
>>>the industrial age, the creation of the two culture debate in the 
>>>20th century, the strange history of image-making in both regimes, 
>>>and the raiding of each others' toolkits in the late 20th and early 
>>>21st century.
>>>
>>>Although taught by an art historian, this course welcomes and 
>>>solicits participation from students of the sciences, historians of 
>>>science, engineers, artists, and architects.  We will explore the 
>>>hermeneutics (modes of interpretation) and epistemology (study of how 
>>>knowledge is produced) in both science and art, attending to the 
>>>institutions and disciplined behaviors that govern those who would 
>>>function as scientists or artists.
>>>We will attend to peculiarly revealing instances of the 
>>>scientific/artistic subject, such as contemporary artist and/or 
>>>robotics engineer Ken Goldberg, who maintains a position that science 
>>>requires from him an assurance of certainty, where art thrives on a 
>>>condition of doubt.  In the emerging discourse of "new media art," 
>>>are these realms fruitfully blurring?  Is the potential for doubt 
>>>circulating around nano-science and its manipulations of the object 
>>>of inquiry a similar case of "blurring" between the art/science 
>>>domains?
>>>
>>>Readings will include Peter Galison and Lorraine Daston (on 
>>>Objectivity), Donna Harraway (on cyborgs and taxidermy), Ian Hacking 
>>>and Bruno Latour (on scientific representation), Erwin Panofsky (on 
>>>Galileo and chiaroscuro), Katherine Park and Daston (on monsters and 
>>>the order of nature), Barbara Maria Stafford, David Freedberg, and 
>>>John Onians on "neuroaesthetics,"  and the new study of 
>>>"neuroarchitecture" by MIT's own Nancy Kanwisher. Students will also 
>>>have the opportunity to conduct original research in the archives of 
>>>the CAVS (Center for Advanced Visual Study), which began its days in 
>>>the late '60s as a center for interdisciplinary work in science and 
>>>art.
>
>
>Caroline A. Jones
>Professor of Art History
>Director of History, Theory + Criticism Architecture Department MIT 
>3-303, 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02139  USA 
>http://architecture.mit.edu/htc/
Caroline A. Jones
Professor of Art History
Director of History, Theory + Criticism
Architecture Department
MIT
3-303, 77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02139  USA
http://architecture.mit.edu/htc/
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