that art and science often live in silos
I remember when I was doing my PhD in
neuroscience I showed art piece that I
had created from lab materials to one of
my colleagues and he looked at me and he
said why would you do that and and and
so I tried to explain to him the
artistic reflection of the scientific
process and cross-pollination of ideas
and he looked for a moment and said I’ve
got work to do
and walked away and so I really hope
that I’m gonna do a better job making my
case to y’all today why does the siloing
of art and science matter because like
colors ideas and information multiplies
if you have two colors and you keep them
siloed then you just have two colors red
and yellow but if you mix them suddenly
you have the beautiful palette of a
Rising Sun and similarly if we take a
transdisciplinary approach to art and
science we can multiply the information
and ideas and perhaps make the world a
slightly better place I’m going to talk
about some examples from my work that
use technology to mediate deep synergy
between art and science with my
collaborators I created a interactive
installation called livestream to raise
public discourse around ground water as
I’m sure many Californians already know
groundwater is one of our most precious
resources and yet it’s easy to forget
about as it constantly runs beneath our
feet our dream was to create an
interactive installation that would read
data from sensors across the state of
Kentucky and turn that data into musical
notes that would play as a symphony in a
public park and to give the viewers
empowerment to give them agency to
conduct that symphony and to listen to
the groundwater data we use proximity
sensors so as you approach a pipe the
melody would crescendo and then fade
again as you walk away we had lots of
challenges to create an interactive
installation combined with technology
and so we
really wanted to to have youngsters like
this exploring groundwater data and you
know maybe they could go on and become
scientists someday studying groundwater
in their own community by taking data
from scientific sensors and and relating
them to the public in a playful way we
start to break down the silos separating
art and science and democratize the
science and there are still many
challenges to this work including
maintenance and funding and interagency
coordination but I hope this seed is
something you take away as the
possibility for greater collaboration
between art and science to further this
idea and really think about how we could
create a pure merger of the artistic and
scientific process I started to think
about how we could not only take new
ideas but actually create new data start
with scientific hypotheses and phenomena
and create an art installation that
would generate novel datasets to test
those hypotheses that’s what I did with
my collaborators at low vyd when we
created telephone rewired this work is
based on neuroscience research and in a
moment I’m going to give you a brief
demo
however this involves flashing the
screen and so if anybody here is
sensitive to strobe lights or has
photosensitive epilepsy you may wish to
cover your eyes or step out during this
brief demonstration neuroscience
research has shown that pulses of light
and sound can actually in train the
adagio swathe um’s of the brain and in
so doing can change your perceptions
your reaction times your memory
formation and so we wanted to create an
art installation that would use this
phenomenon and create a reflective space
that allowed the viewer to consider the
potential for neurofeedback and
collaborative cognition and now for the
demo
prepare to enter the matrix so what
you’re seeing here is simply flashing
the screen black and white at the theta
rhythm which is a frequency used by the
brain and if you let go your brain will
actually synchronize with the screen the
installation would take you on a journey
through different frequencies but even
in this simple demonstration any colors
or shapes or patterns you may see is
just your mind shifting into a different
mode of operation and so we’ve shown
this work at museums and galleries
around the world and we asked viewers to
wear an EEG headband to record their
brainwaves we also has some participants
to take a memory task while we modulated
their brainwaves and so far was
collected data from thousands of viewers
including EEG data as well as
participant responses with the goal of
ultimately feeding back and further
progressing the science itself this work
has many challenges we didn’t have to
worry about raining weather fortunately
but we did learn for example to boldly
label your USB data sticks so data
doesn’t get lost when the installation
gets taken down and shipped back if
anybody here today happens to find a USB
stick when you’re wandering around in a
museum and it has a few thousand
participant responses please don’t
hesitate to reach out to me I would love
to hear from you as an art installation
we wanted to create an aesthetic
experience a place where you could think
about a future world in which we can
manually toggle the switches of human
cognition this is one viewers reaction
to the work it was definitely very
intense my moods and kind of like you
know how I felt emotionally it was all
mostly feeling pretty strong and drastic
at a few points I kind of felt like I
was panicking and other points I felt
like surprisingly confident oh you know
very psychedelic you know it’s just like
a lot of forms and you know shapes and
colors and motions with the lower
frequencies I tended to see pale blue
dogs a lot that kind of minded me like
some butterfly wings I’ve seen it was
definitely there very therapeutic
similar you know how like say if you
gave your muscles of vigorous massage my
own state of being felt massage where
it’s just or like I felt very thoroughly
work but more capable for it didn’t just
you know make me feel good or more
connected but it raised more questions
than I want to look into and so for all
my yammering on today I’m pretty sure
I’m not gonna describe it any better
than that
so telephone were wired is attempting to
break down the silos between art and
science and fully meld the artistic and
scientific process to start with a
scientific phenomenon and hypotheses and
create an immersive aesthetic experience
that can generate the datasets to test
those hypotheses and so where do we go
from here there are seven million
science researchers in the world and
about 2 million artists in the United
States alone that sounds to me like a
lot of potential to create new ideas
generate novel datasets and to create
public discourse around some of the most
pressing challenges of our time from
climate change to cognitive decline and
dementia but in order to achieve that
potential we need the participation of
everyone here so if you’re an artist
reach out to a science lab near you ask
them about bringing their work to a new
audience if you’re a scientist reach out
to the art department in your university
and take seriously their feedback about
new perspectives if you’re in technology
make collaboration tools so we can more
easily share datasets and algorithms and
visualizations and if you’re on grant
budgeting consider making it a
requirement to have communication and
artistic collaboration in scientific
research so that we’re sure that we’re
seeing all our scientific research from
different perspectives and encouraging
further public discourse to leave you
with some perspective
about 2.8 million people visited the
Museum of Modern Art last year and about
13 million people visited Golden Gate
Park for the scientists in the room how
many people read your last paper so the
non scientists in the room imagine a
world in which 15 million more people
had a personally moving experience
thinking about the future of our planet
and so let’s create a movement of
synergy between art and science that
could potentially fuel the future of
scientists and artists change the way
people value funding the arts and
scientific research tip the scales of
scientific literacy and maybe just maybe
makes the world a better place and save
the world
from cognitive decline and abuse of our
most precious resources thank you very
much and I look forward to synergizing with you in the future
I remember when I was doing my PhD in
neuroscience I showed art piece that I
had created from lab materials to one of
my colleagues and he looked at me and he
said why would you do that and and and
so I tried to explain to him the
artistic reflection of the scientific
process and cross-pollination of ideas
and he looked for a moment and said I’ve
got work to do
and walked away and so I really hope
that I’m gonna do a better job making my
case to y’all today why does the siloing
of art and science matter because like
colors ideas and information multiplies
if you have two colors and you keep them
siloed then you just have two colors red
and yellow but if you mix them suddenly
you have the beautiful palette of a
Rising Sun and similarly if we take a
transdisciplinary approach to art and
science we can multiply the information
and ideas and perhaps make the world a
slightly better place I’m going to talk
about some examples from my work that
use technology to mediate deep synergy
between art and science with my
collaborators I created a interactive
installation called livestream to raise
public discourse around ground water as
I’m sure many Californians already know
groundwater is one of our most precious
resources and yet it’s easy to forget
about as it constantly runs beneath our
feet our dream was to create an
interactive installation that would read
data from sensors across the state of
Kentucky and turn that data into musical
notes that would play as a symphony in a
public park and to give the viewers
empowerment to give them agency to
conduct that symphony and to listen to
the groundwater data we use proximity
sensors so as you approach a pipe the
melody would crescendo and then fade
again as you walk away we had lots of
challenges to create an interactive
installation combined with technology
and so we
really wanted to to have youngsters like
this exploring groundwater data and you
know maybe they could go on and become
scientists someday studying groundwater
in their own community by taking data
from scientific sensors and and relating
them to the public in a playful way we
start to break down the silos separating
art and science and democratize the
science and there are still many
challenges to this work including
maintenance and funding and interagency
coordination but I hope this seed is
something you take away as the
possibility for greater collaboration
between art and science to further this
idea and really think about how we could
create a pure merger of the artistic and
scientific process I started to think
about how we could not only take new
ideas but actually create new data start
with scientific hypotheses and phenomena
and create an art installation that
would generate novel datasets to test
those hypotheses that’s what I did with
my collaborators at low vyd when we
created telephone rewired this work is
based on neuroscience research and in a
moment I’m going to give you a brief
demo
however this involves flashing the
screen and so if anybody here is
sensitive to strobe lights or has
photosensitive epilepsy you may wish to
cover your eyes or step out during this
brief demonstration neuroscience
research has shown that pulses of light
and sound can actually in train the
adagio swathe um’s of the brain and in
so doing can change your perceptions
your reaction times your memory
formation and so we wanted to create an
art installation that would use this
phenomenon and create a reflective space
that allowed the viewer to consider the
potential for neurofeedback and
collaborative cognition and now for the
demo
prepare to enter the matrix so what
you’re seeing here is simply flashing
the screen black and white at the theta
rhythm which is a frequency used by the
brain and if you let go your brain will
actually synchronize with the screen the
installation would take you on a journey
through different frequencies but even
in this simple demonstration any colors
or shapes or patterns you may see is
just your mind shifting into a different
mode of operation and so we’ve shown
this work at museums and galleries
around the world and we asked viewers to
wear an EEG headband to record their
brainwaves we also has some participants
to take a memory task while we modulated
their brainwaves and so far was
collected data from thousands of viewers
including EEG data as well as
participant responses with the goal of
ultimately feeding back and further
progressing the science itself this work
has many challenges we didn’t have to
worry about raining weather fortunately
but we did learn for example to boldly
label your USB data sticks so data
doesn’t get lost when the installation
gets taken down and shipped back if
anybody here today happens to find a USB
stick when you’re wandering around in a
museum and it has a few thousand
participant responses please don’t
hesitate to reach out to me I would love
to hear from you as an art installation
we wanted to create an aesthetic
experience a place where you could think
about a future world in which we can
manually toggle the switches of human
cognition this is one viewers reaction
to the work it was definitely very
intense my moods and kind of like you
know how I felt emotionally it was all
mostly feeling pretty strong and drastic
at a few points I kind of felt like I
was panicking and other points I felt
like surprisingly confident oh you know
very psychedelic you know it’s just like
a lot of forms and you know shapes and
colors and motions with the lower
frequencies I tended to see pale blue
dogs a lot that kind of minded me like
some butterfly wings I’ve seen it was
definitely there very therapeutic
similar you know how like say if you
gave your muscles of vigorous massage my
own state of being felt massage where
it’s just or like I felt very thoroughly
work but more capable for it didn’t just
you know make me feel good or more
connected but it raised more questions
than I want to look into and so for all
my yammering on today I’m pretty sure
I’m not gonna describe it any better
than that
so telephone were wired is attempting to
break down the silos between art and
science and fully meld the artistic and
scientific process to start with a
scientific phenomenon and hypotheses and
create an immersive aesthetic experience
that can generate the datasets to test
those hypotheses and so where do we go
from here there are seven million
science researchers in the world and
about 2 million artists in the United
States alone that sounds to me like a
lot of potential to create new ideas
generate novel datasets and to create
public discourse around some of the most
pressing challenges of our time from
climate change to cognitive decline and
dementia but in order to achieve that
potential we need the participation of
everyone here so if you’re an artist
reach out to a science lab near you ask
them about bringing their work to a new
audience if you’re a scientist reach out
to the art department in your university
and take seriously their feedback about
new perspectives if you’re in technology
make collaboration tools so we can more
easily share datasets and algorithms and
visualizations and if you’re on grant
budgeting consider making it a
requirement to have communication and
artistic collaboration in scientific
research so that we’re sure that we’re
seeing all our scientific research from
different perspectives and encouraging
further public discourse to leave you
with some perspective
about 2.8 million people visited the
Museum of Modern Art last year and about
13 million people visited Golden Gate
Park for the scientists in the room how
many people read your last paper so the
non scientists in the room imagine a
world in which 15 million more people
had a personally moving experience
thinking about the future of our planet
and so let’s create a movement of
synergy between art and science that
could potentially fuel the future of
scientists and artists change the way
people value funding the arts and
scientific research tip the scales of
scientific literacy and maybe just maybe
makes the world a better place and save
the world
from cognitive decline and abuse of our
most precious resources thank you very
much and I look forward to synergizing with you in the future
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