Fusion Talks brought together 18 speakers from 9 countries who explored and identified together the possibilities offered by the field of art & science, both for the visual arts and for education and scientific or philosophical research. During 4 panels, curators, artists, designers, cultural managers and philosophers presented different ways of approaching the collaborative relationship between art and science. We have learned that art & science is not quite a genre, it is more a multilayered environment that cannot be embodied in just one form or process. It addresses multiple perspectives and needs, it is a sensemaking, sense giving experience of learning and certainly it is oriented both to aesthetics and research.
Theorists and curators such as Annick Bureaud, Horea Avram, Claudia Schnugg, Aliya Sakhariyeva or Anna Dumitriu, artists like Frederik de Wilde, Sabina Suru, Nicole Spit, Jennifer Willet, Maria Castellanos, philosophers such as Adrian Currie, Clive Cazeaux, Cezara Nicola and Diana Novaceanu debated together with cultural institutions like Ars Electronica, S + T + Arts, Waag Society and Scientifica. They explored new ways of incorporating scientific concepts and methods into arts and other disciplines, ways of contextualizing information, to encourage critical reflection and to grow interdisciplinary communities.
We found out what drives them into such projects, how they produce their ideas, who are the structures that promote them and how to frame it for exposure and public engagement.