Volume 16

Between Scientists, Writers and Artists: Theorising and Critiquing Knowledge-Production at the Interstices between Disciplines

Aaron Plasek

Abstract

Stars are Symbols was a collaboration between more than 40 individual writers, poets, artists, and scientists. Each writer/artist conversed with a scientist about the research the scientist was conducting. They then generated new creative work inspired by this process. All the art, creative writing and scientific research was galleried, culminating in an Associated Writing Programmes Conference Off-Site Reading on 7 April 2010.  This paper considers some challenging questions that an exhibition like Stars are Symbols engenders. What can we hope to learn about the intersections of science and art by responding to these intersections in discipline-specific modes such as creative writing or fine art? How does one discuss such exhibitions in a precise manner that neither simplifies nor misrepresents ideas in science, nor echoes trite bromides, but helps us recognize new perspectives about the discourses we are considering? Three categories of interdisciplinary work are posited: convergent, radical, and phantasmal.  Tentative comments on these questions and others will be offered in the hope of facilitating further discussion.