Across the great divide : Boundaries and boundary objects in art and science

Abstract

This paper explores collaboration between artists and scientists through participant observation. Four artist/scientist pairs worked together to create ten-minute performances for a festival held in January, 2009 in Ithaca, New York. Each pair created their piece over the course of three two-hour meetings, the first of which employed a cultural probe to open a discourse between the artist and scientist and to facilitate collaboration. My role as a participant observer allowed me to closely observe collaborative processes in which pairs engaged in boundary work and made use of boundary objects. The boundary work helped the pairs establish authority and autonomy within their respective sub-fields, while at the same time provoking discussions that led to the creation of their projects. The pairs used three types of boundary objects: existing, created, and appropriated. These established a common language by which they could create and present their performances to an audience.

Keywords

art and science boundary objects boundary work collaboration science and performance

1. Introduction

Over the past decade, the intersection of art and science has captured a portion of the popular imagination, appearing in museum exhibits, books, and magazines. This kind of integration often requires collaborations between artists and scientists, which have not traditionally been welcomed by either field. There is no standard protocol for artist/scientist collaborations, and while such a protocol might not always be necessary, it may help us understand how such collaborations work, or may potentially work. Additionally, further research into the kinds of collaborations in which such a protocol might be used will help to better understand the relationship between art and science, and ultimately, could help investigate the meanings that products of art/science collaborations may hold for the publics for whom they were created.

This study is an attempt to use such a protocol to draw out the intricacies of collaboration between artists and scientists and, in so doing, to add to the understanding of the relationship between art and science. To examine the collaborative process, a protocol for collaboration was developed using Gaver et al.’s concept of cultural probes (1999). Four artists were paired with four scientists, and using the cultural probe, they created four ten-minute performances. While instrumental to the creation of their pieces, the cultural probe was also designed to reveal their individual creative processes as well as their chosen methods of communication with one another.

2. Literature review

Imagination has always been part of the scientific process; however, it has often been relegated to something that happens before the work of science starts (Popper, 1959). Holton (1978) describes the “art of the imagination” as a key ingredient in scientific progress. Daston (2005) describes the relationship between art and science as two ways of discovering truth that worked in concert and were at their best when imagination and reason were balanced. This harmonious interaction between creativity and logic was displaced by the rise of objectivity as a governing form of knowledge production (Daston, 2005).

This chasm between art and science prevailed for many years, and some maintain it still exists (Burnett, 1999; Kovac, 2002). For as long as people have observed the “great divide” between art and science, they have called for the unification of these disparate ways of knowing (Burnett, 1999; Cohen, 2001), often sparking acrimonious debates. C.P. Snow’s 1959 Rede lecture on “the two cultures” and F.R. Leavis’ venomous response comprise perhaps the most famous of these disputes (Ortolano, 2002, 2009). During the first part of his lecture, Snow, a scientist and amateur novelist, bemoaned what he called the “gulf of mutual incomprehension” between art and science (Snow, 1963: 4). Leavis, a renowned literary critic, derided Snow’s hypothesis in Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow (Leavis and Yudkin, 1963), which one anonymous reader called “the most virulent, petty, feculent string of ad hominems ever produced by internecine British snobbery” (Burnett, 1999: 205).

The idea of the two cultures has resonated with scholars, and remains an interesting area for research; however, the work done to further unpack the two cultures has resulted in more confusion. The two cultures have been mapped and re-mapped as different things: science and the humanities; science and the arts; and sometimes natural and social science. Often, as one presenter stated at a 2009 New York Academy of Science Symposium on the Two Cultures, the two cultures fall into the categories of science and “everything else.”

These re-mappings point to an entanglement between the art/science and science/public relationship that neither scholars nor scientists have yet been able to tease apart. This entanglement suggests that no matter what we profess to know about science communication, the role of science, and of scientists, is still held conceptually apart from, and in many cases above, other forms of knowledge production, including the arts. In spite of efforts to integrate the arts and sciences, and in spite of efforts to transform the way science is communicated to the public, these boundaries have persisted. This paper explores these boundaries both conceptually and practically.

Boundaries

The intellectual ecosystem has with time been carved up into “separate” institutional and professional niches through continuing processes of boundary work designed to achieve an apparent differentiation of goals, methods, capabilities and substantive expertise. (Gieryn, 1983: 783)

Boundaries in the sciences have been among the most hotly contested of these professional niches. Famously, Karl Popper (1959) asserted that all science was falsifiable. The demarcation of falsifiability was an attempt to separate science from religion and superstition, but this is not the only demarcation drawn to understand “what science is.” Laudan (1983) discusses many attempts to demarcate between science and non-science, tracing the question back to Aristotle. In the end, he asserts that a demarcation between science and non-science is “uninteresting” and “intractable,” and the better question is what makes a well-founded belief (p. 125). Ruse (1990, 1996) challenges Laudan, using the issue of creationist science arguments to reassert Popper’s claim of falsifiability as a sound method of demarcation.

These discussions point to multiple ways of mapping the boundary between science and not science. For these scholars, as well as scientists and non-scientists currently interested in the problem, the demarcation of science and non-science is flexible and ambiguous. This is because there are several forms of non-science that warrant boundaries in different circumstances. These different kinds of demarcation serve to expand authority into new domains, to monopolize authority, and finally, to protect autonomy (Gieryn, 1983: 791–792; Hilgartner, 1990).

Often in art/science boundaries as well as scientific knowledge/popularization boundaries, these motivations are at work. Maintenance of the boundary between art and science carries out the function of monopolizing authority by reinforcing the idea that science is a superior, and even perhaps the ultimate, form of knowledge production. The need for authority has led to the creation of formal criteria in establishing professional boundaries within the sciences. The line between scientist and non-scientist, for example, is connected to a level of education, current research activities and publications, and institutional commitments. This is not to say the boundary is fixed, but rather, the criteria used to establish the boundary are explicit and systematic.

Boundary work is not limited to the sciences, “Because expansion, monopolization and protection of autonomy are generic features of ‘professionalization,’ it is not surprising to find the boundary-work style in ideologies of artists and craftsmen and physicians” (Gieryn, 1983: 792). Boundaries in the arts may serve the same purpose, but the process by which demarcation occurs is quite different from demarcation in the sciences. Becker (2008) describes the communities that form around the production of art as “art worlds,” though he readily admits that these communities are not easily understood by sociologists who study them or by practitioners within the art worlds themselves. “Both the ‘artness’ and ‘worldness’ are problematic because work that furnishes the starting point for the investigation may be produced in a variety of cooperating networks and under a variety of definitions” (pp. 36–37). The boundaries of these worlds are constructed within these networks, and they are constantly changing. Often in the arts, boundary work protects autonomy and helps different art worlds expand into new territories.

Boundary objects

Regardless of the boundaries established by scientists and artists in their respective fields, the members of the scientific, as well as the artistic, communities often have obligations to work across these boundaries. In museums and other cultural institutions, interdisciplinary collaboration remains a part of day-to-day activities. Star and Griesemer (1989) explain that much of this work is done with boundary objects, which they define as, “those scientific objects which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds … and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them” (p. 393). They describe the work of translation that goes on in situations in which multiple actors in a network share a set of resources and a common purpose:

In particular, we are interested in the kinds of translations scientists perform in order to craft objects containing elements which are different in different worlds – objects marginal to those worlds, or what we call boundary objects … Each social world has partial jurisdiction over the resources represented by that object, and mismatches caused by the overlap become problems for negotiation. (p. 413)

Star and Griesemer’s work on boundary objects was a response to Latour, Callon, and Law’s development of Actor Network Theory (ANT) (Callon, 1999; Fujimura, 1992; Latour, 1988; Latour, Sheridan and Law, 1988). While Star and Griesemer adopted some aspects of ANT, notably, the importance of objects as actors within networks, their approach differed in that they took an ecological view of these networks. By doing this, they were able to examine “an indeterminate coherent set of translations” (Star and Griesemer, 1989: 390).

Our approach thus differs from the Callon-Latour-Law model of translations and intéressement in several ways. First, their model can be seen as a kind of “funneling” – reframing or mediating the concerns of several actors into a narrower passage point. The story in this case is necessarily told from the point of view of one passage point – usually the manager, entrepreneur, or scientist … But it is a many-to-many mapping, where several obligatory points of passage are negotiated with several kinds of allies, including manager-to-manager types. (p. 390)

Star and Griesemer’s model does not give preference to a specific interpretation or use for boundary objects. A network approach like Latour, Law, and Callon’s considers the ways in which scientists recruit allies and establish facts, while boundary objects do not serve to align different factions around a “fact” as it is created, but rather, allow collaboration across diverse social worlds (Fujimura, 1992).

The boundary work and boundary objects that are part of the entanglement between the two cultures argument and public engagement in science provide a way to begin to untangle the complex relationship between interdisciplinary work in art and science, and science communication.

3. Across the Great Divide¹

In this study, creative collaborations provide a lens for exploring the larger questions regarding the nature of the relationship between art and science. What are the processes and effects of artist/scientist collaborations and what are the implications of these processes and effects? My aim was to understand the creative process that might occur between an artist and a scientist asked to collaborate on a scientifically informed performance. What impact would such a collaboration have on the participants? What factors would become important to the performance? What, if any, benefits are there to participating in cross-disciplinary collaborations of this nature? Most people do not doubt their value, but I hope to understand what that value is for the participants, and how it can be maximized. To answer these questions, I recruited and guided four artist/scientist pairs through the creation of ten-minute performances, all of which were presented at an event titled “Across the Great Divide” at the Light in Winter Festival in Ithaca, NY in January 2009. I met with each pair three times, for two to three hours per meeting, to help them create their performance.

Throughout the process, I was involved to different degrees and in different ways. I was engaged in participant observation that, as Atkinson and Hammersley say, spanned the gamut of “complete observer, observer as participant, participant as observer, and complete participant” (1994: 248). My aim as a participant observer was to focus more on observation than participation; however, I played an active role as an administrator and facilitator, with the goal of maximizing the short amount of time I had to observe each pair while they created their performance. The majority of the creative work to be done was completed by the pairs during their meetings, which allowed me to directly observe their creative processes and, ultimately, to better understand how and why they created the piece they ultimately performed in front of an audience. My role as a participant also enhanced both the experience for the participants and my own understanding. Because I was their partner in creating the performance, they were able to seek my advice and freely discuss their hopes and concerns regarding the outcome.

Crossing boundaries required ways of speaking that were understood by both the scientist and the artist in each pair. This occurred largely through the use and development of boundary objects. It is important to understand the positions of the key actors in order to understand the way boundary objects work in this situation. The common purpose was the creation and presentation of science-based performances. The major actors – the scientists, artists, and me – all operated under the assumption that there was some value in the combination of art and science; however, we each had very different roles, personal visions, and goals. While the participants had widely varying backgrounds ranging from tenured professor to young choreographer, they all had a background that enabled them to think conceptually about art and science. Two of the four scientists are well-established scientists in their fields, and the remaining two were involved in education and outreach for organizations and institutions. The artists were also well-established in their fields, and in three cases, they were also established teachers. Their experiences provided them with the ability to engage in the kinds of conversations necessary for such a collaboration. This would not be the case with all artists and scientists.

Most of the scientists who participated were interested in sharing their work with a broader audience. Itai (an experimental physicist) also had a question about the nature of beauty, making this, for him, a philosophical pursuit, as well. Jim (a theoretical physicist), who had been involved in another festival activity several years before this (his activity did not end up being presented), also relished the opportunity to learn from artists. As he put it, “It is important to have people listening hard, with different ears.” Part of Trish’s (a paleontologist) job description included planning special events for the Museum of the Earth’s “Darwin Days” celebration, so her interest was also in the arts as a form of scientific outreach. Likewise, Holly’s (an entomologist) job was tied to Cornell University’s extension program, which has a mission to share scientific knowledge, including information about health and environmental risk, with the public.

As for the artists, Maren (a dancer) and James (a musician) were familiar with the Festival and were interested in the opportunity to perform, while Lyrae (a poet) and Spencer (a composer) had previously created works with scientific themes. Lyrae’s recently published book of poetry, Open Interval, incorporated mathematic and astronomical themes, and she had been so inspired by this work that she was interested in exploring more scientific themes. Spencer, a graduate student who was nearing completion of his PhD, had composed works based on the lives of scientists in the past, and was interested in trying something new. Just as the scientists viewed this opportunity through the lens of their own work, so did the artists. For them, it was an opportunity to perform; it was a subject that inspired. Because these artists worked individually, their connection to the project seemed more personal than that of the scientists, who, while they worked on this project alone, were part of a network that shared the responsibility for the knowledge they produced or disseminated.

Both the artists and scientists were already quite interested and intellectually capable of thinking outside their own fields. Though the participants were all highly specialized, their backgrounds had prepared them to appreciate and embrace the perspective of their partner. They were all quite well educated and had often dabbled in other artistic or scientific fields. To provide an illustration of the ways in which these people were uniquely prepared for the project, Maren (dancer) had studied geology as an undergraduate and Trish (paleontologist) minored in theatre and sang in a choir. Lyrae (poet) had just completed a book of poetry that drew on scientific themes and had taught a course in poetry and science. While I did not set out to recruit such a qualified group, the time commitment proved too great to attract participants not already committed to artist/scientists collaborations.

Initiating collaboration

There are not many situations in which artists and scientists naturally interact in such a way, so I created the conditions for this study. The project added to the participants’ already busy work schedules, so I limited the amount of time they would need to spend on the project. The aims of the first meeting were to develop a collaborative rapport; to begin conversations that reflected the participants’ beliefs; and to help me gain insight into each participant’s creative process. To accomplish all of this in a short span of time, and to be able to observe rich conversations without the benefit of an extended observation period, I administered a cultural probe, inspired by the work of Bill Gaver (Gaver et al., 1999, 2004). Boehner et al. define the probes as “designed objects, physical packets containing open-ended, provocative and oblique tasks to support early participant engagement with the design process” (2007: 1077). Gaver’s original use of the probes was to provoke responses from an elderly community so that he could design a space for them to enjoy in their own neighborhood. Since Gaver’s original use of the probes, there have been many permutations, most in the field of human–computer interaction.

There has been much debate concerning their proper use and design. Gaver, and others, explicitly say that probes should not be used as a method for collecting data, but rather as a way to interact with, and inspire/be inspired by, users. Some concerns over the misuse of these probes include their use as a sort of “discount ethnography” in which researchers substitute time spent observing people with time spent analyzing their probes. Still deeper concerns regarding the probes have to do with the probes employed in conflict with methodology. In these cases, probes are used within the context of a more traditional set of methodologies, “producing data instead of producing responses, closing instead of opening the design space” (Boehner et al., 2007: 1084). While Boehner et al. explicitly state there are unlimited possibilities and interpretations of probes, they advocate clear, well-reasoned ideas of why probes are implemented, and an understanding that probes are meant to be interpreted rather than quantified.

By failing to observe and analyze participants using the probes, researchers may be missing rare opportunities to gain insight into creative processes and meaning making. I administered the entire probe in a single meeting, and observed the entire meeting. As I began the project, I had four goals for the probe 1) to help the pairs develop a rapport and working relationship, 2) to inspire creativity and meaningful conversation as they thought about what they wanted to do for their performance, 3) to serve as a kind of interview that each pair would answer collaboratively rather than individually, and 4) to serve as a tool for planning and executing the rest of the experience. The probe enabled the pairs to engage in conversations about their backgrounds, reasons for choosing their fields, differences and similarities in process, and their thoughts and feelings about art and science. This helped them develop their piece, and provided rich insights into their collaboration for me.

The cultural probe consisted of eight activity prompts. Topics focused on each individual’s work and on broader questions of art and science. For the final prompt, they created a mission statement for the piece they would like to create. Much of my analysis ended up coming from this initial meeting, as this was the crucible of the collaboration, and provided rich information about the participants’ beliefs regarding art and science, as well as their approaches to collaboration and brainstorming.

By the end of the second meeting, they were to have a basic script of their performance, as well as a plan for any “homework” they might have before the third meeting, which was a rehearsal of their performance, followed by an interview about the experience so far. Though the second and third meetings were important for many reasons, much of the formation of the collaborative relationship took place during the execution of the probe itself.

The resulting performances were widely varied. Itai (physicist) and Maren (dancer) created a choreographed performance that explored the similarities between the artistic and scientific process. Lyrae (poet) and Jim (physicist) created a reading from several of her poems and his published articles. James (musician) and Trish (paleontologist) created an improvisational lecture set to music, and finally, Holly (entomologist) and Spencer (composer) created an audience participation piece in which audience members used slide whistles to embody invasive species.

4. Demarcation and boundaries

The cultural probe encouraged the pairs to consider the roles of science and art in ways they had considered before and ways they had not. Particularly, a prompt that offered a selection of quotations about art and science for them to discuss (prompt 4), and one in which a series of ambiguous images were presented for their interpretation (prompt 5), asked them to consider the nature of the relationship between science and art, and to decide if an image was art or science. The quotations and images were chosen because they were open to many interpretations, and each participant had unique views on these subjects. In addition, questions about their own work habits and career histories enabled them to define their roles within their fields, and, more broadly, within the context of the culture in which they lived. Because they were asked to consider these questions, and in effect, to consider the value of their discipline and their work, many of their conversations, while not explicitly discussing boundaries (though in some cases they did) contained several indications that boundary work was occurring.

Because boundaries were malleable and changing within the project, they played an important role in shaping the conversation. For Jim (physicist) and Lyrae (poet), it became a matter of how to name what they were doing, and so, how to understand it. Early in the process, I referred to their conversation as a poem, and Lyrae was very quick to correct me. Just as Jim said that art was more than just something pretty, Lyrae made it clear that poetry was more than a string of words and phrases put together. She emphasized rhythm and meter, saying that even when a meter wasn’t consistently used in a poem, the poet had still carefully considered meter. Once the title of “conversation” had been given to the product of their collaboration, the way they would present it to the audience was much more clear for Jim and Lyrae. Additionally, once their project had been labeled a conversation, Jim was visibly more relaxed than he had been before. He said he had been nervous about creating something worthy of the title performance in such a short time, and after each step in the process he said he was “less terrified” than he had been before, but the title of conversation seemed to be what most put him at ease. The boundary work done by this pair to establish the difference between their work and a poem accomplished two tasks: first, it helped Lyrae protect authority by establishing the specialized skills required to compose a poem. Second, it freed Jim to participate in the creation of their project without the pressure of the title of poem attached to the outcome. In other words, the boundary work protected Jim from having to establish authority in a field other than his own. Boundary work of a similar nature occurred in each pair’s collaboration, often serving the traditional purposes described by Gieryn. Though each pair focused on different boundaries, the boundary work helped them establish their relationship to one another and to the performance they were creating.

Science and “not science”

During conversations with Maren, Itai attempted to establish the boundary between science and “not science” with the idea that science is an attempt to understand something that would exist without our trying to understand it.

Itai: I mean in some sense science is going after something that would be here independently of people … so there is a world independent of people. Physics goes on; gravity still works whether we’re here or not, so there are things that go on that are independent of us, and science in some ways tries to ask about those things.

While he was acknowledging a “real” world, Itai was careful not to use the word “real” or to imply that science could understand that which exists without us. He often referred to science as a social endeavor. In Itai’s words, “… there are parts of [science] that are very rooted in social behavior and parts of it that aren’t: that are sitting back and telling you who’s right, and that’s really powerful.” Itai’s discussion of science as a social endeavor shows that he was engaged in a particularly nuanced kind of boundary work, still in an attempt to maintain the authority of science. He was not denying socially constructed aspects of his field, but was carefully placing them alongside that which was independent of the social, or, in other words, true in the natural world.

Holly, the entomologist working with the composer, Spencer, had a view of science very close to Popper’s falsifiable model, and when discussing how she went about doing her work, she alluded to the scientific method. She said she kept a large pad of paper in her office, and used this pad to scribble ideas and inspiration for her work before she began the scientific process in earnest. This clear distinction between the inspiration for her work and the scientific method, literally between the blank page and the rest of her lab bench, reflects Popper’s idea that true science is always deductive, but that the inspiration for a hypothesis can come from somewhere else; that there is some ineffable quality or spark of creativity prior to, and separate from, the work of science (Popper, 1959).

Itai identified the relationship between science and nature by drawing a distinction between science and other production. Holly identified protocols of knowledge production that are unique to science. Though these were very different conversations, both cases incorporated ways of re-establishing science’s authority and protecting its autonomy. The artists paired with the scientists seemed fairly familiar or comfortable with the boundaries established by the scientists, and did not directly challenge them. This may be because the boundaries within scientific research are more well-established than those of the art world, and thus, more recognizable to those outside the field.

Art and “not art”

While discussions arose about the demarcation of science from non-science, there was also a need for boundaries between art and “not art.” When looking at the photographs in the prompt containing images, Jim, a theoretical physicist was the first to engage in boundary work between art and non-art. When he and Lyrae, a poet, saw an image of bacteria (Figure 1) in a Petri dish grown to look like a flower, Lyrae expressed dislike for the image but did not know why. Jim’s response was, “I don’t have any strong views about Petri dishes; I like to think that taking pictures of nice looking things is not the same thing as art.”

Figure 1.

Image from prompt 5: E. coli in a Petri dish. Artist Amy Chase Gulden and scientist Kristen Baldwin use E. coli bacteria to produce live, growing paints.

James had a very different view of the boundaries of art and non-art. His highly abstract work, both as a visual artist and as a musician, is created out of materials and sounds not usually associated with the arts; for example, he has created soundscapes using kitchen utensils and various household objects. When prompted, James indicated that to him, intention was a large part of what separated art from non-art. He also thought art was moving toward abstraction, and that as an artist, that is the direction he wanted to push his work. He explained his process as an artist:

James:

As scientists help us understand and know more, the art shouldn’t be getting smaller and more concise. Everything we know fits together abstractly, I just see art getting more and more abstract, and that’s one of the things I try to reach for, how far can I go and still understand what I’m doing … I don’t care if anyone else understands as long as I still understand what’s going on.

It may be natural that Jim identifies the demarcation of science in the process and art in the product, while James may hold the opposite view because they understand their own work as a process, but appreciate one another’s as a product.

Within the pairs, individuals certainly engaged in the kind of boundary work described by Gieryn; however, neither the artists nor the scientists were engaged in boundary work alone. By working together, pairs may have been more prone to negotiate the demarcation process, resulting in boundaries that may have been more open than, for example, those established by scientists who were demarcating the boundary between science and pseudoscience. Because this work was not antagonistic, there may have been less of a threat to authority, leading to opportunities for boundary crossing.

Crossing boundaries

Though there were many lines of demarcation in these conversations, the pairs found several common threads between art and science, as well. For Maren and Itai, one of the commonalities between art and science was the need for open questions.

Itai:

When you have a good sculpture, it’s obvious. And when you have a good science project it’s obvious which question you are answering … I don’t know, the questions are the things that are the most important for me.

Maren:

I agree. I think when you ask a question you’re more open to letting answers come to you, and then you are more able to go to a place you might not have expected, and that’s something that’s new.

Similarly, James (musician) felt that a goal of both art and science was to make people think, though he added that art also made people feel. James and Trish, a paleontologist, also compared biology to art, when they were looking at the Petri dish image (see Figure 1). Trish and James felt that it exemplified what they thought of as the random beauty of both science and art. When asked to draw an artist and a scientist, Spencer drew two similar figures. One was composed of musical notations and the other of mathematic symbols. He said this was because art and science were both “meaningful, symbolic languages.” Itai also said that there was a kind of linguistics in both art and science.

Though harmonious, these depictions of art and science were not the same for each participant. In the exchange above, Itai and Maren are not quite talking about questions in the same way. While they both value questions, the kinds of questions they are talking about, where the questions come in their processes, and even the importance of answering these questions might not be the same. Despite these differences in interpretation, the idea of the importance of questions was enough to provide a connection between their work, and that connection helped them to build the tools they needed in order to communicate with their audience.

5. Boundary objects

These tools often took the form of boundary objects. Boundary objects arose when there was a need to work with different, but overlapping meanings. Each pair created or used at least one boundary object, and most used several. As Star and Griesemer (1989) suggest, the boundary objects didn’t necessarily hold the same meaning for each person, but they were useful in establishing common ground. As illustrated in the example above, questions did not mean the same thing to Maren and Itai, but the use of questions (as a concept) helped lay a foundation for the two to work together.

The pairs worked with three kinds of boundary objects while creating their performances. The first, existing boundary objects, were part of the existing body of work of either the artist or the scientist, and were brought into the project as ways of expressing concepts and ideas. There were also built objects, which were most often created ad hoc to help the pairs understand the relationship between art and science. Finally, there were appropriated objects, which had specific meaning in their own context but were used by the pairs to create new meaning for both the scientists and the artists. These appropriated objects were new creations, made using fragments of existing work.

Existing boundary objects

Existing boundary objects are artifacts or abstractions brought with participants into the project. For example, Itai introduced videos, produced as a part of his research, of fruit flies in flight. To Maren, the flies were small and annoying, and invaded her fruit, but to Itai, they were the embodiment of several scientific concepts; he viewed them both as laboratory subjects and as natural engineers. It was not until we looked at the videos that both Maren and Itai “shared” the flies. The way the fly moved its wings and body became a part of Maren’s dance, and it still provided information for Itai that allowed him to perform calculations and learn about the physics of the fly’s wings. The overlapping nature of the meaning the video held for Maren and Itai helped them to find a common way to work with the video, but the difference in meaning allowed Maren to create new interpretations of the video for the audience.

Photographs of natural phenomena were also often used as boundary objects. Holly used images of invasive insect species and of both pristine and ravaged forests to show the effects of invasive species, and Trish used photographs of fossils to illustrate similarities between fossils and living creatures. These objects were already employed by the scientists as methods of observation and as visual explanations of their work. When the photographs were brought into the creative process, Spencer and James used them in different ways. Some images were explained, and some had captions, but their value was emotional and aesthetic to James and Spencer. Without the background Trish had in identifying fossilized life forms, James could tell that he was looking at fossils, but could not envision the creature or its environment as Trish did. But James used the photographs as a source of inspiration. He imagined what kind of sound the rocks would make when hit with Trish’s hammer, or how it would sound to walk on a surface of the same kind of rock.

Built objects

As the pairs worked together, they created their own boundary objects, but the first built object was the cultural probe itself. I created the probe with several goals in mind, but once it was given to the pairs, they each made something entirely different from it. In some cases, pieces of the probe became part of the performance. Most built objects were created during the execution of the cultural probe.

Early in their first meeting, Trish and James began working with a visual metaphor of an hourglass the two created during the cultural probe (Figure 2). Initially, the hourglass defined the relationship between art and science, but it had many uses as the performance progressed. The hourglass was used as a guiding principle throughout their work; when they were working out what to do next, or how to arrange the story Trish told, they returned to the hourglass. In different contexts, the metaphor had different uses, though they were all closely connected. In one instance, the hourglass represented the connection between art and science, in another, it represented their mission statement about their performance, and in a third, it represented the storyline of their performance. The interpretations of the hourglass were closely connected to one another, and seemed to be iterations of what they meant by the hourglass. Rather than the hourglass being a way for them to illustrate the ideas they were discussing, it was as if they knew that this shape represented their collaboration, and the words they used were different ways of trying to explain the meaning of the hourglass.

Figure 2.

Several incarnations of Trish and James’ hourglass, drawn during their first meeting.

Maren and Itai’s circle (Figure 3) was represented by the words they chose, rather than acting as a representation of those words. Itai and Maren came upon the shape of what was similar about their processes before they came up with the words. There was much debate about what words to use, and eventually a conscious decision was made to repeat the same words for both Itai’s and Maren’s explanations of what they do. But the image itself did not change. Much like the hourglass, the shape expressed something in a more clear and more immediate way than the words chosen to explain the shape. Itai and Maren created the circle diagram to help them understand the similarities in their work. The image did not exist in either of their minds prior to the second meeting, in which they drew the shape and simultaneously began to walk and think in terms of the shape. Though they created the image together, for each of them, it expressed something unique. For Maren, it was an expression of a creative process of choreography; it was a shape that could be replicated with the body, which is why the two of them began to move in a circle. For Itai, it was an expression of the social process of science, at least the process he went through in his own work. It represented the cyclical nature of science, and the fact that the endeavor is without end.

Figure 3.

Incarnations of Maren and Itai’s circle.

Both Maren and Itai’s circle, and Trish and James’ hourglass depicted the pairs’ understanding of the relationship between art and science. While these two views were quite different, they are both plausible ways of understanding this relationship. Both arose first without words. Both were used to help the pairs shape their performance, yielding very different kinds of performances.

Appropriated objects

In some sense all of these boundary objects are appropriated from other contexts, and some of them change meaning for their owners, but here I am referring to objects that had a specific meaning to one of the participants but was used by that participant for an entirely different reason, such as the individual lines Lyrae and Jim used to create their performance. Because they each used single lines from their published work, the lines became decontextualized. Jim’s first line, “nature is very complicated” was the first line of his dissertation, and retained the meaning it had for him; however, when decontextualized and placed next to Lyrae’s “I cannot tell the dipper from Orion,” Jim’s line took on a new meaning for him: one that was mingled with the context of his dissertation, but also, one that was part of a new whole, belonging in a new context. Similarly, when Lyrae recognized that Jim’s line “What happens then, when atoms change their mind?” was in iambic pentameter, she decided to choose a line from one of her poems that was also in iambic pentameter. In this case, the meter, rather than the words, became the new context for her line. Once again, her own work was decontextualized and recontextualized in such a way that it had a different meaning for her in their co-created piece than it did in her own poem.

Trish and James used a drawing that contained both an ancient Devonian sea floor and a modern gorge formation to illustrate the evolution of the planet. To create this image, Trish used a set of graphic conventions to which she adhered when making drawings of the layers of rock at waterfalls. These conventions were part of a technical language by which geologists and paleontologists documented and reported their findings in the field. They communicated specific properties of the geologic formation of the rock to other paleontologists and geologists. They were appropriated as a tool to communicate with James, and later the audience, about the way sediment falls and forms different kinds of rocks. Trish mixed figural drawings with the recontextualized graphic conventions to create a drawing that would provide technical information regarding rock formations, geographic information situating both the ancient sea and the current rock formations in Ithaca’s gorges, and figural elements of creatures living in the ancient sea.

6. Conclusion

This study was intended to make more explicit the two cultures divide identified by Snow, to clarify what that divide might mean for artists and scientists, and to explore how it might be bridged. Boundary work offered a useful lens with which to examine the two cultures and the ways in which artists and scientists made meaning of them. The cultural probe administered at the first meeting created opportunities to observe and understand the way the participants engaged in boundary work when they were in a position to collaborate across boundaries. Although the boundaries had different functions for different pairs, establishing boundaries became a necessary part of the collaborative process. Throughout the probe, as well as the subsequent meetings, the boundaries between art and science and between science and public were evident, they were fluid, and they often shifted to suit the needs of the participants. Finding ways to cross boundaries was also a part of the boundary work. In many circumstances, the reasons for engaging in boundary work can be described as a closing off rather than an opening up; however, in this case, the boundaries were part of what enabled the pairs to work together. Protocols like the cultural probe may be important keys to insuring that boundary work between artists and scientists is productive and leads to usable knowledge for both. Moreover, observing such protocols provides a way to observe the creative process in action, providing invaluable research for social scientists attempting to understand collaboration and creativity.

Each group came to find at least one boundary object they could use to bridge their worlds. The objects symbolized different things for each pair, which suggests to me that while the objects might be unique, the use of such objects is not. These particular objects may not work for a different pair producing a different performance, but boundary objects, in general, can indicate a set of ideals, rules, or principles shared across disciplinary boundaries. It is possible that objects went beyond the work of translation, and helped create a new, common language by which the pairs could attempt to communicate with the audience. Through these objects, two distinct perspectives were able to create a single narrative intended to communicate with a third party. The audience was presented with some of the boundary objects during performances, and while they had still another perspective from which to view the objects, they had the opportunity to incorporate not only the artists’ and scientists’ interpretations, but also interpretations made by each pair together. While the objects helped the artists and scientists understand one another, they were also used to develop a language by which the pairs could communicate ideas, created together, to an audience.

Future research should examine whether boundary work and the use of boundary objects affects the outcome of similarly structured projects. Specifically, the next research question should investigate how the products of this kind of collaboration are received by the public. Performance is often left open for interpretation by audiences, and audiences often come to performances expecting to make judgments about what they see. A performance that presents only one passage point might be stifling to audiences, whereas the multiple passage points available in a boundary object model create space for audiences to bring their perspective and experience into the interpretive process.

The boundary between the two cultures of art and science was a strong presence in Across the Great Divide, but it may have helped the pairs create a richer, more engaging product. Providing opportunities for artists and scientists to work together to establish their own mappings of the two cultures may provide new ways of thinking about public engagement with science, and may provide audiences new access to scientific concepts.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my special committee, Dr. Bruce Lewenstein, Dr. Tarleton Gillespie, and Dr. Geri Gay, for their insight and support in this project, and the Cornell New Media + Society Group and the anonymous reviewers for their excellent feedback. I’d also like to thank the producers of Light in Winter, and Max Evjen for helping develop and present Across the Great Divide. Finally, I’d like to thank the artists and scientists who participated in Across the Great Divide for their creativity, open-mindedness, time, and dedication to the project.

Notes

Author Biography

Megan K. Halpern is a graduate student in Communication at Cornell University. She has been a producer of science themed performances and continues to develop opportunities for artists and scientists to collaborate and to create science performances for general audiences.

References

Atkinson

Hammersley

(1994) Ethnography and participant observation. In: Denzin

Lincoln

(eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 248–261.

Becker

(2008) Art Worlds, 2nd edn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Original work published 1984.)

Boehner

Vertesi

Sengers

Dourish

(2007) How HCI interprets the probes. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. San Jose, CA: ACM, 1077–1086.

Burnett

(1999) A view from the bridge: The two cultures debate, its legacy, and the history of science. Dædalus 128(2): 193–218.

Callon

(1999) Actor-network theory: The market test. In: Law

Hassard

(eds) Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell, 181–195.

Cohen

(2001) Science and humanities: Across two cultures and into science studies. Endeavour 25(1): 8–12.

Daston

(2005) Fear & loathing of the imagination in science. Dædalus 134(4): 16–30.

Fujimura

(1992) Crafting science: Standardized packages, boundary objects, and “translation.” In: Pickering

(ed.) Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 168–211.

Gaver

Dunne

Pacenti

(1999) Design: Cultural probes. Interactions 6(1): 21–29.

10.

Gaver

Boucher

Pennington

Walker

(2004) Cultural probes and the value of uncertainty. Interactions 11(5): 53–56.

11.

Gieryn

(1983) Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists. American Sociological Review 48(6): 781–795.

12.

Gulden

Baldwin

(2007) Wildflower shadow. Hand-painted genetically-engineered E. coli bacteria, in culture. URL: http://amychasegulden.blogspot.com/2007/07/ecoli-bacteria-wildflowers-in-process.html

13.

Hilgartner

(1990) The dominant view of popularization: Conceptual problems, political uses. Social Studies of Science 20(3): 519–539.

14.

Holton

(1978) The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

15.

Kovac

(2002) Two cultures revisited: New widening gaps. World Futures 58(1): 1–11.

16.

Latour

(1988) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

17.

Latour

Sheridan

Law

(1988) The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

18.

Laudan

(1983) The demise of the demarcation problem. In: Grünbaum

Cohen

Laudan

(eds) Physics, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis: Essays in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum, illustrated edn. Boston, MA: Springer, 111–127.

19.

Leavis

Yudkin

(1963) Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow. Being the Richmond Lecture, 1962. With a New Pref. for the American Reader. And an Essay on Sir Charles Snow’s Rede Lecture. New York: Pantheon Books.

20.

Ortolano

(2002) Two cultures, one university: The institutional origins of the “two cultures” controversy. Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 34(4): 606–624.

21.

Ortolano

(2009) The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

22.

Popper

(1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books.

23.

Ruse

(1990) Making use of creationism: A case-study for the philosophy of science classroom. Studies in Philosophy and Education 10(1): 81–92.

24.

Ruse

([1988] 1996) But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

25.

Snow

(1963) The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

26.

Star

Griesemer

(1989) Institutional ecology, “translations” and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science 19(3): 387–420.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.09 MB