Cutting Edge is a periodical column on burning questions

CUTTING EDGE April 2013
-THE HYBRID ARTIST AND INTERDISCIPLINARY ART

Angela van der Burght

When was last time there were so many topics to be this concerned about from the miserable financial situation of artists and bankruptcies in the glass industry and the closing of workshops and studios to the cancellations of conferences in Boston and Canada and the recommendations of the Council for Culture to make further cuts of € 125 million for culture in the Netherlands to the report Ontgrenzen & Verbinden (unlock and link) in which Siebe Weide, Director Netherlands Museum Association warned for the opposite ‘Ontbinden en vergrenzen’ (dissolve and border) on ending printed art magazines and closing libraries?

But since it has my interest for years now, I was more excited to write about the announcement by the new president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences Hans Clevers and his plan to recover a bond between science and the arts that has been detached since the industrial revolution, in the 19^th century. It seemed to me this is a good moment for an update on hybrid artists and interdisciplinary art.
In their final report The Hybrid Artist, Camiel van Winkel, Pascal Gielen and Koos van Swan of the Centre of Expertise for Design AKV/St. Joost in 2012, described the organization of artistic practice in the postindustrial age. A distinction is made between multidisciplinary and hybrid: "In today's practice, the specific medium that the artist uses (painting, sculpture, drawing, video, film) no longer determines the artistic project and the discursive dimension." Hybridity is the superlative of versatility, outpatient activity, legislation, where the artist in the artistic field plays different roles and art has different functions with a mixed practice in which autonomous and applied art forms from a variety of disciplines go together.

David Edwards described in his book Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation (2007) how contemporary makers achieve breakthroughs in the arts and sciences by developing their ideas in an intermediate zone of human creativity where neither art nor science can be easily defined. This activity is known as ArtScience and this discipline carries this name. These type of designers can innovate either in research institutes, in society or industry. Edwards has founded several innovation organizations in the USA, Europe and Africa, including Le Laboratoire, a cultural center in Paris, and Idea Translation Labs in Boston and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as, Cape Town, South Africa. These labs form the network of ArtScience Labs and manage the creative educational program, The ArtScience Prize [www.artsciencelabs.org] and [www.davidideas.com].

Interdisciplinary art
Another very interesting example is found in the work of Philip Beesley: a professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo, Canada and a practitioner of architecture and digital media art, he was educated in visual art at Queen’s University, in technology at Humber College, and in architecture at the University of Toronto. At Waterloo, he serves as Director for the Integrated Group for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing, and as Director for Riverside Architectural Press. Beesley also holds the position of Examiner at University College London. His Toronto-based practice PBAI is an interdisciplinary design firm that combines public buildings with exhibition design, stage and lighting projects. The studio’s methods incorporate industrial design, digital prototyping, and mechatronics engineering. Philip Beesley’s work is widely cited in the rapidly expanding technology of responsive architecture. The Blog [http://bldgblog.blogspot.be] describes the installation: “Endothelium biomechanical sculpture-spaces are theatre environments consisting of a field of organic ‘bladders’ that are self-powered and that move very slowly, self-burrowing, self-fertilizing and are linked by 3D printed joints and thin bamboo scaffolding. The bladders are powered using mobile phone vibrators and have LED lights. It works by using tiny gel packs of yeast which burst and fertilize the geotextile.” www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com

Also the site of Angelo Vermeulen [www.angelovermeulen.net ] is interesting to read and see how he made the Darwin-like installation, for example, Blue Shift together with Prof. Luc De Meester of the University of Leuven and engineers from Philips Turnhout, Belgium.

The symposium at Biennale Kijkduin 2011 Transparent Vision – the Art and Science of Glass also had as its objective the restoration of the link between science and art of glass so that the new developments are or have been applicable and will be well designed.
The aim to encourage the development of talent in the field of art, technology, and architecture, within the scope this symposium was meant for design students, entrepreneurs, and experts who are engaged in experiments and innovative applications of glass. The topic addresses the social interest of glass as a transition material because glass is – more than any other material – multifunctional. No other material causes such similar revolutionary changes in the field of economics, health, safety, technology, architecture, culture, nature and the environment. President of the Koninklijke Academie van Wetenschappen (the Royal Academy of Sciences) Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf opened a very successful day with his reading Between Science and Art and expressed the hope to reunite in the future sciences and art. His successor now actually seems to be planning this.
In addition to speakers from the art, design, architecture, science and industry were also present the schools with a training program for a Masters of Glass Art and Science from Sunderland and Zlin, Czech Republic, while in Finland and Portugal the first students will graduate with interesting projects in which science and art go together.

Hans Clevers is one of the winners of the new Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. The prize rewards exceptional performance in scientific research in medicine. Eleven winners each received the amount of 3 million dollars. The award was established by some of the most successful entrepreneurs of the past decades, so that this prize will be the Nobel Prize of the 21st century. Hans Clevers is Professor of molecular genetics at the University Medical Center Utrecht and Covenants at the Hubrecht Institute of the KNAW. Since June 2012, Clevers has combined his position as president with his research work, [www.knaw.nl]. In the radio program Dit is de Dag (this is the day) Clevers proclaimed that he also would work on reuniting the Sciences and the Arts: “ I'm founding a Academy of Arts. That's what I would like to leave behind.” The Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences now has a- very influential position. Clevers desires to attain the same influential position in art and culture. To this end, he has decided to set up a new Institute next to the Academy. "Art must get just such a ‘booking agent’ as science". Many more details could not yet been give, but over a few months it should be clear whether this plan is really going to happen. His spokesman could not give me more information at present. But I will keep you posted.

See also: Science > Radiant Soil
and the book Combats on the work of Koen Vanmechelen

“ArtScience offers a four-year bachelor's and a two-year master's programme in an interdisciplinary learning environment where you are stimulated to create your own media of expression.” Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Den Haag, ArtScience Ba and Ma, www.kabk.nl

Translation: Erica H. Adams