ArtScience Prize Overview What Is ArtScience? the artscience prize jury 2009-2010 program TIMELINe Piloting the ArtScience Prize
Water is perhaps the most precious and essential resource on the planet. More than oil, more than land, more than perhaps any other resource on earth, it is core to life and civilization. As the human population continues to increase, demand for water increases. Meanwhile water access is limited by pollution and wastefulness.
What is the future of water? What can we do now to make this future as bright as possible? Can water be made, protected, stored or transported in ways that are more efficient than we are doing today? Can we recreate lifestyles and water-intensive activities like farming so that they use less water? Should we filter the salt out of seawater as needed to make it fit for human consumption? What if water, now free in most of the world, began to be owned by companies that charged for its use? These are just some of the questions addressed by scientists and researchers today.
Such questions also propel the creative work of many contemporary artists and designers, from artist Janet Echelman’s Olympic Oval, which takes run-off water from an Olympic facility's 5-acre roof and transforms it into a water garden intersected by curved pedestrian bridges, netted "sky lanterns," and water-aeration system, to underwater sculptor Jason de Caires Taylor, whose work highlights ecological processes whilst exploring the intricate relationships between modern art and the environment. It is at the heart of two major works of design and exhibition at Le Laboratoire in the fall of 2010, related to edible bottles and water transport using the principles of the biological cell - works that emerged from student reflection in the idea translation lab.
Integrating neuroscience with information science, neuroinformatics explores how the brain generates and processes information, and conceives of new ways to synthesize data on the brain to foster discovery across disciplines. Melding information science's cross-disciplinary approach to data collection and communication with contemporary discoveries in neuroscience allows researchers, artists, and other creative thinkers to re-imagine the workings of the human brain based on novel syntheses of information from many fields of inquiry.
How does the brain generate and process the information that characterizes conscious and unconscious human thought? Can this information be accessed by technology to empower the handicapped, whose limbs may no longer successfully process active brain signals? Might it allow us to communicate more fully and deeply than ever before? These are just some of the questions addressed by neuroscience and information science researchers innovating in this field today.
Such questions also propel the creative work of many contemporary artists and designers, from architect Francois Roche's upcoming project exploring how architecture may evolve with ever more precise understanding of the human mind, to artist Shilpa Gupta and social psychologist and ArtScience Jury member Mahzarin Banaji's investigations of unconscious prejudice at Le Laboratoire. Sparking discussion of the role of imagination and cognition in society and the creative process, the theme of neuroinformatics will provide teen artists and scientists with a gateway to contemporary multi-disciplinary research and discovery.
