International Initiative in the History of Evolutionary Views of Human Nature

This project takes stock of the emergence, character, scope, and import of contemporary collaborations between scientists and artists found working together in laboratories, studios, and in the field. As a score of exhibitions and installations over the past ten years have testified, these have emerged to both engage public interest in the vital scientific, political, and ethical issues of our day and challenge long held divisions between art and science. These 'hybrid' projects have sought to raise awareness of how we modify and use human and non-human bodies, interact with and change our environment, and conceptualise humanity within the broader cosmos. Our project responds to these developments.
We focus on five examples of collaboration spanning, on the one hand, space exploration, computer visualization, landscape ecology, climate change, and biotechnology, and, on the other hand, dance, film, music, sculpture, and painting. At the most basic level, the project uses in depth interviewing and participant observation to determine what the collaborators are producing, why they decided to work together, and what impediments they encountered along the way. But, as ethnographic research into their day-to-day interactions progresses, questions are answered in regard to: what institutional issues had to be faced; what political questions motivated or arose in the effort; and what philosophical currents link the collaborations. And not lastly: what lessons can be learned about how to best link the arts and sciences in educating diverse publics about these critical issues?

Intellectual merit. The work we propose is important for many, if not all, disciplines. Not the least among these is geography, a field that straddles a continuum from the humanities to the natural sciences. Its practitioners are concerned with critical environmental regimes, the role of social and cultural matrices in shaping scientific understandings, and the role of geo technologies in the representations and analyses of the earth's surface. Our work on art-science border crossers probes the very boundaries that comprise this venerable field of study.
Second, as a project informed by methods and questions in STS, we contribute new insights to on-going work on the spatial settings of laboratory practices, as well as to the institutional, political, and epistemic contexts within which these take place. We add richness and a comparative angle to these studies by addressing collaborations in the sites of production: field sites, studios, laboratories, museums, and universities.
Third, scientists across a variety of disciplines - even those not represented in our case study sites (chemistry and optics, among others) - should be interested in the outcomes of our research, particularly insofar as it promises to shed light on new approaches to representing scientific problems, and possibly even new ways to think through them. And fourth, as artists gain insights into a range of scientific problems and tools, as well as an understanding of how scientists in diverse contexts think through the ethical and political import of their work, our research offers them opportunity to reflect on the longstanding divisions between art and science, as well as to consider new avenues of engagement.

Broader Impacts. Our project draws explicit attention to the wider public reception of art-science collaborations. As such, the project will make a substantial contribution toward an understanding of how 'lessons learned' can be transposed to other contexts, thereby developing and realising models for public outreach at different sites. Insofar as the remit of these collaborations entails the advancement of public knowledge about a number of contemporary world-wide crises and discoveries, our in-depth engagements in field sites serve as a study of the development of innovative strategies for the delivery of popular education and knowledge transfer devoted to timely, policy-related issues of the larger public interest. In its final form, this project's outcomes can serve as resources for both researchers and funding agencies seeking to develop new directions in research collaboration.
Our work addresses how collaboration is currently being re-theorised and negotiated in a handful of highly significant cases. Can a deeper thread running through all these projects be discerned, one that portends a new phase in science-art relations that has the ability to transform the way we train students, organize universities and funding agencies, and disseminate knowledge?