Conferences

"Art & Science: The Two Cultures Converging" was a three day SciArt conference held in partnership with The Helix Center on December 1-3, 2017.

This conference brought together over 36 local innovative experts in the fields of science, art, technology, and education who engaged in a series of roundtable discussions on (1) science-art collaboration, (2) STEAM and the future of education, and (3) the multi-directional relationship between science, art, and society. Each of these topics were specifically addressed two times, creating six roundtables total, with unique participants in each round who built off of the previous conversations of all roundtables. The format of spontaneous and generative dialogue was chosen with the aim to evolve a collective conversation over the course of three days, in attempts to gain intellectual progress on the most difficult, interesting, novel, and complex challenges we face as cross-, multi-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary practitioners.

What can art-science-tech collaborations result in? How do we form new educational models for the 21st century? How do we bridge the gulf between art and science, and between art, science, and society? These are only some of the questions that were addressed by the participants and active audience members.

As these topics are global in reach, all roundtable discussions were livestreamed and recorded.

View conference details HERE

Opening remarks by Julia Buntaine, SciArt Center's founding director:

...I had the idea for this weekend about a year and a half ago after attending a conference which was wonderful but far too short on the time allowed for spontaneous conversation - what we’re going to do here this weekend is a bit different than your typical conference. With an emphasis on evolving a collective dialogue over three days, we’ve cut out prescripted presentations entirely and invited innovative local leaders in the science, art, technology, and education realms to share their current work, thoughts on issues big and small, approaches and solutions to outstanding problems, and questions about where we are, and where we want to be, in the worlds of art and science, and the points at which they converge.

The meaningful interactions of art, science, and technology in culture, industry, and education is well established - we’re not here to justify this interaction, it speaks for itself. Rather, this weekend over the course of six roundtable discussions on three central topics, we will cover questions such as: What are the potentials of science-art collaboration beyond art about science? How do we form new educational models for the 21st century? How can we repair, and build upon, the multi-directional relationship between science, art and society?

I am so grateful to have found the perfect partner for this weekend - The Helix Center. Helix’s motto urges us to engage in “an unhurried search for wisdom,” and it is high time to evolve these cross-disciplinary conversations, guided by wisdom, to the next levels.