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. Photographic images concerned with different kinds of observations will be interwoven with objects in the collection to evoke a sense of the curiosity and wonderment suggested by the title of her project. Referring to the Renaissance world of figures such as Giambattista della Porta, whose text on natural magic was the most famous of the genre, the project seeks to find an approach to art and science which avoids the antagonisms and oppositions that characterise so much of their recent history. Susan Derges will be showing the outcomes of her research at the Museum of the History of Science from October 2001. The University of Oxford's contributions to Year of the Artist are being organised in association with The Laboratory at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.
. The YoA began on 1 June and will place 1,000 artists in 1,000 residencies, taking them out of the traditional spaces usually associated with art and placing them in unusual and surprising locations. The work will provide a source of visual metaphors as tools for research and the public understanding of science, and has received one of only eleven national awards from SciArt, a consortium dedicated to assisting partnerships in science and art. The project is being managed by Artpoint Trust and the photographs will be displayed in the new Edward Abraham Building. The Museum of the History of Science will provide artist Susan Derges with inspiration for her residency, Natural Magic.
Abstract What is the relationship between inner and outer, mental and physical, subjective and objective experience. If they are all part of one continuous (and creative) process how can this be visualised. What are the metaphors offered by science as well as those underlying scientific ideas about the mystery of form (and thought forms even) coming into being and the whole process of embodiment. My work has been a continuing enquiry into some of these questions - beginning with the hope that science might provide absolute answers or solutions, it has become more concerned with the place of the subjective self in the world, with the notion of an observer interactive reality and with creative emergence. The photographic image parallels the scientific gaze in the way that it can slice up the world for scrutiny and as evidence, but it also has the potential to cultivate a subjective response - by which the world is experienced as a whole and in which intrinsic value and mutual respect are possible.
Thus, for example, those who block motorway construction by creating communities in trees and underground tunnels are considered by some to be engaged in art acts. The metaphysics of the Blackfoot of North America, and their vision of an animate world, is examined. The essay argues that a similar world view existed in Europe up to the early middle ages but that the secularization of space, time and matter paved the way for the development of "Western science" and its associated technologies and notions of progress, prediction and control. The essay speculates that a new science may be possible which combines the current power of abstraction and analysis with an "impersonal subjectivity". The review concludes that while the case for cold fusion, in its various forms, has not been fully established, evidence for anomalies phenomena in the solid state is strong.
another science site: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345386132/
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