Parallel sessions

Science and art are often considered as incompatible; in universities, they’re housed in separate buildings (or even campuses!) while in your local bookshop, the disciplines are shelved in different aisles. But it is the case that astronomy and art have been inseparable for centuries.

From Galileo’s singular yet sublime sketches of a ragged lunar terrain and complex, entwined sunspots through to the today’s digital datasets that combine multiple observations from many different instruments across the electromagnetic spectrum, our approach to understanding the universe demands from us both ingenuity and creativity. Astronomical imagery is now woven into popular culture.

This session will bring together perspectives from both artists and astronomers to explore the following two themes;

(i) how artistic representations utilise and grapple with real astronomy data;
(ii) how techniques from art influence how astronomers see and interact with their data.

These will be examined through ongoing art/astronomy engagement projects that demonstrate how these approaches enhance science discovery, artistic expression as well as the wider public understanding of both.

Schedule:

09:00 Introduction to Session: SUN
09:15 Gillian McFarland “Exploring the Space - In between - Artists and Astronomers Creativity and Curiosity”
09:25 Joanna Ramasawmy “Life on a Pale Red Dot: an art/science photographic exoplanetology project”
09:35 Martin Archer “Models of art-science collaboration to help embed science as part of culture”
09:45 Helen Mason “SunSpaceArt”
09:55 Helen Schell “The Human Spaceship - Starlight”
10:05 Ulrike Kuchner “Aleatory Whispers: ways of working together in an art-science collaboration”