SRUK awards the first “Art and Science” prizes

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  •  The first exhibition and award ceremony of “Art and Science, an initiative from SRUK/CERU” and supported by the Ramón Areces Foundation, was held in London.
  • Professor Arthur Miller illustrated how “Art and science are fusing in the 21st century and collaborations between artists and scientists have produced stunning works”.
  • “Common Bio”, “Regeneration and Recycling” andSeed dispersal in a Fragmented Landscape” pieces were awarded the prizes in collaboration with Telefónica Foundation.

London, 19th of June 2017. The first exhibition and the awards ceremony of the “Art and Science, a SRUK initiative” was held on Saturday in London. With this initiative, the Society of Spanish Researchers in the UK (SRUK/CERU) aims to establish a space to favor the synergy between Art and Science. Thanks to the invaluable support of the Ramón Areces Foundation, scientists and artists have been able to work together, communicate and learn from each other, to finally convey the scientific knowledge in a more understandable and suggestive format to the general public.

This initiative has allowed the interaction between eight pairs of artists and scientists who explored the same scientific question from their different ways of working. The resulting art creations were exhibited at the Spanish Institute “Vicente Cañada Blanch” in London. After the introduction of the pieces by scientists and artists, Anna Vilalta, director of SRUK Cambridge and María Brancos, exhibitions head from Telefónica Foundation, explained the selection criteria for the awards. The £300 first prize award went to ”Common Bio”, an audiovisual installation that uses the electrical representation of DNA sequences (as obtained from a nanopore sequencing machine) from the artist Marta Fuster in collaboration with Tomas Di Domenico. In addition, “Regeneration and Recycling” from the artist Jane Frost in collaboration with Ana López and “Seed dispersal in a Fragmented Landscape” from Jon Heras in collaboration with Juan Pedro González-Varo,received the second and third category awards, £200 and £100 respectively. Marina Velez, curator of the exhibition, stated: “Cross-disciplinary collaborations promote dialogue and encourage us to explore beyond our own ideas of what knowledge is and the works exhibited here are the result of such interdisciplinary dialogues. Curating this exhibition has given me first-hand experience of the curiosity and fascination that artists and scientists express for each other’s disciplines and methodologies”. Vilalta, highlighted “the importance of promoting the interaction between traditionally distant disciplines, the fusion of which make artistic inspiration flourish and facilitates dissemination of scientific knowledge to the general audience.”

The resulting art pieces will be exhibited later this year in Cambridge. Also, the awarded pieces will travel to Madrid to be exhibited in the “Telefónica Foundation Space” in November. Brancos said, “More than the result itself, the great value of this initiative lies in the encounter and dialogue generated by artists and scientists. We have seen how imagination and creativity, as well as research, are important in both domains and how both can mutually nourish and enrich each other. This way SRUK/CERU joins in a very much needed trend, promoting a fruitful collaboration between disciplines”.

Arthur I. Miller, Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London and keynote speaker at the event, illustrated how “Art and science are fusing in the 21st century and collaborations between artists and scientists have produced stunning works”. He also talked about collaborations between artists and machines that according to his own words “have led to previously unimaginable art”.

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