2.15.1 Perhaps the source of the communication problem can be traced to the fact that most of the philosophers under attack in the scientific community do not work closely with scientists and that scientists are equally isolated from the movements of philosophical thought and contemporary artistic expression. As long as the work does not have a reason to be located in a few disciplines simultaneously, room for misunderstandings will be ample. The work of artists working with technology demands interaction with scholars from a wide variety of disciplines such as computer science, social studies, philosophy, cultural studies. Bridging and synthesising many worlds while composing 'something else' becomes the art.

2.15.2 In my own experience, I find that even this territory is problematic. Artists are too frequently viewed as 'illustrators' of scientific theories, inventions, and discoveries by the scientific community. During my PhD studies I acted as a producer of a interactive CD-ROM project entitled "Life in the Universe" with Stephen Hawking. The experience can be summarised as going from a scientific text to an artistic interpretation to a marketed product. Although touted and promoted by both industry and academia as a collaborative project between artists and scientists, between University and Industry, it was just posing as such. My colleagues at the university and I were given a number of text to interpret. We spent many hours conceptualising and coming up with innovative ways to navigate through the information. The people from industry who sponsored the project checked in occasionally to make sure we were doing the work. There was only one meeting with Stephen Hawking and much of it was set up to get a nod from him-we were legitimising the production. Once we had the entire project designed, visualised, and ready, it was taken from us and completely reframed into a more palatable interface design (which did not go well with the concept behind it), packaged in a flashy box, and marketed. We were never contacted again by the industry or by Hawking himself. Much of what is promoted as 'interdisciplinary' and 'collaborative' is purely a front for funding agencies who are justifiably interested in promoting this type of research. I have learned from this experience that artists have to learn to appreciate their worths and learn how to negotiate and write complex grants in order to move into a genuinely collaborative space. [top]