When art meets science

By Judy Lin

Arts brought the cheese and crackers. Sciences brought the beer and wine. And with the sounds of smooth jazz drifting across the patio on a sunny afternoon outside the Broad Art Center, several dozen faculty, staff and students enjoyed one another's company at the third quarterly North South Mixer on March 13.

Hosted by the Department of Design | Media Arts, the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) and the Office of Summer Sessions, the "no agenda" event invites scientists to meet artists to meet humanists and more. The idea: to get to know each other and, ultimately, perhaps, to find new ways to collaborate that bridge disciplines and campus geography.

The mixers are the invention of Victoria Vesna, professor of Design | Media Arts, who hosts the events with CNSI managing director Susan Ruben and Susan Jain, director of Summer Sessions' academic program development. In her own work, Vesna is bridging the divide between disciplines as a longtime creative collaborator of nanoscientist James Gimzewski, professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Their latest work, "Blue Morph," uses nanoscale images and sounds to illlustrate the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

Vesna is also founder and director of the UCLA Art|Science Center & Lab, which demonstrates the potential of media arts and science collaborations — connections which, she said, are best begun not in a formal environment but in a casual atmosphere.

"We're all so overwhelmed, so busy, that to go to another forum or discussion or meeting about how we can work together just sounds exhausting... and I've been to many," she said. "I saw [collaboration-building] really working when people were eating and drinking and talking and just being human with each other. Out of this, relationships and friendships and sometimes even research are encouraged."

Summer Sessions' Jain said that because her office already works with faculty from all parts of campus to create innovative summer programs for high school and international students, she often finds herself advising faculty to link up with each other across disciplines.

"How do we get that conversation going? How do you connect faculty and students? We decided we'd just have a party," Jain said.

The ambiance at the mixer was festive and the conversation friendly, but many in attendance had serious reasons for getting to know colleagues in other fields. Postdoctoral student Adam Stieg is technical director of CNSI's Nano and Pico Characterization Lab, as well as a musician — he plays piano and guitar. He worked on "Blue Morph" with Vesna and Gimzewski and is a strong advocate of academic cross-over.

"The university system is very effective in producing well-trained academics but it tends to compartmentalize people," Stieg said. "If you're a scientist only surrounded by scientists, you tend to compartmentalize yourself in your way of thinking." Meeting people from other fields, he said, "stimulates different ways of thinking. ... I love my work, but I do happen to have other interests. And I've found that developing cross-disciplinary collaborations has helped me develop the capacity to be creative beyond the construct of my professional training."

John Carpenter, a first-year graduate student in Design | Media Arts who is working in the area of biological data visualization, cited his own experience in seeking input from outside his field. For a class called "Media Archeology" that examined vision technology devices, he sought the aid of optics experts from the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Marty Simon, who runs that department's optics lab, even gave him a private tutorial. "It was really great," Carpenter said. "And now there's this whole relationship going. He's even going over to archeology to help with other projects."

Information about the next North South Mixer will be posted at the Art|Science Center & Lab Web site, http://artsci.ucla.edu. All campus members are invited. Also find examples of art-science collaborations at the site.