Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation

by David Edwards

Scientists are famous for believing in the proven and peer-accepted, the very ground that pioneering artists often subvert; they recognize correct and incorrect where artists see only true and false. And yet in some individuals, crossover learning provides a remarkable kind of catalyst to innovation that sparks the passion, curiosity, and freedom to pursue--and to realize--challenging ideas in culture, industry, society, and research. This book is an attempt to show how innovation in the "post-Google generation" is often catalyzed by those who cross a conventional line so firmly drawn between the arts and the sciences.

David Edwards describes how contemporary creators achieve breakthroughs in the arts and sciences by developing their ideas in an intermediate zone of human creativity where neither art nor science is easily defined. These creators may innovate in culture, as in the development of new forms of music composition (through use of chaos theory), or, perhaps, through pioneering scientific investigation in the basement of the Louvre. They may innovate in research institutions, society, or industry, too. Sometimes they experiment in multiple environments, carrying a single idea to social, industrial, and cultural fruition by learning to view traditional art-science barriers as a zone of creativity that Edwards calls artscience. Through analysis of original stories of artscience innovation in France, Germany, and the United States, he argues for the development of a new cultural and educational environment, particularly relevant to today's need to innovate in increasingly complex ways, in which artists and scientists team up with cultural, industrial, social, and educational partners.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

David Edwards is a creator, writer, and educator. He teaches at Harvard University and is founder of Le Laboratoire in Paris, France and Cambridge, MA. His work, which spans the arts and sciences, has been featured prominently in the international media, and is at the core of the international artscience movement. He lives with his wife and their three sons in Boston.

Reviews

[hh · Rating 2 out of 5]

in this book, david edwards says of his fiction work that he "writes mostly for [him:]self." well, it shows in his nonfiction. there are interesting ideas here, but they're conveyed in sentences that i often had to reread several times because of odd grammatical constructions. his personal vocabulary is also so overused that i found myself drifting off mid-thought. i think i could have loved this book. i think i would love talking to david edwards. i think if i were the copyeditor (who must have been told to go 'super light') i might throw this book across a room. i believe that david edwards is a smart guy with great ideas - but this book does not showcase any of that.

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. Catalyst
2. Process
3. Idea Translation in Cultural Institutions
4. Idea Translation in Academia
5. Idea Translation for Humanitarian Causes
6. Idea Translation in Industry
7. The Idea of the Lab
Acknowledgments

[Andreana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learn to educate yourself to be a comprehensivist.

[Lazy Mutt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned an entirely new perspective towards academics.