Melbourne Creative Intersections 3-6 October 2011

The World Summit on Arts & Culture has been held every three years since 2000, and brings together artists, cultural agencies, senior policy makers, advocates and artists from more than 80 countries to explore how art and artists can give voice to diverse communities and concerns through collaborations with experts in health and well-being, the environment, education, business, new technologies, cultural identity and more.

It is a huge event, involving more than 500 delegates, with six international keynote speakers, 18 roundtable discussions, as well as panels, performances and a public forum. You can find out all about the Summit, including full details of the extensive program at http://artsummit.org/

Roundtable: The Outer Limits

Moderated by Pia Waugh (ICT Policy Advisor, Office of The Hon Senator Kate Lundy), this panel comprised Erica Seccombe (Visual artist and PhD candidate ANU School of Art), Tim Senden (Professor, ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Australia) and Gavin Artz, (CEO, Australian Network for Art and Technology, ANAT). The audience included national and international policy makers and arts advisers.

This panel was brought together to discuss how arts policy can better enable and support art/science/technology collaborations and ask what would be the one big new policy shift or idea that would help arts keep in step with science in coming years. As advances in science and technology increase exponentially in the twenty-first century, experimentation by artists abounds and in many cases reveals new potentials to these inventors.

Gavin described many of the innovative interdisciplinary projects supported through ANAT’s funding programs and the significance of good governance to foster artistic and scientific collaborations and manage these interdisciplinary relationships.  As Erica and Tim’s collaborative project was funded by ANAT’s 2010 Synapse residency, Erica talked about how crucial the combined support of ANAT and the ANU have been in recognizing the potential value of her project. Erica discussed her experience as a visual artist working in the ANU Department of Applied Maths Micro CT facility, where Tim Senden has been facilitating an interdisciplinary research project exploring the possibilities of visualizing volumetric data acquired from micro-computed tomographic X-ray technology. Tim identified the parallels he sees between experimental, creative and risk taking research for scientific researchers and artists working at the technological frontiers, and contributed some interesting ideas as to how scientists might incorporate artistic collaborators in future funding applications.

The panel agreed that there needed to be a change in the way established funding bodies, policy makers and institutions evaluated interdisciplinary projects. This included how transdisciplinary outcomes through a collaborative process should be considered as equally important as the more conventional conclusions such as a body of work for exhibition. The ensuing discussion revealed that the perceived gulf between the arts and sciences is not limited just to Australian culture.  Despite the rapid advance of the digital age, there remains a general and unfounded prejudice towards the creative arts’ ability to contribute meaningfully to science and technology - the proof being in the difficulty for arts practitioners to secure commensurate funding for innovative projects. The panel and participants agreed that to acknowledge interdisciplinary projects and encourage significant new directions was as simple as not to keep asking where the divisions are, but to start identifying where the intersections begin.