Art and Science talk in Glasgow University

Two weeks ago I spent the whole weekend in Glasgow. During my stay in the city, I had the opportunity to attend a talk organized by Glasgow University Magazine, given by two award-winning science communicators Emily May Armstrong, who was doing her Ph.D. at Glasgow University, and Catarina Marques, who already has a Ph.D. 

The title of the talk was Art and Science: Dismantling the binary. The purpose of the talk was to dismantle the perceived binary that exists between art and science: people often tend two think that they are two fields completely unrelated to one another. These two have been depicted as opposing, and the belief that you have to either be good at or have to choose one or the other has persisted. What this event tried to demonstrate was that this is not true at all.

The speakers talked about how the art-science binary originated- science is empirical whereas art is often conceived as "free", or "no rules"- and then run through examples of art in science or science in art. For instance, most scientists, as a quick poll demonstrated, agree that they need to be creative at least sometimes in their work. In addition to this, scientists, especially biologists, need to draw continuously: Darwin drew almost every species he saw when he embarked on his expedition on the Beagle. 

On the other hand, science is very useful for artists. The speakers talked about strange pigments that could have pretty amazing finishes, such as a material that picks up 96% of light- so it's basically like the darkest black that's ever been made. Essentially, with chemistry and science in general, artists have very useful tools and inspiration for their work.

I found this talk very interesting and kind of suited for me since I am not only a scientist but an artist- I even considered doing my masters on Scientific Illustration- and have always suffered the science-art binary conflict first-hand. I think art and creativity, in general, are very important tools for scientists, and often underestimated and forgotten.