Collaboration between TRIUMF and ECUAD fashions exhibit at Science World
(Vancouver) – When faced with a question about the nature of our Universe, would you grab an engineering notebook or an artist’s sketchpad to collect your ideas? Science and art are often confused as being polar-opposite disciplines though they both exercise one’s ability for creative and innovative thinking. With the launch of a new exhibit at Science World, Emily Carr University and TRIUMF continue to develop common ground from the inspirations of art and science.
The exhibition will be on display at Science World, providing visitors of all ages an opportunity to contemplate science from an artistic perspective. It includes art pieces by students and alumni of Emily Carr University and showcases artists’ fascination with scientific topics ranging from the cosmos to particle behavior to human relationships with technology.
“Both science and art are born out of a desire to make sense of the world around us,” notes Lindsay Kroes, TRIUMF Communications Assistant. “In conversation with TRIUMF researchers and Emily Carr students, it is clear that both groups share an innate sense of curiosity and a penchant for unconventional thinking. The art which has resulted reflects these intersections and similarities.”
Some of the artists participated in the Artist-in-Residence Program at TRIUMF, through a Humanities course, Black Holes and Other Transformations of Energy, taught by Associate Professor Ingrid Koenig. The Artist-in-Residence program offers students an opportunity to hear lectures from TRIUMF researchers and spend an afternoon immersed among the people, equipment, and collaborative environment at TRIUMF. The ongoing partnership between Emily Carr University and TRIUMF brings student artists and research scientists together to explore new ways of thinking about physics, the scientific method, and our world.
David Morrissey is a theoretical physicist at TRIUMF who explores the physics behind dark matter and engages with Emily Carr students in their “collisions” with science. Says David, “In science, as you go through the process, very often the place where you end up is not necessarily where you had in mind. I see now that the same is true of making art; in both cases, the process steers you.”
The exhibit was organized by TRIUMF, Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, in collaboration with Emily Carr University of Art & Design. The curatorial team, led by Emily Carr’s faculty Ingrid Koenig and Randy Lee Cutler, also included Emily Carr alumna Debbie Teupah and TRIUMF’s Communication Coordinator Melissa Baluk.
The exhibit will on display at Science World from Friday, April 11, 2014 through Monday, May 19, 2014.
–Melissa Baluk, Communications Coordinator.
TRIUMF Press Release