s (2007) work on scientific atlases has opened new lines of inquiry into the relations between objectivity and visual practices in science. Implicit in their narrative, and in need of further investigation, are some suggestions on how historical reflections on visual practices in science incorporate its evolving relation with the visual arts. In this chapter I chart the story of how artists participated in the practices of observation that Daston and Galison (2007:19ff) compellingly define as "collective empiricism". In doing this, I use their narrative as a point of departure to narrate a story that is deeply intertwined with that of scientific objectivity, and which has remained so far pretty much untold. My aim is to show that the history of scientific objectivity has constantly crossed paths with the history of artistic visualisation, from which it has received some powerful challenges. Drawing on three case-studies from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, I argue that, by challenging the current canons of correct and accurate forms of visualisation and representation, artists played a crucial role in shaping the history of objectivitymainly by vocalizing their objections to it.My concern in this chapter is twofold, and it ultimately aims to reconcile historical and epistemological accounts of visual practices in science and in the visual arts. At a basic level, my aim is to add new interpretative layers to images that are too often taken for granted and classified strictly as "scientific" or "artistic". Looking at the history of how certain artistic and scientific representations came to be the way they are reveals that scientific visualisation is imbued with aesthetic commitments, and that artistic visualisation constantly capitalizes onand responds toscientific and technological innovation. But in charting this history, my concern is primarily an epistemological one. Complicating the story of what count as accurate representations
My train ride from London to Oxford is filled with anticipation. Having just watched the latest season of Black Mirror, I anticipate the same blending of wit, unintended consequences, and dystopian paradox from the new exhibition that has just opened at the Barn Gallery in St John's College, Oxford. Unsecured Futures is the solo show of the first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist, Ai-Da. A versatile artist, Ai-Da dabbles in drawing and painting as well as sculpture and performance. "She" is the result of a large multidisciplinary team that features artists, curators, computer scientists from the universities of Oxford and Leeds, and Cornwall-based company Engineering Arts Ltd. The press release feeds my sense of expectation, promising me that she is absolutely unique: "Ai-Da's ability as a robot to draw and paint from sight has never been achieved before and makes Ai-Da an artist in her own right, as well as a world first."
This article revisits the historiography of Cubism and mathematics, with a particular focus on Pablo Picasso's uses of geometry at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. In particular, I consider the artistic appropriation of the concept of the fourth dimension, and its pictorial uses as a conduit for a conceptual reformulation of pictorial space. I investigate Picasso's distinctive adoption of this geometric framework in relation to one of his 1909 experiments across painting and photography, and advocate the possibility of drawing novel historiographical lessons from Picasso's work-lessons that bring the historiography of Cubism in a closer dialogue with recent debates in the historiography of science. I conclude with an appeal to consider the continued relevance of this past experiment in art and science when assessing the contemporary drive toward art-science collaborations, and use the case of Cubism and the fourth dimension as a springboard for a critical reflection on the future directions of art-science collaborations.
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