Network Entrepreneurship at the Interface of Art and Biology
I want to reflect on some aspects of the conversations from the symposium on Visual Culture and Bioscience and try to reframe the discussion with notes for myself.
A focal point for the discussion has been to discuss the roles artists play in laboratory settings. A good deal of discussion and effort has been directed over the years towards promoting opportunities and understanding the roles that artists perform alongside and/or despite scientists. Suzanne Anker also introduced the notion of “art as invention”–the migration of social spaces in a recent thread dealing with the social and cultural implications of bioscience.
While these are complex topics full of social and methodological implications, I sense a generalizable way of framing the conversation that, I think, warrants some consideration–if only because it might help draw others into the conversation.
Whatever the engagement of art and biology, be it through individuals, groups, and/or at the level of disciplines, there are certain instances of value created by these multifaceted interactions. Many of these have been discussed. However, these are not characteristic of only art and bioscience, but rather they seem to exists at all levels of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the practice of sensing opportunities and starting new organizations (of concepts even!) to seize on those opportunities.
Quoting Suzanne Anker:
Novel ways of thinking and doing can be socially, economically and politically beneficial. The wonder of invention is a creative springboard allowing the more adventurous to remix the given. Negotiating territorial discourses and practices requires tenaciousness and makes significant learning demands on the border-crossers…Invention can also be looked upon as incorporating an element of chance…For the artist, recognizing nuance and possibility in the process of making, is part of artistic creation. Another aspect, furthering collaboration and creative process is the random and not so random meeting of various practitioners at cocktail parties, lectures art exhibits and the like.
I like Suzanne’s sentiment–though I have to disagree about the role that chance plays in the interaction. Certainly there is an element of chance, but invention is much more an import/export process: “Negotiating territorial discourses, recognizing nuance and possibility, meeting of various practitioners.” From my point of view, the majority of what counts as interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary practice involves translation, mediation, organization, and consultation. If you are involved in an actively engaged import/export process of exchanging ideas, materials, methods…whatever…you generally increase the odds that chance will fall in your favor. The implications, especially for teaching and learning, are that the import/export process can be learned and developed while chance cannot.
Would you agree that a characteristic of artists is their ability to sense gaps in culture or social structures? Would you also agree that artists are able to bridge these gaps because they maintain affiliations and learning strategies that involve and leveraging the concerns of multiple groups?
I see at least two ways of looking at this:
Behaviorally–that is, what are the behaviors of artists and scientists that seek to make these kinds of bridges and border-crossings? A question to ask here is, “How?”
Functionally–that is, what are the benefits that these behaviors confer both for the individuals involved and for their “other” constituencies? A question to ask here is, “For Whom?”
From the behavior standpoint, this idea of entrepreneurship is critical. I admire the symposium participants’ overriding desire to identify new areas of investigation, their resourcefulness in building a practice and implementing projects, and their dedication–despite conventional “wisdom.”
Woven through this discussion have been themes of
- creating common ground,
- creating new holistic understanding, and
- resolving differences between disciplines through the development of a metaphor–visual or otherwise.
These themes, not coincidentally, characterize Wolfe and Haynes’ criteria for interdisciplinary synthesis (at least in terms of writing). (Wolfe, C. R., and Haynes, C. 2003. Interdisciplinary writing assessment profiles. Issues in Integrative Studies 21, 126–169.)
To what degree are the behaviors, practices, and methods of the artists and scientists involved in this discussion and elsewhere indicative of brokering–such that each is translating, applying metaphors, creating common ground, and resolving differences between groups? This brokering, I think, is a fundamental activity and the research seems to indicate that it can be learned.
For much of my argument about brokering, I am drawing from Ronald Burt’s work on structural holes and network entrepreneurship. Burt recent presented to NESTA on the topic of innovation.
The domain knowledge and landscape is also critical. The fact that so little is known about biology, and for that matter, about art, necessarily creates opportunities. These are amplified by the apparent and real methodological differences between biology and art practices. Thus, one explanation for why this is such a rich area of inquiry lies in the social, cultural, and ethical implications of bioscience–confounded by the social and cultural “holes” created when we try to align the constituencies and interests of biology and art.
