Description
Inspired by the thirteenth annual Artefacts meeting, held in Washington, DC in October 2008, “Analyzing Art and Aesthetics” (Artefacts series, Vol. 9) investigates the materiality of science and technology, focusing on art and aesthetics. How have artists responded to developments in science and/or technology, in their own times, or from the past? Moreover, how have art forms as diverse as glassblowing, sculpture, drawing, and painting responded to discourse and achievement in the arenas of science and technology, or inspired innovation and discovery in these fields? Rather than limiting the discussion to art alone, the conference organizers also invited participants to consider aesthetics, a field originally conceived as the philosophy of beauty, but reframed in recent years to include the scholarly consideration of sensory responses to cultural objects. When considered as aesthetic objects, how do scientific instruments or technological innovations reflect and embody culturally-grounded assessments about appearance, feel, and use? And when these objects become museum artifacts, what aesthetic factors affect how they are exhibited? For all of these questions, the participating scholars looked for answers in the material objects themselves. By doing so, the conference–and this volume–reconsidered how science, technology, art, and aesthetics impact one another. This volume includes contributions from 19 leading scholars based in the academic arena as well as the museum world in a diverse range of disciplines who explore the significance of artistic interventions into scientific discourse as well as the impact of science and technology on the development of art ranging from the late eighteenth century to the present. The essays have been broken into three sections, each with its own introduction that will enable readers to focus on overarching categories: Artists Interpret Science and Technology; Aesthetics of Technology; and Models as Aesthetic Objects.
