FIELDWORK IN ARTS AND SCIENCE – Hallucinating snowmobiles and imaginary islands

Zoom lecture, May 15 2020

Artists may be well versed in working with the senses and discuss the wide range of perceptions that our cultural expressions evoke. But how critically do we asses our perception of natural phenomena? Surely a chicken is a chicken and a crow is a crow. In this talk Sander Turnhout and Theun Karelse will shake the taxonomical tree-of-life and see what falls out. A more complex picture may emerge. Our perception of nature is a cultural act. How did this evolve? What forces shape the data that underpins our understanding of nature and the policies we make? How does it shape the environmental awareness of our machines? What value does fieldwork have for scientific and artistic pursuits?

text by Theun Karelse and Sander Turnhout