Exploring the Intersection of Media Arts and Science: A STEAM Learning Journey

This article describes an approach to STEAM education in which art is viewed as a unique discipline with distinct ways of thinking. The researchers developed and evaluated a STEAM education programme to explore how art and science work together to expand and accelerate inventive thinking among Native American middle school students who participated in American Indian Services (AIS) Pre-Freshman Engineering Program (PREP). An important focus of this project was the unique local environment and culture that included Diné culture in Gallup, NM. We hypothesize that integrating culturally responsive, transdisciplinary art into an existing STEM summer programme will increase student engagement and understanding of art and science as ways of inquiry, personal exploration and constructing knowledge. We assumed that art thinking can enhance students’ sense of autonomy and competence. Our primary research question was: How does a culturally responsive, art-integrated STEAM curriculum influence student thinking, learning and understanding of connections between art and science? The research contributes to developing and evaluating out-of-school-time STEAM learning opportunities, adds to the knowledge of how to connect culture to STEM education through arts integration and contributes to improved educational outcomes through art and design integration in rural Indigenous communities.

While Media Art has evolved into a critical field at the intersection of art, science and technology, a significant loss threatens this art form due to rapid technological obsolescence and static documentation strategies. Addressing these challenges, the Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research was developed to advance an Archive of Digital Art. Through an innovative strategy of “collaborative archiving,” social Web 2.0 features foster the engagement of the international media art community and a “bridging thesaurus” linking the extended documentation of the Archive with other databases of “traditional” art history facilitates interdisciplinary and transhistorical comparative analyses.

While the dialogue between art and science has developed quite steadily since the post–Second World War period, scholarship on this theme and museum support for interdisciplinary inquiries has followed a highly discontinuous trajectory. At the beginning of the Cold War, fears over the potentially devastating impact of technology gave rise to a significant body of literature that criticized the growing rift between humanities and sciences. The popularization of theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and cybernetics in the 1960s, along with the growing access to new technological devices, spurred artists’ interest in the design of objects, performances, and environments that enhanced viewers’ awareness of their perceptual and behavioral responses or exposed them to complex information systems. Such works were often characterized by variability and unpredictability, requiring viewers to complete the work through their engagement or to observe its dependence on biological, sociopolitical, and technological conditions that were not under the artists’ complete control. Preoccupied primarily by the aesthetic qualities of these art practices and doubtful about their ability to provide a social critique of technology, many art critics faced significant challenges as they tried to develop new criteria for assessing their value. Scholarship on art and science flourished primarily between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s when new platforms of collaboration among artists, scientists, and engineers were established, and museums organized exhibitions that promoted the production of technology-based projects. Critical interest in art and science declined sharply in the second half of the 1970s under the impact of growing skepticism over the aesthetic qualities of such works and their capacity to raise critical questions about the relationships among science, technology, and society. Between the 1970s and the mid-1990s, scholarship on artistic inquiries into science and technology was featured primarily in new media symposia, festivals, and journals. Advances in genetic sequencing, bioengineering, and neurosciences have catalyzed a renewed artistic and scholarly interest in interdisciplinary methods of inquiry since the turn of the century. Recent scholarship focuses on (i) analogies between the studio/the museum and the laboratory; (ii) the ethical implications of scientific and artistic research; (iii) the technological mediation of sensorial experience and cognitive processes; (iv) the public display of knowledge production; and (v) the visual mapping and emergent behavior of complex networks. It is generally believed that artists can offer a critical angle on scientific methodologies and theories by examining the less evident repercussions of their applications and by bringing their sociopolitical implications into public debate. There is also an increased sense that artists developing projects at the intersection of art, science, and technology are not only creating representations of existing scientific knowledge, but are also leading new inquiries into the interdependence of biological, economic, social, and technological systems. More and more artists and art theorists emphasize the need for reciprocal exchanges between art and science. The caveat of this article is that it covers only scholarly literature available in English. It aims to provide a historical perspective upon debates regarding convergent trajectories between art and science since the 1960s. While some overlaps with the history of new media art are inevitable given the relevance of cybernetic theories and experimentation for both areas of study, the focus of this bibliography is on artists’ use of scientific concepts, methods, and interdisciplinary approaches to art and knowledge production rather than on their reliance on new technology for acts of creative expression in general. Each bibliographic section reveals fluctuations in perspective on contemporary art and science by combining texts from different decades. Whenever possible, the sections include sources written by a broad range of agents that mediate the dialogue between art and science, including artists, art historians, curators, philosophers, scientists, and theorists.

The chapter reviews recent evidence of, and debates about, the integration of art, entertainment, and media in media portrayals (e.g., movies, photographs, theater, music, performance art, museums, story-telling, modifications of an environmental space, social media, painting, comics, dance, videogames, etc.) of climate change based on three sources of data: 1) articles listed in academic reference databases and Google Scholar, 2) online sites, and 3) climate change news images. 1) Retrieved articles discuss both the potential and challenges of communicating about climate change through art, entertainment, and media. However, research is inconsistent on and in some cases is critical of the nature and extent of effects of art-based climate communication. 2) The Internet is a rich and diverse source of websites and videos about climate change. We analyzed 49 sites based on the art medium or form discussed, the primary content related to climate change, and the apparent goal of the site or video. The most frequent goals were promote action, collaboration, raise awareness, climate change communication, discussion, empowerment, reshape public perception, and engagement. 3) Based on the major themes and frames identified through content and cluster analysis of 350 images associated with 200 news articles from 11 US newspaper and magazine sources through late 2009, we summarize the theme of art and mass media representations of the environment, and how those are associated with the other major themes. We conclude by suggesting promising areas for future research on the intersection of art and science in communicating about climate change.

In 2016, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) acquired a number of Andy Lomas’ works from an exhibition held at the Watermans Art Centre (Watermans in Morphogenetic creations—Andy Lomas. New Media Arts Archive, 2016a) to add to its Computer Art Collection (V&A in The V&A’s computer art collections, 2016). The exhibition, titled ‘Morphogenetic Creations’, explored how intricate complex structures, such as those found in nature, can be created emergently through computational simulation of growth processes. Following in a long-established tradition of art inspired by biology the work is at the intersection of art, science and computing. The artefacts collected by the V&A included prints, multi-screen video and stereoscopic works. This article looks at the works involved, as well as two works from the original exhibition that were not included in the acquisition, as a case study of providing digital works in a form suitable for preservation, and for display in the future when technology for playback of media is likely to have significantly changed.

In the context of converging media technologies, the concept of mobile media embedded in wearable material was introduced. Wearable Computing, Fashionable Technology, and Smart Textile are being developed at the intersection of media, art, design, computer science, and engineering. However, in Germany, little research has been undertaken into Smart Textile in education1. Those activities are not realized at school in the context of artistic processes in general MINT2 education in classroom settings. In order to research the interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, hard and software tools, such as Arduino LilyPad, a programmable board designed for stitching into clothing and flexible applications are scrutinized. In the project, contemporary media art projects in the field of Fashionable Technology are explored to inspire interdisciplinary technology education. The project described in this paper engages girls in technology and engineering by integrating artistic processes as well as a more playcentric approach to technology and engineering education.

In the context of converging media technologies, the concept of mobile media embedded in wearable material was introduced. Wearable Computing, Fashionable Technology, and Smart Textile are being developed at the intersection of media, art, design, computer science, and engineering. However, in Germany, little research has been undertaken into Smart Textile in education1. Those activities are not realized at school in the context of artistic processes in general MINT2 education in classroom settings. In order to research the interplay of electronic textiles and wearable technology, hard and software tools, such as Arduino LilyPad, a programmable board designed for stitching into clothing and flexible applications are scrutinized. In the project, contemporary media art projects in the field of Fashionable Technology are explored to inspire interdisciplinary technology education. The project described in this paper engages girls in technology and engineering by integrating artistic processes as well as a more playcentric approach to technology and engineering education.

Prescribing Faith: Medicine, Media, and Religion in American Culture Claire Hoertz Badaracco. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007. In a New Light: Spirituality and Media Arts Ron Austin. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. The popular press frequently deals with faith, spirituality, or a mind-body connection in looking at issues of health and wellness and health and disease. Claire Hoertz Badaracco's Prescribing Faith: Medicine, Media, and Religion in American Culture looks at the mediated public debate about science and religion. She seeks to understand better public conversation about and religion, within its historical frame, and clarify tension between current medical practices and trend toward alternative and complementary medicine, within which flourish ideas about healing power of (6). The book asks readers to think about such controversial subjects as marketing health care as a commodity, condition advertising by Big Pharma, and creation of anxiety about illness, aging, and death with a corresponding need for faith-based products to alleviate this anxiety in what she refers to as medicated public square (3, 4, 155). Badaracco first looks at how a patient is to behave in face of suffering. She provides a case study by looking at two nineteenthcentury Transcendentalists, Sophia Peabody, painter and illustrator who married Nathaniel Hawthorne, and doctor, Walter Channing, a founder of Harvard Medical School. As a practitioner of medicine Channing prescribed mercury and arsenic for Peabody's headaches and other afflictions. She took his medicines and she accepted advice from him on how to control emotions. In addition, she sought refuge in religion from suffering from headaches and medicines' adverse affects. Badaracco sees Peabody developing a theology of suffering, accepting dosage as part of God's will for her (38). She finally recovered from long illness when Channing further prescribed a trip to warmer climate of Cuba where she quit taking mercury and arsenic and kept a travel journal. Badaracco contrasts Channing's heroic approach to health and disease with other alternatives that were available to American public in early nineteenth century from quackery to homeopathy. Chapter two examines life of Mary Baker Eddy and lifework of establishing a religion built on ideas of biblically based healing through prayerful connection with Divine Mind, without drugs of any kind (60). Badaracco believes that Eddy's Christian Science intersects with American literary history, in New England Transcendentalism and she argues that Eddy articulated many of ideas current in twenty-first century mind-body and complementary and alternative medicine (87, 89). Eddy's Christian Science is portrayed as very much in opposition to heroic of Channing and his colleagues. Badaracco especially focuses on importance of how Eddy built a newspaper business (The Christian Science Journal) and how she earned a living by pursuing readers directly without aid of booksellers and agents with publication of Science and Health with Key to Scriptures. Badaracco is especially fascinated with how Eddy was able to make religious book a required product for many American consumers (9). For popular culture scholars, Badaracco also notes that Christian Science prospered in twentieth century with Hollywood celebrities where First Church of Christ Scientist in Pasadena attracted movies stars from Joan Crawford to Henry Fonda. The book's third chapter is more concerned with how researchers have looked at role of prayer and faith in healing. Her major focus is on how integrated has gained presence in major medical institutions in their medical school curriculum and in actual treatment of patients. …

Although involvement in art and design have been shown to play an essential role in catalyzing STEM research, true integration is still an area of active research. The realization of STEM education via STEAM lends itself to interactive and participatory dialogic art; this juncture provides a nonjudgmental space to cultivate the question-making aspect of inquiry, the ability to comfortably hold uncertainty, and a sensitivity to the process of discovery. Even though STEM education can (and often is) inquiry-based, assessments still tend to focus on whether knowledge or skills have been obtained, and this is no different than the current general practice in the arts. Consequently, what does it mean to learn in a STEAM context? This article presents a multifaceted view which can be used to organize meaningful assessments for STEAM learning. Author/Artist Bio Dr. Nicole Radziwill is (as of Fall 2015) an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University. She is an ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt whose research focuses on quality management and informatics. Dr. Morgan C. Benton is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University. He teaches programming and web development, and his research emphasizes ways to motivate and inspire students in higher education. Cassidy Moellers is a 2015 honors graduate of the ISAT and Media Arts and Design (SMAD) program at JMU.