2.1. Artists are Wild Thinkers and god is a mathematician
This part of the investigation focuses on caricatures, stereotypes, self-images, and the motivation for collaboration, as these often reflect the expectations and motivation to engage in interdisciplinary collaborations. In publications about art, science and technology collaborations, stereotypical quotes hint at striking images of the other disciplines. In ‘Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity’, a publication where the potential of interdisciplinary collaborations are investigated, examples are given:
‘Engineers often have little background knowledge in the arts, and look at the beauty of their ‘problem solving’ as art…’[38]
In this publication, these turn out to be mild misunderstandings. The general conception and deeply rooted stereotypes are serious obstacles for collaboration. What should one think about this statement for example:
‘Artists see science; they don’t understand it; they think it is brilliant. Scientists see art; they don’t understand it; they think it’s dumb.’ [39]
These stereotypical ways of thinking seem to be common among artists who reflect upon scientists and engineers, and vice versa. In this chapter these kinds of stereotypes from literature are analysed to understand the image collaborators have of their collaborators from other disciplines, and what their self-image and wild assumptions are in interdisciplinary collaboration. It is often useful to stereotype the ‘self’ or the ‘other’ to make a clear point, bold statement or provocation, or to support one’s main argument. However, it can also lead to a distorted idealistic image that is hard to ban from our memory. The shared interest in technology or technical tools draws artists towards computer scientists and engineers, but interestingly enough the image most scientists have about the arts has not been updated since the 19th century. The Enlightenment and the effects of the Cartesian divide between the analytic approach for science and philosophy research and the empiric approach for the arts is often disregarded. Also the more recent rigorous split between the arts and technical science as an effect of the specialisation in the 20th century industrial revolutions are often disregarded. This shows that a lack of knowledge and updated information about each other’s fields works as a blindfold. The search for the Romantic artist is challenging in the context of today’s 21st century art and technology practice.
Most literature sources relevant for this investigation use mixed forms to indicate professions, genres or disciplines: very outspoken specific, nuanced or precise descriptions on the one hand and very general stereotypes on the other, depending on the context, the argument and the targeted reader. Stereotypes reflect a common understanding and a sense of familiarity through the ‘you know what I mean’ feeling shared between the author and the reader. However, most authors and publications referred to in this section come up with clear statements on collaboration among artists, scientists and, to a lesser extent, engineers. Nevertheless, they are not so clear about which alien disciplinary branches they exactly refer to. For example, if one takes a look at ‘the arts’ in most scientific studies, are they referring to performing arts, visual arts, literature, music, media arts or … ? And what is ‘science’ in the popular sense? Is this physics, mathematics, robotics, cognitive science or… ?
