English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

“What is most needed is sutures, the creation of parallel mental universes, communicating vessels,” told me ardently a lecturer at the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera who was taking part in the project Universo, laboratorio creativo (Universe, a creative laboratory), a collaboration established in 2006 between the Accademia and INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera. By implementing this project, whose title is (literally) “an idea worthy of God”, now in its second year, we astronomers of Brera aim at sharing the mental images created in us by the present scientific representation of the cosmos, to metaphorically ‘take them to the streets’. In an attempt to achieve this purpose, a series of meetingsworkshops were organized to include on each occasion approximately thirty people, comprising astrophysicists, lecturers and students at the Accademia. The meetings are based on a scientific report about any contemporary astrophysics issue (e.g. dark energy and the expansion of universe). The atmosphere is highly informal: anybody may interrupt at any time and say what they want, ask a question, raise some doubts. “What do you think? This is what you, scientists, should ask to the people”, told me the lecturer-artist at the Accademia. And this is what we do. When I said we want to take those images ‘to the streets’ I meant no joke. We want to transform the images of science, at least those related to the science we deal with, from a fortified place within the minds of scientists into a public place, maybe a square, a street, a café. In short, a common subject, worth of an exchange of turns in conversations among friends, in between comments on a football game, the political situation and your love life. Idealistic; unrealistic maybe? According to the lecturers and the students of Brera who have supported the initiative, the conclusion should be the opposite: the project appears to be completely in line with the explicit requests by non-experts, so much that it was welcomed enthusiastically by over 300 students-artists and by two dozens of lecturers who, far from being passive, have fed an exciting exchange of opinions. They have asked for explanations, have put forward their view of things, and have shown – or better, demonstrated – that art, at least the one they use to interpret the world, does not disregard contemporary science at all. As proved by highly technical terms they use, and their search for materials and methods comparable to traditionally scientific ones – save for a different realm of research, a different language, a different purpose. In general, if a dialogue is ever to be mentioned, in this case it really is a dialogue. I am quoting this example because, although very specific in its creation and very fortunate in its implementation, it has the evident quality of being reproducible. If it is true that artists are particularly interested in astronomy for the universal themes it deals with (the birth, evolution, the end, the relation with space and time), it is also true that a large part of contemporary science borders equally exciting suggestions. Think of the links now typical between mathematics and beauty, the relation between physics, matter and universe, the impact biotechnology, genetics and neuroscience have on the representation of life. Moreover, it is noteworthy that also these examples feature a dialogue not linked to possible practical uses of science, but exclusively to the representations and the scientific and artistic interpretations of the same phenomenon.

A dialogue on hard sciences is possible. Is it useful too?