Event 3: Claudia Schnugg

I attended a pop-up lecture given by Dr. Claudia Schnugg at the California NanoSystems Institute (CSNI) on May 23rd, 2017. Schnugg is a researcher, curator, and producer in the fields of "art and science collaboration, organizational aesthetics, embodied knowledge, and artistic inventions." Her lecture encompassed the projects she has been involved with and the lessons they have for the scientific & art communities. She helps create opportunity for artists and scientists to collaborate.

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A huge focus of Schnugg's lecture was specialization and diversity in the fields of art and science. This promotes specialized scientists working in a different environment than a typical lab, often an artistic space. This facilitation is transformative as it allows artists to consult scientists on their projects. Having artists reside in scientific spaces or scientists in an artistic space allows each person to specialize, not having to be an expert in both fields, while producing a more impactful product, while exposing each person to new ways of thinking.

However, even though the collaboration is critical to development, bringing these communities and individuals together can prove difficult, as Schnugg discussed. Bringing an artist into a scientific space produces challenges since each has more to learn from each other than can often be covered in the scope of a single project. Bringing scientists into an artistic space can also be difficult as opportunities are limited and scientists require specific resources.

Schnugg covered many artists and their projects. Lucy McRae's projects cover the integration of human evolution and technological advancements. We are pushing the human body in many different ways not previously presented, such as space travel, that the body is not designed for. Her project "The Institute of Isolation" reflects the effects of extreme environments on the human body.