Quodlibetica Eight: Science and Art
Branden Martz, Cardigan: General Custer’s Last Stag Hound (2009).
An Arrangement of Skins
Struck by a slew of exhibits invested in the relationships among art, science and wonder, we have devoted Quodlibetica’s June constellation to that very intersection. From electricity to the spark of creativity, taxidermy to taxonomy, Greek myth to digital manipulation, this constellation speculates on just how manifold art’s interactions with science can be.
To name just a few of the individual points in this constellation: Tom Haakenson’s piece on exhibitions at the Bell Natural History Museum suggests three media alternatives for use in getting at the stuff of life. Diane Mullins’s contribution continues the Benjaminian conversation on technical reproducibility, asking whether media’s new digital ubiquity constitutes a qualitative revolution or merely a quantitative sea change.
Furthering our mission of printing writing that we like but can’t define, we invited art and science groover Dia Felix, who spends her days in San Francisco’s Exploratorium, to contribute a piece on the scientific origin of inspiration. The resulting piece, part free verse, part interview is – how do you say? – inspired. In a Quodlibetica first, we commissioned our intern and College of Visual Art graduate Jake Ramberg to rush illustrations for the piece, and in the spirit of keeping all data, we have printed them both.
In this issue, we welcome our new co-editor, Thomas O. Haakenson, Chair and Associate Professor of the Liberal Arts Department at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Haakenson, previously a contributing writer, now joins editors Christina Schmid and Collier White to broaden our editorial voice while furthering a spirit of inter-institutional and interdisciplinary cooperation.
- Christina Schmid and Collier White
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