Unfortunately, I always thought Neri's work was BS. Perhaps I am not imaginative enough. But thats what I think. Its BS. Nothing works. Maybe its interesting design, but it didn't appeal to me.
I'm at MIT and there are definitely people in other groups on campus that like to shit on the Media Lab for this reason. I think this actually raises an interesting question. If you want to position yourself at the intersection of science and art, what's the correct balance of practicality, rigor, and imagination?
The stereotypical person from the "hard science" communities will never totally buy into this kind of work being science. It's not exact, it's not rigorous. On the other hand, artists and designers more often inhabit this speculative, rapidly-prototyped, thought experiment-esque mode of creation and take it as a valid form of inquiry.
Personally, I love it. It's not hard science or hard engineering in the same way that someone in EECS or biology might treat those fields, but it's a wonderful way to root artistic exploration in current scientific technique.
Is that the right balance between the two? Is there a point along the spectrum where you need to stop calling yourself a scientist and start calling yourself an artist? I think that's an open question.
I think you bring up interesting points, but in Neri Oxman’s case the answer seems to be that the science is essentially absent in its entirety. I won’t pretend to have a good answer to “what is art,” but the question “what is science” is much easier to answer. Her work may be art, but it utterly fails the test of science insofar as it doesn’t adhere to the scientific method. She’s a scientist in the same way that a color therapist is a medical doctor.
Better examples of the intersection of science and art might be found in the work of someone like Buckminster Fuller. The nature of science being what it is, the science probably has to come first, with the art emerging from it
Observation and exploration are part of science, but only when mated with the rest of the scientific method. On its own “observation and exploration” can be equally applied to playing in beach sand. If you’re not forming and testing hypotheses, analyzing data from experiment, and attempting to replicate results, you’re not engaged in science. You can’t pick one or two elements of the scientific method and call it science, anymore than you can claim that buying running shoes and standing at the start of a marathon is racing.
It's still an interesting problem of division. Let's say the end result (bees in space!) is not science. However, in the process of getting those bees to space, her lab invents a novel 3D printing method [1]. Science in service of art?
"Although some scientific research is applied research into specific problems, a great deal of our understanding comes from the curiosity-driven undertaking of basic research."
I can't speak for all of her lab's work (a lab's output is far more than the Principal Investigator's contributions), but I really am inspired by the potential applications of high-resolution voxel printing developed by the group [1]. Only such beauty can inspire the sci-fi hope of high-capacity memory storage, new computational paradigms [2]
As another commenter mentions, I do think it is productive to discuss the line with which something is no longer "rigorous" enough to be considered science. The caveat is that these discussions should be made by the lab doing the work, not by the Internet peanut gallery.
Media Lab's "research" resembles constructive science rather than deductive science (how does the world work?). We normally forgive science papers for doing engineering when they present something that is immediately useful to humanity (e.g. TensorFlow whitepaper). Artists (fashion designers, creatives, etc.) often make cool demos but fall short "revolutionary" products because the fabrication technology is not ready yet for their ideas. It still has a place, though, in science - if only to suggest unorthodox ways of approaching scientific inquiry.
At the very least, these works realize thought-provoking concepts a step farther than most of us are willing to commit to -- chatting about it on the Internet.
FWIW, my day job is doing science, if that lends my comment any credibility.
> Also in 2015, a Mediated Matter team developed G3DP,[47] the first 3D printer for optically transparent glass.[48][49] At the time, sintering 3D printers could print with glass powder, but the results were brittle and opaque.[50] G3DP was designed in collaboration with MIT's Glass Lab and the Wyss Institute, emulating traditional glass working processes. Molten glass was poured in fine streams and cooled in an annealing chamber, yielding precision suitable for art and consumer products, and glass strength suitable for architectural elements.[51] The process allowed close control of color, transparency, thickness and texture.[52]
B-But bees! In space! It doesn't get more Hackernews than bees in space obeying their robot overlords, man. Not without involving gut bacteria and/or Kubernetes -- and I think Neri would be the type to find a way to use both.
The stereotypical person from the "hard science" communities will never totally buy into this kind of work being science. It's not exact, it's not rigorous. On the other hand, artists and designers more often inhabit this speculative, rapidly-prototyped, thought experiment-esque mode of creation and take it as a valid form of inquiry.
Personally, I love it. It's not hard science or hard engineering in the same way that someone in EECS or biology might treat those fields, but it's a wonderful way to root artistic exploration in current scientific technique.
Is that the right balance between the two? Is there a point along the spectrum where you need to stop calling yourself a scientist and start calling yourself an artist? I think that's an open question.