A natural scientist, an artist, and a researcher meet at the university

Four years ago, in what was a pioneering initiative in Hungary at the time, BME launched a residency programme for artists interested in collaborating with one of the University’s departments, laboratories or research programmes and in exploring science as a source of inspiration. The programme ran for two seasons, and we reported on its results, for example, here and here.

Even then, this kind of dialogue between science and art was nothing unusual at major Western universities, and it has since become even more widespread. Such initiatives are driven by the need for innovation, the search for new forms of science communication, and the recognition that 

addressing complex social and technological problems requires different forms of knowledge to work together.

Anna Gács, associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Communication of BME’s Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, observed this trend first-hand when she spent four months at American universities on a Fulbright scholarship studying these initiatives. She spent much of her time conducting interviews at Northeastern University (NEU) in Boston, which has grown from a technical college into a major research university over the past few decades. Today, NEU has 38,000 students across 13 campuses and includes faculties of engineering, business, medicine, arts and humanities, among others. It is also expanding its presence in Europe.

Anna Gács at the Northeastern University

The Boston-based university also seeks to make the most of its diverse portfolio by offering combined programmes that bring together two otherwise unrelated disciplines that complement each other well in practice. Examples include data science and journalism, IT and communication, music and psychology, and design and behavioural neuroscience. (The opening image shows one of the University’s creative laboratories, where students from different study programmes can work together.)

Collaborations between STEM disciplines and the arts, which are also supported by internal grants at NEU, fit well within this trend – and it was this phenomenon that Anna Gács examined. Her research is a natural continuation of the aforementioned BME residency programme. Last year, she presented her paper, Hierarchy of Knowledge in Art–Science Collaborations, at Diverse Science, an interdisciplinary conference organised by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA). The paper will be published this autumn in the conference proceedings published by the MTA, while a recording of the presentation is also available on the MTA’s YouTube channel (in Hungarian):

The central question of the study was how participants in so-called art&science projects – artists, natural scientists, curators and research managers – perceive and understand one another, and what hierarchies or new forms of connection emerge between artistic and scientific forms of knowledge. One of her key findings is that 

art&science collaborations are not simply encounters between two separate worlds, but rather dynamic spaces in which roles, methods and forms of knowledge are constantly being reconfigured.

At American universities that encourage such programmes, workshops and seminars are regularly held to explore the connections between different areas of knowledge. These include a presentation by a composer on their collaboration on a medical research project, a workshop on the relationship between environmental science and art, and an art&science roundtable. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, perhaps the world’s best-known engineering institution, has recently established several art departments and regularly hosts exhibitions and symposia exploring the relationship between art and STEM disciplines, Anna Gács told bme.hu.

Az exhibition by Hannah Perrine Mode, an artist who collaborates with Arctic explorers, at the gallery of NEU College of Art, Media and Design

She added that BME is particularly well placed to become more actively involved in international developments in this field. In addition to continuing the residency programme, she highlighted several possibilities, including introducing public-facing project courses, involving artists and communication students in the dissemination of research findings, organising exhibitions linked to research projects, and even launching English-taught study programmes in art&science.

“Greater openness benefits any higher education institution in itself, while bringing these two approaches together can also offer many practical advantages,” she said.

Rector's Office, Directorate of Communications