Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London
Duration: 2 Years
http://www.artsciencecsm.com/
So when people ask me what I most recently studied, and I answer with "art and science", they either look understandably baffled, or vaguely impressed. The question I always get asked the most is: what's this course about? What exactly is "art and science"?
I enrolled on the art and science course in the 3rd year of it's fruition. The course had been developed within the MA fine art department by course leader Nathan Cohen. As a relatively new course, I think it's safe to say that the answer to the question was simply us. The students. The course at this point, didn't really have an identity as such. That identity was still very much open for interpretation and because of that, the course was great in some ways but lacking in others.
I was greatly inspired when I came along to the open day and wanted to find out for myself what this "art and science" malarkey was all about. It felt like a fantastic amalgamation of the weird and wonderful; subjects that didn't typically compliment each other, being explored in cocktails of unique artistic practices. The strength of the course is in it's people. The sheer variety of backgrounds makes for some pretty interesting conversations and some equally interesting conflicts. In my year, there were those who came from biology, physics, design, architecture, technology and everything in between. There wasn't an ideal formula in how much science you were interested in or how much art for that matter. There wasn't a magic ratio of the two subjects. As long as you had some element of art and some element of science within your practice, everything else was fair game. So my practice for example was a combination of sculpture, architecture and psychological influences.
One of the things I had also been initially drawn to was the size of the course. Each year takes approximately 20 students, which means the entire course is only 40 in capacity at the present time. Some of the other courses I looked at, including Chelsea's MA in Fine Art, had a staggering admission of over 100. Especially for a masters course, I didn't want to feel like a needle in a haystack, I wanted a smaller cohort where everyone could get to know each other's work really well. And I think smaller groups do work. You get more studio space, which is always great, but you get to know each other's practices inside out, which means you can really help each other respond, feedback and input.
I think embarking on such a new course was always going to be a risky move, and even more risky when the course doesn't really have its own definition yet. However I was buoyed by a sense of excitement at the prospect of making our own rules. Despite having great promise, there are many elements - the "nitty gritty" parts of the course that need ironing out. Like I mentioned, the huge variety of backgrounds is amazing, and you won't get a mix like that on many other courses. However this also proved difficult on many occasion also. Not everyone had the same education, not everyone was taught how art courses function or the format of creating exhibitions. Some had never worked in studios. This was an art and science course but under a fine art context. Because not all the members of the course were on the same page, it made for some difficult processes which should have been fairly simple at masters level but took much longer because there were several different ways and opinions on how to do it. Therefore, in order for the course to continue effectively, I believe there needs to be some way of bringing everyone up to speed. For example teaching everyone the basics in curation and art structure so everyone understands what certain terms mean, or how an exhibition should be hung. I come from a fine art background, so things like this were hammered into me on my BA. For others like me from an art background, they must have felt like this knowledge was obvious or common practice whereas it must have appeared slightly alien to those from other backgrounds.
The other glaring concern that came up, time and again was how to offer enough variety to cater to everyone's needs. I imagined there would be themes or areas of science that would be covered in a fairly systematic way. Maybe they would do a survey of our interests and cater activities to the common areas they found? Unfortunately, not so much. We spent a large proportion of our outside lectures or visits on mainly the biological/medical area of crossover with art. Which meant that everyone else who was interested in physics, light, sound, technology etc. were not really getting a lot out of these talks. This was quite a shame, as I think there was definitely huge potential to branch out and discover other areas of science that combine with art. Sometimes it felt a little haphazard, as if talks were prepared just to fill the schedule rather than thoughtfully designed and curated to its attending individuals. This led me, and others to have to find our own sources of reference elsewhere.
I think that the course needs to set some parameters in order to define what type of students, what type of course this will become. With any initial venture, it's easy to perhaps include everything and anything, which was the sort of the philosophy I felt we had. Ambitious and exciting initially, it proved pretty unsuccessful when "everything and anything" clashed. Though the course can be gradually defined by its peers, the course itself needs to decide what it wants to be and what it wants to offer. Will it be more art based, allowing people to go on to make artworks within art and science? Or will it be more science based and try to get artists into scientific projects and institutions? Or can it be both? The course has opened up a lot of questions, but so far hasn't tackled many of them.
I have high hopes for the future of this course. I think it has the potential to be brilliant. And I certainly wouldn't say it was a bad experience, but there were many situations I found myself in that were simply frustrating and therefore hindered the more exciting elements of such a course - creating new relationships. I met some wonderful people and saw things I probably wouldn't have ventured to see if not for the course allowing these opportunities. I would say that if you're considering this course, go for it, it will certainly be the wild card of the bunch. If you're looking for something experimental and unexpected, this course can almost definitely offer you that. If you're looking for something more solid, you may want to hold off a while until the course has matured before you decide.
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