Art and Innovation: The Future of Interdisciplinarity
19 March 2014 13:30 - 17:00
Het Nieuwe Instituut and The Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT) are organizing the joint symposium Art and Innovation: The Future of Interdisciplinarity on 19 March. For STT, the symposium marks the end of a foresight study in which new relations between art, science and technology were explored. Het Nieuwe Instituut will adopt the findings of these explorations, and will apply them in the development of their practice-based research.
Art and innovation
Again and again, research reveals that, by itself, technology plays a rather modest role in innovation. Dealing with the truly complex challenges of the future requires an open mind and a broad perspective. Of course, research & development and patents are important, but so are creative thinking, clever management and the ability to connect the seemingly incompatible.
Interdisciplinarity is what we need, is often suggested. An approach that does not promote pigeonholing, but that takes the idea that innovation depends on bridging disciplines as its starting point. By itself, this ideal of interdisciplinarity in the context of innovation is not a new one. The emergence of mono-disciplines and hyper-specialization has been criticized extensively. But what makes more recent debates on the matter particularly interesting is this idea that art and artistic practice play an important role in innovation. An idea worth exploring in greater detail.
Join us on March 19, 2014 for an afternoon of connecting art practice to innovation, and probing the future of interdisciplinarity. We will address questions like: Wherein exactly lies the value of being between (inter) disciplines? What can we really expect from interdisciplinarity? It adds complexity, but does it help to see through complexities as well? And how does art fit in there? Is art yet another discipline, is art what binds other disciplines together, or is art above all a perspective? Can art help to deliver easy solutions or is the relation between art and innovation (fundamentally) different from that?
Practical information
Date: Wednesday 19 March 2014
Location: Auditorium Het Nieuwe Instituut, Museumpark 25, Rotterdam
Time: 13.30 - 17.00 hours + drinks
Language: English
Admission: Free
Registration required
Seats are limited! Please register via the link above for participation and you will receive updates on the programme. For more information contact Annette Potting.