It was a pleasure to host a diverse group of art and design students from the New York School of Visual Arts lead by artists Kara Rooney and Anna Kazan.
How to plan for such a meeting? I approached the challenge by considering what might be helpful to artists beginning their careers and posing questions I hoped they would find interesting:
What is it like to arrive as an artist in a large physics department and where do you begin?
What is the scope of Finding Patterns?
What can we learn from Nature?
What can we learn from the process of scientific discovery?
What can an artist contribute to science?
Reflection on the last two questions led me to create this table exploring the character of Finding Patterns in comparison to that of scientific discovery. It draws upon my manifesto and shows how I have chosen to adopt the essence of science highlighted in blue and added some additional features shown in red.
The values of Finding Patterns in light of those I find in scientific discovery.
The session closed by exploring some of Nature’s patterns transferred onto silks and an opportunity to peer inside the heart of the atom by viewing colourful atomic spectra.
Browsing Nature’s patterns printed onto Habotai silk.