Arts, sciences & citizens

This programme aims to imagine tomorrow, and to do so by reflecting on our shared scientific, ecological and civic concerns in order to outline a horizon for thought and work, a narrative of the world.

Through this programme of joint research between scientists and artists, we will propose the construction of new types of experiences, with different formats and timeframes, to question our certainties, develop hypotheses and allow new protocols and new forms of creation to emerge. The themes resonate with the challenges of our contemporary society: living organisms, forests, the atmosphere, the ocean, the climate, the cosmos, the iridescence of time, the construction of knowledge, and artificial intelligence.

Since its creation in 1990, the Hydrodynamics Laboratory has been involved in research projects combining arts, sciences and citizens by inviting artists from all disciplines (circus, theatre, design, contemporary art, music, etc.) to the laboratory. This pioneering initiative, which is highly recognised both nationally and internationally, has enabled us to play a transformative role within the Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IP Paris) with the creation of the SHALL [Humanities, Arts, Literature and Languages] department and then the interdisciplinary SPIRAL [Science, People, Imagination, Research, Art, all Linked] centre in 2023, which brings together 80 permanent teaching and research staff from five institutions of the IP Paris University. In the academic world, we are helping to define creative research as another form of knowledge construction between theoretical research and applied research, with three theses defended in the last three years in Art within SHALL.

From 2017 to 2023, LadHyX held the first arts & sciences chair in Europe between École Polytechnique, École des Arts Décoratifs-PSL and the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation, which provided a framework and significant resources for the development and dissemination of this research-creation. The arts and sciences chair, now taken over by the SPIRAL centre, is developing a range of activities based on cooperation and interdependence: between disciplines, between the academic world and civil society, between humans and their terrestrial and technical environments.

How can we act together in a context of ecological emergency, societal uncertainty and technological and financial developments that are not guided by the common good? How can we reconsider our interdependencies, our modes of interaction and our sensitive relationships between humans, non-humans and machines?

To address these questions, the programme combines three main approaches:
1. Research-creation projects that bring together a wide range of knowledge, expertise and actors (plants, machines, etc.) and give rise to the creation of works and experimental devices.
2. A hands-on training approach that engages students in collective learning through hands-on experience, via workshops, Useful Fictions summer schools or multidisciplinary internships
3. the invention of situations aimed at renewing relationships with audiences: poster brunches, demo defences, public workshops, performative round tables and an image-based magazine: .able.

Reinventing science

Scientists are beginning to understand that science and the scientific approach may be ineffective in resolving or even addressing the reality and significance not only of the ecological and societal crisis mentioned above, but also of new frontiers, such as unresolved questions about life and consciousness. These questions elude science, which proceeds by dividing a complex problem a question applied to a large real system, into small isolated problems, possibly reformulating the same question by applying it to a smaller, controlled but fictionalised system, to the point where the problem can be studied by a laboratory experiment, by a series of calculations in the binary memory of a computer, or as a theoretical model in a mathematical space explored by thought.

Thus, scientific results are based on rigorous demonstrations following an objective protocol in which potential biases are precisely evaluated; but the framework that allows them to be established also defines their limits. These scientific facts are constructions that are both sublime and fragile because they are human, Useful Fictions. They result from a series of cose mentali, acts of understanding and manual acts, where know-how allows proof to be executed through demonstration or calculation. Together, they define a mode of existence and truth, a form of knowledge in a process that painting also follows, as Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci have asserted. For these great masters, painting is a science; but conversely, shouldn’t science be considered an art, in the sense that scientists implement their specific approach to the world and engage their vision through expeditions, virtual explorations, and thought experiments that lead scientific research to perform reality?

Can art and science together encompass all the performances and narratives necessary to conceptualise this confrontation and challenge our beliefs and observations, as well as the nature, legitimacy and ethics of scientific practice?

Once such a reasonable common vision has been constructed through art, art and science, and scientific narratives, it should affect the actions of all individuals and communities.

It could thus contribute to bringing critical thinking back into the march of the world.