Transdisciplinary experimentation and ontological change: an ethnography of art-science

Abstract

How can we distinguish between the prevalent modes of interdisciplinary practice? And what distinctive orientations govern these practices? Barry and Born (Interdisciplinarity, 2013) identify three modes of interdisciplinary practice and three orientations, or logics, of interdisciplinarity––concepts that I develop here in relation to ethnographic research on art­science from the mid 2000s. The paper offers a window into particularly generative experimental pedagogies and art­science engagements in this period, and a crucial transition in which artistic ‘public experiments’ begin to replace old and discredited notions of the ‘public understanding of science’. It offers future­oriented insights with clear lessons for practice­based research policies, insights that can also fuel interdisciplinary practices to come.