Silvia Casini is a lecturer in visual culture and film at the University of Aberdeen. She was awarded an AHRC-funded PhD in visual studies by Queen’s University, Belfast (UK). Among her research interests there are: the aesthetics and epistemology of scientific visualization. Her essays appeared in among others Leonardo, Configurations, Contemporary Aesthetics, The Journal of Media Practice, Tecnoscienza, Museums ETC as well as in edited collections for Bloomsbury, Nordic Academic Press, etc.
Dates of Visit: May 2015 - December 2015
Project Title: Investigating scientific objectivity and evidence through art-sci collaborative projects
Project Description: Visualizations related to emerging technologies such as brain imaging prompt scholars to re-think notions of scientific objectivity and evidence particularly in contexts of use as artists working on technoscience show. Despite scholars acknowledged the existence of an “art science movement”, those collaborative projects are still framed in a reductionist way, either as means to add an aesthetical dimension to science or to communicate science to the lay public. I seek to develop a theoretically and methodologically robust critical framework to assess art-science projects, arguing that art-science projects play a useful epistemic role in contexts where scientific evidence is uncertain, controversial or not exhaustive.