Open Call: Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship at Girton College

Applications are now open for the first Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship at Girton College. This unique collaborative opportunity is open to artists internationally and is not confined to any single aesthetic, theme, or medium. The Fellowship is financially supported.
 
Cavendish Arts Science creates new encounters between art and science that help us to examine the world and our place within it through the creation of new artistic work.
 
We are seeking thought-provoking and adventurous artists, in particular those with no previous experience of interacting with scientists. The successful artist will develop ideas through engagement with physicists and other researchers and produce new work to be exhibited during the Fellowship and beyond. The Fellowship will last for one year from October 2021 and will normally include a residency in Cambridge, UK of at least four months, with potential for this to be split.
 
Cavendish Arts Science is an initiative of the University of Cambridge, Cavendish Laboratory for Physics. The Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship at Girton College is made possible through a partnership with Girton College. The programme is supported by a generous donation from Una Ryan.
 
Open call deadline: midnight 16 May 2021
 
For more information and to apply please visit: https://cavendish-artscience.org.uk

SYMPOSIUM: Technologies of Romance

To mark publication of Technologies of Romance – Part II (the new book by Paul O’Kane), the Science Museum, eeodo artists’ publishers, and Central Saint Martins College, UAL, welcome you to attend a free, day-long symposium at the Science Museum. A diverse and dynamic range of artists, lecturers, historians, students and curators from various institutions will exchange ideas and contribute artworks, performances, videos and academic papers on the symposium’s title and theme, exploring the intersection of art and science. The event will conclude with a plenary session followed by drinks and book signing, then at 6.45 pm the museum opens its ‘LATES’ session, with drinks, DJs etc. which all our participants and audience are also welcome to attend. Please register for free at our eventbrite page if you would like to attend. 

Conference - The Visual Worlds of the Royal Society

Details here.

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Monday 16 July 2018

Sachiko Kusukawa (University of Cambridge): Welcome & Introduction

Alexander Marr (University of Cambridge): William Sanderson's Criticism and Copying

Matthew Walker (University of New Mexico): Oblivious to the Ancient and Moderns? The Royal Society and John Evelyn's Translation of Fréart's Parallel

Rebekah Higgitt (University of Kent): The Making of a Medal: The Iconography and Manufacture of the Royal Society's Copley Medal c. 1736-1742

Henrietta McBurney Ryan (University of Cambridge): Mark Catesby and the Royal Society

Sietske Fransen (University of Cambridge): Netherlandish Influences on the Visual World of the Royal Society

 Kate Bennett (University of Oxford): John Aubrey's Prospects

Karin Leonhard & Elisa von Minnigerode (Universität Konstanz): John Finch. A Lynx with a Knife

Spike Bucklow (Hamilton Kerr Institute Cambridge): The Paston Treasure

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Tuesday 17 July 2018

Andrew Burnett (British Museum): 'They found a great quantity of Roman money'. Institutions and Coin Collecting in the 17th Century

Frances Hughes (University of Cambridge): Visual Discernment in the Calligraphy Collection of Samuel Pepys

Katherine M. Reinhart (University of Cambridge): Institutional Image-Makers: Richard Waller and Claude Perrault

Katy Barrett (Science Museum): George Gabb 'The Physical Laboratory of the Académie des Sciences' and Unpicking the Visual Worlds of the Royal Society

 Felicity Henderson (University of Exeter): Closing Remarks

Workshop announcement - Narrative science and its visual practices

9th April 2018

4 travel bursaries for PhD students

As part of the ERC funded Narrative Science project we are hosting a 1 day workshop focussed on the intersection of visual practice and narrative in science. The workshop will take place at the London School of Economics and Political Science, on the 19th of April.

Science abounds with visual materials: exemplary objects, 3D models, photos, diagrams, maps, graphs. Scholars in the history, philosophy and social studies of science have highlighted various features and roles of these objects and the practices in which they are embedded, including reasoning, speculation, demonstration, illustration, communication and others. This workshop focusses on the association of visual practices with narratives in knowledge making. In some cases, visual objects embed narrative qualities in themselves; in other cases, narratives are needed to make sense of the visual materials.

To learn more about the Narrative Science project as a whole, please see the special issue we recently published in Vol. 62 of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.

Workshop spaces are very limited. If you are interested in attending, please write to Dr Robert Meunier as soon as possible.

PhD travel bursaries

To increase participation from the postgraduate community, we are making available 4 travel bursaries, each of a maximum of £250. These can be used to recover the cost of train or airfare for those who wish to attend, and who are currently enrolled on a PhD programme, preferably with research interests directly related to the workshop agenda. To apply for a PhD travel bursary please write to Dr Dominic Berry. Please include: Your name University Affiliation PhD Programme and thesis title And no more than 100 words on how this workshop relates to your research. The deadline for applications to the travel bursary is Friday 6th of April. You will be notified as to the outcome of your application shortly thereafter. Applicants will be selected to ensure a diverse range of research interests and institutions are represented. 

UL exhibition: Landscapes Below: Mapping and the New Science of Geology

A new, fascinating exhibition on mapping and geology by Allison Ksiazkiewicz (who completed her MPhil and PhD in HPS) at the University Library. See here for a good overview, and sign up here for special tours of the exhibition led by Allison.

The exhibition runs from November 25, 2017 to March 29, 2018 at Cambridge University Library's Milstein Exhibition Centre. Admission is free. Opening times are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm and Saturday 9am-16.30pm. Closed Sundays.

Talk - 'Five Shades of Gray: Galileo, Goltzius, and Astronomical Engraving'

1 November 2017, 17:00 - 18:00
Little Hall, Sidgwick Site

A public lecture given by Eileen Reeves, Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

No registration required. Please note venue location - Little Hall, Sidgwick Site
The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Atrium of the Alison Richard Building.

Part of the Genius Before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modern Art and Science project. For more information please contact Gaenor Moore.

CFP - Synergy and contradiction: How picturebooks and picture books work

Cambridge Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature

University of Cambridge, UK
September 6-8, 2018

The aesthetic aspects of storytelling through word and image have been studied extensively in the past thirty-odd years. In 1982, the Swedish scholar Kristin Hallberg launched the concept of iconotext that has been widely employed in discussing the phenomenon. Perry Nodelman's Words about Pictures (1988) was a landmark that placed the subject firmly within children's literature research. The first international conference wholly devoted to the art form was held in Stockholm in 1998, featuring, among others, Jane Doonan and William Moebius. An international network was established in 2007, running biennial conferences and workshops. Dozens of monographs and edited volumes have been published, the most recent More Words about Pictures (2017), edited by Perry Nodelman, Naomi Hamer and Mavis Reimer, and The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (2017), edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer.

And yet there is no universal consensus about the object of inquiry, starting with the controversy of spelling. While most scholars agree that the interaction of words and images is essential, there is no clear agreement on the difference between illustrated books and picture book/picturebooks, nor on the differences and similarities between picture books/picturebooks and comics, nor on the relationship between printed and digital texts.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary since the publication of Words about Pictures and to explore the recent development in picture book/picturebook theories, Cambridge Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature invites paper proposals on any aspect of theoretical approaches to picture books/picturebooks as an art form. We are particularly interested in new approaches that go beyond statements that picture books/picturebooks depend on the combination of the verbal and the visual. We also welcome authors, illustrators, publishers and translators. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

• Picture book/picturebook as an art form and a material object 
• Picture books/picturebooks and other word/image-driven texts (e.g. illustrated books, picture dictionaries, concept books, artist books)
• Metalanguage for discussing picture books/picturebooks: coming to terms
• Theory vs. culture: how trustworthy are the semiotic generalizations of books like Words about Pictures or How Picturebooks Work in relationship to picture books/picturebooks produced in different times, places, cultures? Is there a universal language of picture books/picturebooks?
• Picture book/picturebook design: creators' perspective
• Is there anything beyond words and images? Picture books/picturebooks without words? Picture books/picturebooks without pictures?
• Looking at words, seeing pictures (e.g. implications of fonts, intraiconic texts, etc)
• Young readers' engagement with word/image storytelling: do words and pictures invite different kinds of relationships between texts and readers?
• How have adjacent areas of research benefited from picture book/picturebook theory, for instance, digital literature, comics, graphic novels and games?
• Translation and transmediation

We will not consider proposals on content-focused topics.

Confirmed jousters are Perry Nodelman and Maria Nikolajeva.

Deadline: January 8, 2018. 300-word (or any size image) proposals for a 20-minute paper should be sent, together with a 100-word bio, to mn351@cam.ac.uk. We also encourage panel and round-table proposals. Early indication of interest would be helpful in arranging affordable accommodation. Further inquiries to mn351@cam.ac.uk.

Please note that this conference is not a part of the Picturebook Network series

Philippa Pearce Lecture 2017

Booking is now open for the 2017 Philippa Pearce Lecture, which will be given by Chris Riddell, the celebrated, multi-award-winning illustrator and political cartoonist.

Chris has illustrated over 150 books, collaborating with some of the best known children’s authors of recent decades, including Neil Gaiman and Michael Rosen. Chris has won two CILIP Kate Greenaway Medals, the UK librarians’ annual award for the best-illustrated children’s book, and three Nestlé Smarties Book Prizes. On 9 June 2015 he was appointed the UK Children’s Laureate. During his two-year tenure, he championed creativity, the importance of visual literacy, and the role of libraries in schools. He called on people to enjoy the “joy of doodling” by drawing every day, setting the example with his own fantastic ‘Laureate’s Log’, a whimsical visual diary shared on social media, which has recently been published in a compendium called Travels with My Sketchbook. In the 2017 Philippa Pearce Lecture, Chris will talk about how words and pictures work together for a reader both on traditional page and how he believes this continues to be true in a digital age. He will explore how books are ever more covetable as objects in their own right, as well as valued for the words and illustrations inside, and also how libraries remain vital as repositories for these beautiful productions.

The lecture is entitled, The Age of the Beautiful Book and will take place on September 8^th in the Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Cambridge.

Event - Mathematics meets art at Isaac Newton Institute

A conversation with artist Nigel Hall RA 19 July 2017

The Isaac Newton Institute is proud to offer an open invitation to an audience with artist Nigel Hall RA.

Scheduled as part of INI's 25th anniversary celebrations, the event will examine the complex and inspiring relationship between art and mathematics, told via the medium of Nigel Hall's compelling geometric artworks. Nigel, whose works are exhibited across the globe from New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) to the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, will be joined by Dr Dorothy Buck (Reader in Biomathematics, Imperial College London; co-organiser of INI's HTL programme) and Barry Phipps (Fellow and Curator of Works of Art, Churchill College).

A selection of maquettes, framed drawings and a major outdoor sculpture will be on display in and around INI from 20 June until 18 August, and available for guests to experience during the event. Through them, Nigel's work aims to explore: "the governing principles of how we experience the world, and how to express this in its most refined way with clarity, order and calm".

WHERE? Isaac Newton Institute, 20 Clarkson Road, CB3 0EH
WHEN? 19 July 2017 at 17:00

Light refreshments will be provided

Exhibition - 'Women of Mathematics throughout Europe'

Cambridge Centre for Mathematical Sciences, the Isaac Newton Institute and the Betty and Gordon Moore library are proud to take part in the ‘Women of Mathematics throughout Europe’ portrait exhibition.

The Women of Mathematics’ exhibition celebrates female mathematicians from institutions throughout Europe, and this special expanded exhibition is supplemented with portraits and interviews featuring local female mathematicians from Cambridge University’s Faculty of Mathematics. The portraits will be on display in the Isaac Newton Institute and in the Core of the mathematics building from Tuesday 25th April, and in the Betty and Gordon Moore Library following the exhibition. See http://womeninmath.net for more information around the exhibition.

The exhibition opens TUESDAY 25TH APRIL at 3.30PM, featuring talks by Cambridge mathematicians Professor Anne Davis, Dr Holly Krieger, and Dr Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb. Following the talks will be a panel discussion on issues affecting women in mathematics and a drinks reception, with a chance to network whilst viewing the exhibition.

Women in Mathematics at Cambridge: 25 April 2017, 3.30-7pm Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge

3.30pm Coffee & registration

4.15pm Opening of the exhibition by Heads of Department Prof Gabriel Paternain and Prof Nigel Peake

4.30pm Mathematical talks: Prof Anne Davis, Dr Holly Krieger, and Dr Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

5.30pm Panel discussion chaired by Dr Christie Marr

6.00pm Drinks reception

The talks will be aimed at a general public audience and all are welcome. The exhibition is free and open to all; for tickets please visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/women-of-mathematics-cambridge-exhibition-opening-tickets-32299228863

CASEBOOKS: Six contemporary artists and an extraordinary medical archive

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of events, beginning with the Private View on Thursday 16 March and the Artists and Curator Seminar on Friday 17 March. All events take place at Ambika P3 (opposite Baker Street tube). Details online and below.

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CASEBOOKS: Six contemporary artists and an extraordinary medical archive
Jasmina Cibic, Federico Díaz, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rémy Markowitsch, Lindsay Seers, Tunga

Private View: Thursday 16 March 2017, 6:30 - 8:30pm, Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS, Baker Street Station

Exhibition continues: 17 March - 23 April 2017

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ARTIST & CURATOR SEMINAR

Fri 17 March 2017, 4 - 6 pm Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS, Baker Street Station. Book a place here.

The CASEBOOKS exhibition is one of the most collaborative projects to take place at Ambika P3. It brings together researchers on the Casebooks Project, based at the University of Cambridge, with the curatorial team at the University of Westminster. This seminar is an opportunity to explore the issues brought about by the exhibition from the perspective of the artists and the Ambika P3 curator. Artists will present their projects and a round table will be convened to discuss the following topics:

• How did the artists engage with the Casebooks Project ? 
• What are the levels at which audiences engage with the artworks and the historical and digital artefacts through the exhibition?
• Have the casebooks provided a common theme to the exhibition?
• Can a collaborative exhibition such as this create new links between art, history and science?

Participants: The panel will consist of the exhibiting artists or their representatives and Dr Michael Mazière, Curator of Ambika P3. The Seminar will be chaired by Dr Lauren Kassell, Director of the Casebooks Project.

4.00 – 4.15: Introductions Lauren Kassell Michael Mazière
4.15 – 5.15: Artists' presentations

Jasmina Cibic: Unforseen Foreseens; Federico Díaz: BIG LIGHT Space of Augmented Suggestion
; Mark Hellar: Lynn Hershman Leeson’s, Real-Fiction Botnik and Venus of the Anthropocene; Rémy Markowitsch: The Casebooks Calf; Lindsay Seers: Mental Metal
; Rana Saner: Tunga’s Me, You and the Moon

5.15 – 6.00: Round table and Q&A from the audience chaired by Lauren Kassell
6.00 – 6.30: Drinks


Visit our website for the latest updates to the Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and Richard Napier's Medical Records.

Noisy Embyros

NOISY EMBRYOS

Dates: 9 – 25 March

Private View: Thursday 16 March, 5.00pm

Noisy Embryos is a multi-channel, audio-visual installation that reflects on the relationship between scientists and the animals they observe by juxtaposing videos of snail embryos generated under laboratory conditions with the 'messiness' of the natural environment and of the process of data collection in the field. It draws on interdisciplinary research carried out by artists Deborah Robinson and David Strang and biologist Simon Rundle during field trips at locations used by naturalist Carl Linnaeus and film maker Andrei Tarkovsky on the Swedish island of Gotland.

Cambridge Science Festival 2017:

Noisy Embryos: From the bane of embryology to indicators of the Anthropocene
Thursday 16 March, 6.30pm-8pm

This interdisciplinary talk links the history of variation in embryology (Nick Hopwood, Cambridge) to the current use of embryos as indicators of climate change (Simon Rundle, Plymouth) to introduce how the audio-visual exhibition Noisy Embryos (Deborah Robinson and David Strang, Plymouth) responds to the uses of embryos in scientific research.

This talk will take place in room RUS110, in the Ruskin Building, no need to book, just turn up. 

We look forward to seeing you at the Ruskin Gallery

www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskingallery

Seminar - Emblematic Alchemy

Tara Nummedal (Brown University) will speak at the History and Philosophy of Science Departmental Seminar on Thursday, 9 February at 3:30pm on:

Emblematic alchemy: Michael Maier's Atalanta fugiens (1617/18)

Written by the German physician, courtier and alchemist Michael Maier, Atalanta fugiens (1617/18) offers its readers an alchemical interpretation of the Classical myth of Atalanta as a series of fifty emblems, each containing an image, motto and epigram (in German and Latin), an accompanying fugue (or canon) for three voices, and a Latin discourse explicating the emblem's alchemical meaning. The parts of each emblem and the 214-page quarto book as a whole are meant to work together, with the music, image and text as an interlocking guide to alchemical theory and to the production of the philosophers' stone. In this talk, I will explore the role of sight and image in Maier's alchemical epistemology and situate his book in the visual culture of early modern European alchemy.

Tea and biscuits will be available from 3pm in Seminar Room 1

Seminar Location:
Seminar Room 2
Department of the History and Philosophy of Science
Free School Lane
Cambridge
CB2 3RH

Following the talk we will go to the pub, and on to dinner.

All are welcome!

If you would like to join dinner, please contact Daniel Margocsy (dm753@cam.ac.uk).

Talk - Biology and Modernist Sculpture

A reminder that tomorrow, Tuesday 8 November, at 5.00 in the History of Modern Medicine and Biology Seminar Ed Juler (Newcastle University) will speak on 'The life of forms: biology and modernist sculpture'.

Seminars are held in Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH. Tea and biscuits are available from 4:40pm; seminars run from 5:00 to 6:30pm.

Visions of Nature events - Oxford

This year the Oxford University Museum of Natural History has been hosting a series of exhibitions, events and residencies under the theme Visions of Nature. In December, BSLS members John Holmes and Janine Rogers will be taking part in three public events at the museum as part of this celebration of art and poetry inspired by the natural world:

• On 1st December (7-9 p.m.), John and Janine will be giving a joint talk entitled Building the Book of Nature, drawing on their research for their Canadian SSHRC-funded research project on natural history museum architecture. This talk will explore the architecture and art of the museum, including a guided tour and a pop-up exhibition of designs by John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites and others.
• On 7th December (6.30-8.30 p.m.), they will be joined by Stephen Wildman, Director of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre, together with researchers and teachers from Oxford, to discuss how science and art have worked together in visualising nature throughout the ages.
• Finally, on 12th December (7-9 p.m.), John will be joining the museum’s three poets-in-residence, John Barnie, Steven Matthews and Kelley Swain (one-time BSLS Secretary), to launch a new anthology of poems inspired by and connected with the museum, entitled Guests of Time.

All three events are free and open to all. If you would like to reserve seats in advance, please click here.

Pictorial recap - 30th May

 Frogs in science and literature, reconsidered

 

Call for submissions - Enlightened Perspectives: An Exhibition Working through Science and Art

In the light of National Science Week, Churchill College is putting on an exhibition which explores the relationship between Science and Art. The theme is intentionally vague - is a scientific instrument a piece of art? What about your electron micrographs? Could science be understood from what we would normally regard as just a painting or drawing? We are looking for pieces which put art and science into dialogue with one another: what can this relationship reveal? If this is something you think about, or want to explore more, then please send photographs of your work here.

Information on the inaugural exhibition from last year can be found here. Please specify dimensions and medium. We are open to anything; photographs, paintings, drawings, sculpture, models, films, notebooks, works in progress… this is an opportunity to have your work shown during National Science Week! We don’t want to tell you where the similarities are, but encourage you to show what you think putting Art and Science together can reveal.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: March 1st; Exhibition Date: Monday 9th March.