Art and Science

ArtSci - ISSN 2515-8767 - © ISTE Ltd

Journal issues

Recent articles

Beyond its practical and functional aspects, all architecture fundamentally stems from a poetic structure that summons a web of sensory, historical, and symbolic relationships, anchoring it to a place, a history, a line of thought, or the memory of an event. The Hubert-Reeves Science Library, part of the Université de Montréal’s new MIL campus, is no exception. By offering a personal and geopoetic interpretation of the library, this article seeks to elucidate the trajectories connecting it to the ideas of the renowned astrophysicist — whose son is the author — as well as to his values, his relationship with the world, and the imaginary of the Quebec landscape. The MIL campus is thus approached as a form of geophysical architecture, employing an explicitly mineral vocabulary of geodes, topographies, fault lines, strata and crystals. It appears to emerge from the tectonic imaginaries that shape the territory, drawing a map where the local and the cosmological, the ephemeral and the immemorial, collide and converge. The library’s two gardens — small, tree-filled craters carved into an elevated ground plane — serve as transplanted fragments of Mount Royal, the magmatic landform that hosts the university’s historic campus. They form the project’s living, poetic heart. The library can thus be read as a geology of knowledge: a subterranean stratum where insights from the crystalline structures above settle and transform, much like fertile sediment preparing the ground for future harvests. It also makes palpable a resonance, a link forged between human thought, the landscape, outside, but one arising from the very heart of the flows of matter and memory to which he, like all of us, owes his existence.

I was lucky enough to meet Hubert Reeves on 1965 when he arrived in France. He then accepted to be my thesis advisor. Hubert was both a brightest scientist, science popularizer and ecologist. This short article evokes his two most important discoveries in nuclear astrophysics such as the origin of the light elements (lithium, beryllium and boron) and that of the isotopes of hydrogen and helium and lithium 7. The ways by which Hubert undertook his researches and popularizes them are also presented.

This article traces the essential role of music in Hubert Reeves’s life, work and commitments. Drawing on his writings, his collaborations with musicians, and the performances created with the author and her Ensemble Calliopée, it shows how music, science, poetry and transmission are intertwined within a shared sensitive experience of the cosmos and nature.

Are artists scientifics, and are scientifics also artists ? Not at all. But artists and scientifics are able to work together. They can carry out some projects, and decided to do something jointly. So something new comes on the wold : multiplicity of propositions, new residences, and interventions in cultural institutions. Actualy, we can come out of the ancient divorce between arts and sciences. It is a fact of society. Perhaps is it more easy to give at that phenomenon the name proposes by Zygmunt Bauman, the entry in “liquid society”. In this optic, it is important to consult some artists on those situation. We have work with Claude Alma, on this case, when we have seen his works. He has propose us some projects and models. Here is the result and some commentaries.

Coral reefs of the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) are among the most biodiverse and most threatened marine socio-ecosystems on the planet, yet conventional science mediation often lacks the indigenous (i.e. local) knowledge and innovative, locally adapted approaches needed to produce genuine, long-term engagement. This article presents Isle of Coral, an Art-Science co-creation programme built through an ongoing dialogue between a marine biologist and a visual artist, where scientific data, indigenous knowledge and artistic practice come together. The collaboration takes form through immersive video installations, monumental façade projections, and collages built from underwater SfM photogrammetry, alongside original music, oral storytelling, and ceramic works exploring a coral bleaching event and the wider stakes of reef conservation. Rather than purely bio-physiological, bleaching is woven together with Mahorais, Comorian, and Malagasy beliefs and customary codes - Djinns, Marids, Fady (taboos) - that long governed human relationships with reefs before the Western concept of marine protected areas. We describe the project’s narrative architecture and participatory methodology, co-created with local communities, schools, and knowledge holders, and its measurable reach through festivals, museums, and school programmes. Finally, we discuss how treating indigenous knowledge as a genuine epistemic contributor extends the durability of conservation messaging. We outline the scalable co-creation model in the WIO and other reef socio-eco-systems worldwide.

Black has always been enigmatic and paradoxical. Absence of light, and therefore non-color for physicists, it is indeed color for chemists and artists. Matter or energy (still missing) for astrophysicists, it has never ceased to inspire philosophers and poets. This article begins by examining the evolution of scientific and artistic disputes over the nature of black. It then looks at the forms of its presence on Earth (mineral, vegetable and animal), and describes its pursuit in the cosmos (black holes, dark matter, dark energy). Returning to Earth, it looks at the processes involved in producing the color black, up to and including Vantablack and outrenoir. Finally, it traces the artistic uses and functions of black in relation to light and other colors and concludes with the infinite quest for black in its poetic and metaphysical resonances.

Picture display in frames is only a recent development compared to the oldest known artwork that was created several thousand years ago. Artwork from the Stone Age shows no man-made borders, and artistic expressions were physically restricted by natural and geological structures. First picture display and framing in the Western culture is documented with examples from the Antiquity, in approximately 800 BC to 500 AD. More sophisticated picture display was observed in Western Europe only at the beginning of the 13th century, and from 1910 onward, modernism formed the new style of frames. At the end of the 20th century the contemporary period dominated, and merging abstract paintings with antique frames became a new trend that fuses components from different cultures and time periods. However, the frame came to be a distraction to some viewers for certain types of artwork, because subconsciously, people perceive an emotion from the artwork and the contribution of the frame. A recent competitor to framed artwork for classical interior design is digital art by offering new experience and interaction with art. However, modification of living space by remote work may give preference to digital art and 3D-hologram displays, and it seems to be that our view on electronic art may have to undergo a significant revision.

In Fleming’s works, is James Bond an office-and-casino superhero, or an islander whose horizons extend beyond the British isles? He moves from domesticated settings to favourable coastal areas, encountering dangerous gardens, within a narrative space with an archipelagic character where naturalisation is a recurring theme. He finds himself travelling on several occasions to Jamaica, his creator’s favourite destination, just as he visits various fictional yet plausible islands, populating using lists of tropical species. He himself is regularly compared to a predatory animal, and his relationship with nature, which evolves in line with the narrative twists, is characterised by both usefulness and respect. His antagonists, who are frequently depicted as animals and who often dominate the natural world only to meet their end there, stand in contrast to his female allies, almost all of whom are associated with species of flowers. But nature also serves to bring the story’s world to life for the reader, as well as providing narrative devices or alternative weapons, and if this nature is outdated or carefully chosen, the stories give the impression of carrying an environmentalist subtext.