Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge

How the tools of STS can be used to understand art and science and the practices of these knowledge-making communities.

In Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge, Hannah Star Rogers suggests that art and science are not as different from each other as we might assume. She shows how the tools of science and technology studies (STS) can be applied to artistic practice, offering new ways of thinking about people and objects that have largely fallen outside the scope of STS research. Arguing that the categories of art and science are labels with specific powers to order social worlds—and that art and science are best understood as networks that produce knowledge—Rogers shows, through a series of cases, the similarities and overlapping practices of these knowledge communities. 
 
The cases, which range from nineteenth-century artisans to contemporary bioartists, illustrate how art can provide the basis for a new subdiscipline called art, science, and technology studies (ASTS), offering hybrid tools for investigating art–science collaborations. Rogers’s subjects include the work of father and son glassblowers, the Blaschkas, whose glass models, produced in the nineteenth century for use in biological classification, are now displayed as works of art; the physics photographs of documentary photographer Berenice Abbott; and a bioart lab that produces work functioning as both artwork and scientific output. Finally, Rogers, an STS scholar and contemporary art–science curator, draws on her own work to consider the concept of curation as a form of critical analysis.Foreword I by Geoffrey C. Bowker ix
Foreword II by Barry Barnes xiii
Preface: The Rise of Art-Science xvii
Acknowledgments xxix
1 Introduction: Art in Science and Technology Studies 1
2 Positioning Aesthetic Knowledge: The Blaschka Models 39
3 Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott 75
4 The Practices of Tactical Media 97
5 Symbiotica: Culturing Art and Science 143
6 Curating Art's Work in the Age of Biotechnology 177
Conclusion: Art, Science, and Technology Studies 217
Notes 243
References 251
Index 271“An engaging, accessible, and thought-provoking study of the myriad ways in which art and science intersect, interact, and combine.”
—Leonardo “From Blaschka to bioart, Rogers provides original and fascinating insight into the commonalities, intersections, and power dynamics between art and science, demonstrating the ways that STS can probe the communities and methods of both.”
—Pamela Smith,Seth Low Professor of History, Columbia University; author of The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution
 
“Rogers artfully troubles categories of art/science and lines drawn between artists/scientists. Her ASTS project encourages us to take heed of varied and intricate knowledge-making practices in our own efforts to explore new ways of world-making.”
—Deboleena Roy, Professor of Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University; author of Molecular Feminisms
 
 “Hannah Rogers captures, with insight and hindsight, the emerging areas of art-science collaboration and practices. With a strong documentation of the bio-arts, Art, Science, and the Politics of Knowledge also brings foresight to the post-pandemic world and lays a foundation for future art and STS practices. Sciences and technologies cannot win future wars alone, but will require investments in art-science and other mechanisms for cultural change.”
—Roger F. Malina, Executive Editor, Leonardo/ISAST Publications (MIT Press); Director of the ArtSciLab, University of Texas at DallasHannah Star Rogers is Visiting Scholar at the University of Edinburgh in Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies (STIS) and lead editor of the Routledge Handbook of Art, Science, and Technology Studies.