Art and Science: The Overlaps (Adam Savage)

One of my main goals on this blog is to prove that art and science really aren’t as different as most people seem to believe they are. Art and Science: The Overlaps, is a series of posts which highlight overlaps between the two fields.

While doing a bit of research a while back I found a great video which I briefly mentioned in my “Story of Communication” post. It was a video by Adam Savage about the exact topic of my blog, the overlaps of art and science.

Savage talks about how science and art are really just two ways humans attempt to understand the universe. We can observe and pay attention to it and then attempt to decipher what we see (science) or we can talk about what we see, and share our observations and feelings with those around us (art). Savage then goes into several examples of overlaps between the two.

One study observed activated parts of the brain when artists were observing pieces of art, interestingly, identical parts of the brain lit up when mathematicians’ brains when showed an elegant equation–this suggests that mathematicians may see math in a way very similar to that in which an artist sees art.Another example of art in science goes in to the vast amount of creativity needed to conduct scientific research–things aren’t laid out for you, it is up to the scientist to make everything work.

The video is fairly long, however, the talk itself is only around 18 minutes. There is a very interesting Q and A session for the remaining 35 minutes which I highly recommend watching, but the talk will cover all of the points which I have highlighted.