Interview with Claudia Schnugg: how to make sense of your world through art and science
We are excited and pleased to announce the addition of Claudia Schnugg to Unbore’s Advisory Board. Claudia is an independent researcher and curator developing methodologies for innovation and meaningful interaction with the arts.
Claudia broad academic expertise builds on social and economic sciences as well as cultural sciences. As an advocate of art and science collaboration, she has worked as a producer and curator of a variety of residency programs as well as an establisher of numerous international art and science projects. Claudia has closely collaborated with leading scientific institutions, universities, tech corporations and cultural organisations, such as Helmholtz Center Munich, Ars Electronica, Science Gallery, ESA ESTEC, European Southern Observatory, Human Insights Lab at Accenture, and Art|Sci Center at UCLA.
In 2019, she has published a book, titled Creating ArtScience Collaboration, focusing on the tangible ways in which artist-scientist collaboration can be of value to science and technology organizations.
Claudia has kindly shared her hands-on, proactive approach on what an effective interdisciplinary collaboration is, how to embody it besides the inherent contradiction, how it can have an effect on growing the capability in humans to grasp their changing surrounding environment and make sense of it.
Shooting of ‘The Traveling Plant’ video tour, photo by Pavel Tavares
Tell us about yourself. What’s your background and what brought you to interdisciplinary design research and practice?
What brought me into the interdisciplinary research and practice is the urge to combine my primary and deep academic training in social and economic sciences (with a specific focus on organization, behavior, and management) with my love for the diversity of understanding and experiencing the world in arts (especially media art and art theory in which I do have some additional academic training), sciences and technology. I aim at applying my knowledge and experience in order to understand and create conditions for art, science, technology interactions or collaborations to make them flourish in the environments in which they take place. So-to-speak, what are conditions and methods that make them thrive and pave the way for innovation and meaningful encounter? Seeing these impactful interactions, I am also driven by creating a deeper understanding of what these collaborations bring to the society, to tackle global challenges, but also how they affect those who take part. There, I do want to go beyond buzzwords and combine the stories of eye-opening cases with insights that can be translated to other situations or more general argumentative logic.
Why do you think collaboration between creatives, scientists and technologists is significant?
Whenever we are turning on the news, each day we are confronted with major challenges we are facing on this planet. These global challenges – which are not just something that is appearing as such, but have been researched thoroughly for over 24 years in the Millenium Project – they are complex issues that need us to break up disciplinary silos, overcome habitual blindness, and collaborate beyond academic/scientific disciplines with all levels of society. Establishing such collaborations is a first and essential step to reach this and experiment possible solutions. But solutions also need to be heard in society and different cultures (these cultures are not only “national” cultures, but also economic, organizational, and political cultures) and incorporated in order to get enacted. Especially introducing art and creative approaches, tackling embodied knowledge, learning to express ourselves and propose innovative ideas in various aesthetic ways (besides cognitive, language-based, rational arguments) are important components to reach this.
How art and science collaborate, intervene and innovate, Claudia Schnugg, TED x Linz
What urgent issues were brought to your attention via interdisciplinary collaboration?
That we need to learn to talk to each other; that there are parallel worlds in which goals are pursued based on different logics which are by no means brought together easily; and that learning needs to go beyond creating the ability to reproduce information.
What do you think are the most pressing matters of today’s society that should be questioned and transformed? What are the problems that you personally tackle in your research?
This is a tough one. Much is intertwined, from learning to the ability to reflect and process information as well as events, to inert structures that are obstacles to communication and collaboration beyond disciplines or specific interests, and the habitual blindness everybody taps into in their own discipline, their own culture, their own filter bubble. My practice and my research are driven by creating conditions for interdisciplinary collaboration to thrive. Thus, by working on methodologies, consulting of processes, I am helping them to thrive and I am actively translating to different logics of the diverse actor (also the impact and value-added of engaging in these projects). In my curatorial practice and guiding interdisciplinary processes, this is a major part. Thereby, I want to also reach audiences and talk to audiences beyond the participating parties, share knowledge and engage them. You could say, I advertise all these opportunities, showcase methods, and advocate such collaborations, and talk about possibilities to bring arts in diverse educational systems (e.g. management education). The experiential component and educational aspect are important to grow the capability in humans to grasp the changing environment and make sense of it. The projects I engage in are remarkably diverse, but I guess, this is what they have in common.
ALMA Observatory in Chile, image by Claudia Schnugg
Where should someone who wants to learn more about design, life sciences and technology intersections start? Could you recommend artists or designers to follow, engaging reading, other curious finds?
There are already a lot of recommendations in the previous interviews, so I try not to repeat too much. One thing everybody can do is to go to Ars Electronica’s archive, choose the category Prix Ars Electronica and then look at all the winners and honorary mentions in the categories Hybrid Art and Artificial Intelligence & Life Art throughout the last decades. This gives you a pretty comprehensive overview of how the field developed. But others also give a good impression: the Bioart Society and the online exhibition archives of Science Gallery. Follow Quo Artis and Cultivamos Cultura. Look at the work of Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr with Tissue Culture and Art and their seminal artworks, and see what is happening at SymbioticA and what Guy Ben-Ary did. Also see what artists do, who are not working in the lab, but reflect on the topic, like Lucy McRae. And get your hands on Ingeborg Reichle’s Art in the Age of Technoscience and Eduardo Kac’s Telepresence & Bio Art. An interesting book that just came out earlier this year is Art as we don’t know it – just looking at the list of contributors gives a good overview.
Making of ‘The Institute of Isolation’ by Lucy McRae, image by Claudia Schnugg
How about someone working in the field? What was the last most intriguing thing you read, saw or experienced?
Recently, I had the pleasure to work with Office of Life and Art, the group that also behind Genomic Gastronomy. I recommend looking at their work.
Tell us more about your future plans. What are you working on in 2021?
As everybody else, the pandemic, lockdown in many places and insecurities are also affecting my plans for next years. Currently I am concentrating on developing a next step in my work, bringing together my research, my practice, and my academic work. Which form this finally will take, I’ll hopefully be able to reveal soon. Additionally, I am in the process of developing artist-in-residence opportunities and artistic public engagement projects with scientific organizations in the field of space science and AI & the future of work processes. We should be able to announce details at the beginning of 2021.
With Annick Bureaud, Marta de Menezes, Tatiana Kourochkina and Robertina Šebjanič, I am working on the Traveling Plant Project, or: The Veridical Travel of a Truly Imaginary Plant. We plan to grow the roots of the project. In 2021, we want to promote the first stops on the travel of this imaginary plant by working with partner organizations (“hosts”) around the world who commission related art projects and engage in events. This summer, I started to curate an artist-in-residence program in collaboration with the Institute for Epigenetics and Stem Cells at the Helmholtz Center Munich. Anna Dumitriu is the artist who won the first residency there. We started the residency virtually this autumn and we are looking forward to taking the residency to the next level with in-person visits next year.
Creating ArtScience Collaboration, a book by Claudia Schnugg
What are your expectations and aspirations for being an Unbore Advisory Board member?
Unbore is an important project that aims at presenting challenging ideas and interdisciplinary approaches at a unique place that is starting to recognize the importance of these activities. As part of the Advisory Board, I am looking forward to actively establish connections, point to interesting opportunities, and support the dedicated team in taking the next steps on their path. I am honored to join the Advisory Board of Unbore as I value the underlying goals of this organization and am looking forward to seeing the organization grow and its activities unfold. In this position I do have the pleasure to experience this closely.
Check out Claudia Schnugg’s website to stay updated the latest projects she is currently involved in or take a look at her fantastic book Creating ArtScience Collaboration for a deeper insight into how interdisciplinary partnerships have fostered creativity and led to heightened innovation and value for organizations.