Images as thoughts: dialogue between art, science, history and philosophy

Academic research has devoted relatively little attention to the means of image production, its epistemological meaning, and relationship to culture in general. Although the visual turn of recent years has brought new methodological perspectives, the understanding of images remains limited and is often considered only as a communicative resource to illustrate results, but not as part of the development of a “materialised epistemology” that integrates sensitive knowledge with scientific knowledge and allows for the generation of a different historiography.

Science historian Norton Wise argues that traditional dichotomies that tend to separate art from science, museums from laboratories, and geometric from algebraic methods have impoverished understanding of visualisation processes.

The seminar will use an interdisciplinary vocation to explore other ways of understanding images and their use in research.

Reference article: M. Norton Wise, Making visible, Isis 97 (1):75-82 (2006)

Participants: Andrea Soto Calderón (lecturer in Aestetics and Art Theories, UAB), Blanca Pujals (architect, writer and scriptwriter) and Agustí Nieto-Galan (lecturer in the History of Science, UAB)

Programme

12:00 p.m. Presentation

12:15-12:45 p.m. Projection and contextualisation of the audiovisual Quantum sensing infrastructures (Blanca Pujals)

12:45-1:15 p.m. Commentary (A. Soto Calderón)

1:15-1:45 p.m. Lunch break

1:45-2:15 p.m. Commentary (A. Nieto-Galan)

2:15-3:00 p.m. General debate

This seminar forms part of the "Workshops on Historiographic Tools" (WHITS) series. It is addressed particularly to PhD students, but open to all members of the academic community.