Mixing Science with Art

From the Sundance Insider:

Kellene note: This was the third lecture we attended at Sundance.

The Science of Storytelling

“Invention Is a Drug” for Both Artists and Scientists

By Sarah Keenlyside | January 22, 2008

Artists and scientists converged in a summit of the minds to discuss the subject of “invention” at yesterday’s sixth annual Alfred P. Sloan Foundation panel. Always one of the liveliest and most mind-altering discussions at the Festival, this year’s panel was no exception, which is exactly what the Foundation intends by hosting the event. The Foundation’s program director Doron Weber greeted the audience and explained that the Foundation’s mission “is to encourage artists to create accurate and compelling stories about science.”The discussion ranged across a number on topics: the figure of the mad scientist in stories such as Frankenstein; what differentiates someone who can envision a concert hall out of a crumpled piece of paper from someone who throws the paper in the trash; and the physiological response to inventing something, in which case Evan Schwartz, author of The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit and the Birth of Television, offered his theory that the act of creation sparks a dopamine release in the body that can be addictive. “Invention is a drug,” he commented.

“That eureka moment is the product of a lot of work going on inside your brain and it happens among scientific inventors and artistic inventors.” -Ira Flatow, Science Journalist and Panel Moderator

Award-winning science journalist and panel moderator Ira Flatow led the charge, asking the group if they thought artists and inventors have anything in common. Alan Alda, host of the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers answered with a resounding “yes.” He explained that both artists and scientists plug into a collective matrix of experience and ideas that can manifest themselves in the creation of something new when the time is right: “That eureka moment is the product of a lot of work going on inside your brain and it happens among scientific inventors and artistic inventors,” he said.

VP and chief scientist of Walt Disney Imagineering Benedict Schwegler observed that a significant difference is that inventors, unlike artists, have a responsibility that their inventions function in the real world. “There’s a reason why there’s only one picture of Louis Pasteur when he’s smiling,” he joked.

“I find invention romantic,” said Amy Redford, who is set to follow up her directorial debut The Guitar (which is screening at the Festival) with a film about Hedy Lamarr, who was an accomplished inventor as well as a famous actress. Lamarr’s invention “came from an acute need she could see was going on in the war,” Redford pointed out. “She had a scientific mind and I think an appetite. She saw invention everywhere.” The appetite that Redford described has its parallel in the arts. As Pretty Bird director Paul Schneider observed, the process of writing is like “waterskiing behind an idea” that’s pulling him along.