Bath Bio*Art
E mail: A.D.M.Rayner@bath.ac.uk
Bath Bio*Art is a small Business, managed by Alan Rayner, as well as a labile group of individuals with common interests and objectives.
Bath Bio*Art aims to promote creative interactions and dialogue between Art and Science, especially biological science, in local, national and international arenas. It envisages that by combining scientific knowledge with artistic imagination, from diverse perspectives, it is possible to develop a deeper, 'inclusional'* understanding of the way human beings and other life forms relate to one another and the living space that we all share. It believes that this understanding can especially be reached through the medium of water as the source and connector of life in all its wonderful diversity.
* 'Inclusionality' is a 'way of seeing' from which a participative, Deeply Holistic world view naturally emerges of the dynamic inseparability of content and context – informational lining and possibility space – across all nested scales from subatomic to universal. All things, our Selves included, are dynamic contextual inclusions. One cannot change without changing the Other. Space unites rather than separates. And it is in the gravitational, inductive, transformative receptivity or 'pulling power of holes', informationally lined spaces, that the coherence necessary to sustain all evolutionary co-dynamics may be found.
Bath Bio*Art's objectives are therefore:
- to explore and show how science and art can be combined to enrich and deepen our quality of life and understanding of relationships of all kinds, including human relationships - why art and science need one another
- to illustrate the relevance of local viewpoints to global concerns - why local knowledge is all-important.
- to enhance appreciation of the role of water as source and connector of life - why water is so very important, in so many ways
- to promote a re-orientation in the way we think about and relate to the concept of 'living space'
Alan Rayner was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950. He obtained BA and PhD degrees in Natural Sciences at King's College, Cambridge and is currently a Reader in Biology at the University of Bath, England. An accomplished naturalist and ecological thinker, best known for his scientific studies of fungi, he was President of the British Mycological Society in 1998. He has published over 130 scientific articles and six scientific books, including Degrees of Freedom - Living in Dynamic Boundaries (Imperial College Press, 1997). He also produces and exhibits colourful oil paintings that reflect his scientific knowledge and sense of rapport with the natural world, as well as the abuses to which this world can be subjected by human efforts to master it. A Founder of Bath Bio*Art*, he co-organized an International Science-Art event, The Language of Water, in Bath in Spring 2001.
Bath Bio*Art can provide:
skills in the organization of events such as conferences and exhibitions linking Art and Science
- access to e mail groups and networks with relevant interests
- liaison with potential broadcasters, publishers, publicists
- creative ideas
- talks and explorations, with appropriate speakers and facilitators
- artwork
- general advice
Bath Bio*Art may require:
- help with delivery of any projects it become involved with, e.g. transport, facilities, artistic production, labour
- remuneration (if available) for services rendered