Combining art with science can create an entire new discipline. That’s the premise of Thomas Asmuth’s lecture this week called “Art as an Exo-Discipline”. Thomas Asmuth is an Assistant Professor in the Art Department at the University of West Florida specializing in digital and experimental media. His lecture titled “Art as an Exo-Discipline” is part of the Experience UWF Downtown lecture series and will be this Thursday afternoon, February 26 at 5:30 at the Pensacola Museum of Commerce.
Asmuth spoke to WUWF’s Bob Barrett about his work and asked what it says on his business card: Artist or Scientist?
-- He says his business card says "artist", but it also shows him in a space suit.
-- Asmuth's first interest was in science, and it wasn't until he enrolled in a Physics program in Chicago that he started visiting art museums and began his evolution from scientist to artist. He says between the srt he was seeing and some of the authors he was reading he began to see "the poetry in the science".
-- After completing a bachelors degree in painting, Asmuth was inspired by a Physicist friend of his to begin combining the two disciplines.
-- Asmuth says the science involved in his art work isn't limited to Physics. He says he has also worked with electrical engineering, chemistry, optics and transmission sciences such as radio and wireless communications. He says it's looking at the science and the art as methods of communication and seeing where they overlap.
-- His lecture "Art as an Exo-Discipline" is his attempt to "explain the schizophrenic sort of mind set that I work in". It's a way to show how he can move freely between art and science and combine the two things into something new.
