How can an artist go about creating a new work building on a brief “intimate encounter” with a scientist? This question was at the heart of a panel discussion at Filament Saturday morning. For the artist, the starting point was his practice of making an “empty solo”, understood as a freely improvised action meant to serve as a sort of conversation opener with a so-called “local expert”. The expert in this case, an astrophysicist, professed a certain puzzlement about how to respond to the empty solo, but this was seen to be relatively unimportant by the artist. For him, the poetically charged phrase inspiring him was her remark that “space expands”. Happily dismissing any need to understand the specific scientific content of the local expert, the artist’s nonchalant satisfaction combined with the scientist’s palpable bemusement gave the effect of a genuinely comical (if perhaps inadvertent) example of productive non-communication.
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