Partnerships - Question Time

Richard. I suppose my question as it relates to your work over the last few years, is that in collaborations and partnerships, one of the things I find quite interesting is where there is a conflict of interest. I think of particularly CSIRO (and I know Paula Dawson has experienced this as well), that a lot of these large institutions, the artist you may not necessarily agree ideologically with what they're doing. I suppose the classic example at CSIRO is Genetically Modified Foods. So on one level you might actually be working against those objectives. I have always been intrigued by that and also the fact that your particular history has been with institutions with a forensic modelling focus.

Well it is a combination of the two. Ethics becomes an issue that previously in my art training I hadn't had to deal with. But when it comes to medico-legal ethics for instance, the ability to disclose certain photographs or documentation that you have tried to develop say in an autopsy you can't see through ethical considerations.

A part of that restriction - and I get back to the research culture - I would be able to expose some of the pathology practices that eventually contributed to the New South Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine closing. When I was there in 1996 the Institution was under investigation by the Police Corruption Authority for practices related to the theft of jewellery, there was also a number of other issues dealing with organ transplants and using body parts for research and medial research.

I had documented quite a lot of this practice and part of my residency was to go and review the practices. And I get back to the point of maintaining my position as an artist and not being influenced by the enormous political forces that exist in those environments.

The more practice you get at working in these environments, these incredibly intense environments, the more I think I am able to maintain my artistic independence and integrity. But it is difficult to learn and develop that approach.

The way around this was to develop a model. I developed a specific model that I used, as a scientist would to ensure a distance between himself and the subjects. In other instances, I would work quite closely with the scientists so it was easier to work out which ones to work with and which not.

When you talk about artists and training to be an artist, you've got this plethora of things that an artist has to do or at least be aware of. Not only does he or she have to develop their concepts and ideas, but then they have to become marketing agents. They have to deal with contracts and other business issues, with corporations, with scientists and so on. These people talk a totally different language. The question was really about what suggestions you may have for artists that do work with institutions - is it something that an institution can take responsibility for or is it solely the artists responsibility.

That's a very good question because it seems to me that this is something that the ARC and the Australia Council could look at - what sort of support and infrastructure we could develop in areas like contracts, IP etc. Sue, if you would like to kick off on that.

In terms of IP, there are national principles of Intellectual Property for publicly funded research and all we ask is that the institutions have IP arrangements and conform with those. But you are really asking about the mega issue that, in a sense that, the art and science initiatives tend to be outside the focus of your employment in an institution and they call for an extra dimension in the work that you are doing either in the arts school or in the science area and as we know, if we were here talking about Art and Asia the same point would be made. It is initiated by personal interest and personal commitments and I think that when we have talked about mostly the kinds of things that people value in this area they will start with the very personal 'I went and did it. I went that way. I found people who were prepared either in a Corporation or in a Government Department who were prepared to back it, who were prepared themselves.' So I think we should build on that understanding that in the end, and in the beginning, a lot of these things are done by people pursuing interests and friendships and relationships. You're point, of course, Rebecca as well. But the issue for us and what Terry is putting on the table, is what then do we do to make those able to be have some on-goingness to them, and make them a little less vulnerable to people withdrawing. What's interesting to me is that adjacent practices within the Arts don't have this problem. Film, Theatre, Architecture have figured it out and it is sort of time for the Arts Community to figure it out too I think.

I think that two people asked similar questions. I'm going to ask a third one and try to elaborate to maybe get a full panel discussion. There's some talk of the value of research in Art and Science - the monetary benefit and the security of cultural benefit. And there are a lot of artists who are rugged individuals that fight for cultural independence or against a perceived political deficit. At the same time there is a tradition, or there was a tradition during the Cold War of pure R&D money which would be sufficient for artists and scientists to create projects that don't have to do with monetary benefit and hopefully won't have too much to do with propping up the institutions even if they are supporting them. I wonder how that type of pure R&D can exist in another, well we do have another Cold War coming on, that's where the money came from so maybe the war time pinch will bleed money into innovation again. But if not is there some way more domicile to achieve that?

Who wants to respond. I mean that the point you were raising is an interesting one and to pick up Sue's point about whether we focus here on the discovery aspect of collaboration or on the linkage part which is much more about commercialisation and realisation. I mean, I have the same debates in my day job in Information Technology about where you put your funding focus in pure research into developing next generation IP through to capitalising on what we've got now. It's a difficult one.

Maybe I can contribute there because I think it connects to some of those points made at the end of my little presentation about the fact that your partners and collaborators have to be passionately committed to culture first rather than returning a profit from it. I appreciate your comment about biting the hand that feeds you but if an Artist doesn't have that scope then it's probably not worth doing. And so I think the issue really is that we have to shift the conscience of Corporations and Government to create that space where experimentation can happen and even if it goes wrong it can still be supported. Because there has to be a confidence that in the long term - its good for Society. That kind of dialectic between things which you find acceptable and things which you possibly detest or find intolerable, should still be able to take place.

This question of who owns the creative insight, goes to the heart of all the debates we have about intellectual property and on the other hand, the issue of creative commonness of what was a shared resource. In my digital world it's a whole debate about open source software versus proprietary, Microsoft type systems. The same debates happen in this interface between the Culture of Commerce. Nigel put it in the 'Culture of Culture'. The real notion that somehow we're creating a shared resource which is a common good. And there are some profoundly philosophical issues there that we need to think about in the background of these discussions.

Can I just pick up on that. In attempting to put the case why we have been successful in increasing the research funding budget, I could have emphasised that the discovery program, which is the fundamental research program, is by far the largest program that the AFC runs and is committed to fundamental research. Part of our kind of contextualising research in this way is to protect and develop and support fundamental research. But we've done it, and that's what I was trying to be savvy about, partly by being able to demonstrate the value of publicly funded research - curiosity driven research for the larger national benefit. It builds in the possibility that it won't work out, that it might go in different directions, solo researchers. But still I think that it is important for me to give a message that says we could aspire to more in terms of the scale and impact of research.

Now let me join this discussion as a Scientist. I am an Astronomer. And as an Astronomer I have many of the same problems that Artists do because what I do doesn't acquit. There is no commercial possibilities in Astronomy of any real consequence. But Astronomy as a Science is strongly supported in Australia and it does very well, it has a high profile and that is because Astronomers have put themselves about a bit to say that what they are doing is fundamentally interesting, addressing the big questions, looking at the ideas that underpin our Society. Those ideas are now perceived as important and worth supporting with public money. I would like to strongly suggest that the Artists adopt a similar attitude. Because, although I'm a Scientist, I acknowledge the profound importance of Art as well in our Society and I just haven't really articulated that very clearly. Artists do what Artists do, but don't say how important it is to underpin civilised and culturalised Society. And they should do that. And I would like to suggest that some ARC money is spent on that very topic.

It's a very good point and certainly a point that over the last couple of years is something that the Australia Council is looking at as a key issue of how we actually promote an appreciation of the importance and value of the Arts within a civilised Society, in a really practical way. But a very good point.

Hi. My name's Rebecca Scott. I'm from CSIRO. I've spent probably my last five or six years trying to broker collaborations between Artists and Scientists. But over the last year, our new Chief Executive Geoff Garrat has been very proactive in developing partnerships of this nature.

What I am trying to do more now is to realise some outcomes. We've got 4,000 Research Scientists in the organisation and 21 Research Divisions and there's a wealth of information there. I guess the frustration is that CSIRO, similar to the ARC, is going the way of turning into a 'research business' rather than a 'research organisation' and that brings the need to rationalise everything in dollar terms. I guess Rich, what I'd like to know from you is how you've managed to establish a structure that achieves the result as opposed to relying on a particular individual in the organisation who might believe passionately about the idea.

There's much to say about how we get Artists and Scientists to work together. First it wasn't just finding some artist and just throwing them in the Park. We found artists who were already technologically skilful, brought them in and then introduced them to many scientists. And we looked for sparks.

Most of the artists we brought in were all great artists, but we were really looking for the scientists to really bond with them on a personal level because they would have to work with them for a long time. We had to respect both of their careers and make sure that the rights were assigned appropriately to both their careers, so that one didn't feel like it was ripping off the other.

An interesting point - some critics were convinced that the Pair Project wouldn't work because they thought that artists and scientists wouldn't/couldn't be paired together - also the Eat Project was between artists and engineers. The artists already had these great visions. So one of the things we had to do when inviting the artist was to make sure that the artist didn't come in with great visions - hard to do actually, not to mention the fact that the scientists had visions too - to see into the future. So you had to make the collaboration work by the artist and scientist working and creating their vision together. Otherwise you get the scientist being the tech guy for the artist and the artist being the beautifier of the science work. That's why you hire designers - scientists actually need designers.

To go back to your point on the contracts - this IP issue is critical. As my fellow scientist here was saying, the Scientific World is being pushed very hard to be commercial. In fact the reason why we were let go at Xerox Park was not because they didn't like us but because the primary science organisation in the United States is being turned into an Engineering Lab that had to create a bottom line in three years.

To give an idea of the time required to create - from the gleam in a scientist's eye to the finished commercial product is between 13-15 years in many cases. And that's a long time. So at the Park all those things work together to create the whole. It's a very hands on approach to make work. It was very successful I thought although we did not try and pose it as monetary successful. The way we often say it is that we are trying to make better artists and better scientists, not better art and better science. Try and work at the individual human level. Corporations don't need help with innovation - have you been to a mall lately? I mean there's too much stuff, they already know how to do that. The harder part is making better people.