The dynamics of collaborative resistance: negotiating the methodological incongruities of art, cultural theory, science and design.

Abstract

This paper reflectively explores how the collaborative team behind in potēntia critically and creatively embraces the methodological dialectics that occur when trying to accommodate the different disciplinary approaches of art, cultural theory, science and design. Hosted by SymbioticA - The Centre of Excellence in the Biological Arts, The University of Western Australia, in potēntia is an example of multi-disciplinary collaborative art/science practice pioneered by SymbioticA. Negotiating aesthetics versus accuracy, risk versus rigor, experimentation versus speculation, and problematising versus problem solving, this paper reflexively discusses how cross-disciplinary collaboration, although fraught with friction also presents new and unique opportunities - professionally and personally - for unexpected creative discoveries to emerge.