The multidisciplinary master's degree Art&Science, which opened at TSU a year ago, is one of the three noncapital-area programs in Russia that try to comprehend the new technological world through art.
Art&Science is an area where artists use scientific methods and advanced technologies instead of painting and sculpture. And scientists, in turn, can use art and design to solve scientific and practical problems, - says Dmitry Galkin, program manager, Doctor of Philosophy, professor at the TSU Institute of Arts and Culture.
Officially, master’s students study in the Design area, but Dmitry Galkin emphasizes that this is not the case when they have mastered two tools and gone to work. This is an interdisciplinary program in which students move from the utilitarian sphere of design to the creative sphere of art and the research sphere of science. The program has such subjects as practical synthesis of arts and 3D-prototyping, directing, and digital design.
- For example, for the exhibition (Not)Mandatory Consumption, our master’s student Mitya Glavanakov tried to create an interface for communicating with plants. This resulted in an installation in which the electrical impulses from a flower are processed using a computer program and reproduced in the form of a glitch text. Text was taken from a scientific article on electrochemistry and plant communications, -says Dmitry Galkin.
For the reporting exhibition, Anna Serbinova came up with a conceptual dumpster that recycles waste into raw materials for a 3D printer, and housewives can immediately print anything on it - a plate, a rattle, and so on. She also suggests using recycled plastic as a building material for homes, that is, on an industrial scale.
Almost half of the master’s-level teachers are invited. There are real stars in their areas. Antonio Geusa is a famous curator who is engaged in video art and media art. Dmitry Bulatov is the chief specialist in Art&Science in Russia. Antonio Vilches-Nogerol has tremendous experience in designing expositions and exhibitions.
- In addition, we have an excellent European partner - Danube University Krems in Austria and its master's program History of Media Art, with whom we are preparing an exchange program. Together, we are building a model that objectively says that the level of provincial universities is no longer provincial, we have our own educational market, including the international one. In the first semester, we helped the students deal with their ambitions and interests, so that in the second semester they really focused on their chosen topic. Someone went into design, someone wanted to realize themselves as an artist, and someone decided to become a curator of exhibition projects,- says Dmitry Galkin.