The ethos of openness, curiosity, and critical inquiry is at the core of both scientific and artistic practices. Encounters between them, such as when scientists and artists borrow from each other’s methodological repertoire or venture into collaborations, can bring new, often surprising perspectives. As these cross-fertilizations have increasingly taken on meaning both in the arts and sciences, it is time to reflect upon expectations and insights from the most common format of public-facing events of artistic communication of science. What more is there to learn from such encounters?

The Symposium Encounters presents the many multiple facets of such collaborations between artists and scholars, and how new encounters of such sorts can inspire important discussions about science, art, and their role in society on pressing (ecological) issues of current times.

Organized at the Chair of Life Sciences in Society together with Mascha Gugannig, Michael John Gorman, & Katrin Petroschkat.