(Notes) On Experience in the Field: (Merkintöjä) Elämyksestä Tieteen ja Taiteen Kentällä

The understanding of the future is the goal that is shared by practices in the sciences and the arts; science by producing the most accurate knowledge possible on various issues, and art by speculating on the open possibilities and scenarios for our unknown future. However even if the artists and scientists find themselves focused on the same issues or objects of interest, the goals and background motivations influence the different approaches and end results. The same object of interest is treated with different perspective because the anticipated end-results are constructed with different aims and with distinct frameworks.
In the recent years there has been an increasing interest to search for similarities in scientific and artistic practices. Underlying many arguments seem to be the claim that these practices are in some sense overlapping or close to each other. Instead of focusing on looking at similarities that, no doubt, exist in some level, this article looks into one plausible difference between artistic and scientific practices.
The article focuses on experience as a key aspect of artistic practice that uses organic materials or has a relation to sciences either through the methods and materials or by its subject matter. The article claims that the production of experience as the result of research practice can be seen as one of the aspects that differentiates artistic practice from science approaches, which nevertheless may share the same area or topic of interest. This does not mean that there would not be experience within science but it is typically not the primary result aimed at within the (e.g. natural) sciences.
The article deliberately avoids making any precise definitions for artistic practices that relate to science research to evade fixed perception of the field that is evolving and still in finding its shape and limits . Having been primarily situated in the field of the arts I will discuss the above stated issue through the perspective from the arts.