From Enlightenment to Dark Matter, as featured on Radio 4

The Art of Innovation

A fully illustrated BBC Radio 4 collaboration with the Science Museum that explores the relationship between science and art, for fans of Neil MacGregor and Neil Oliver.

Based on the landmark Radio 4 series, this beautifully illustrated modern history of the connections between science and art offers a new perspective on what that relationship has contributed to the world around us. 
__________ 
 
 Throughout history, artists and scientists have been driven by curiosity and the desire to experiment. Both have wanted to make sense of the world around them, often to change it, sometimes working closely together, certainly taking inspiration from each other's disciplines. The relationship between the two has traditionally been perceived as one of love and hate, fascination and revulsion, symbiotic but antagonistic. But art is crucial to helping us understand our science legacy and science is well served by applying an artistic lens. How exactly has the ingenuity of science and technology been incorporated into artistic expression? And how has creative practice, in turn, stimulated innovation and technological change? 
 
The Art of Innovation is a history of the past 250 years viewed through the disciplines of art and science. Through fascinating stories that explore the sometimes unexpected relationships between famous artworks and significant scientific and technological objects - from Constable's cloudscapes and the chemist who first measured changes in air pressure, to the introduction of photography and the representation of natural history in print - it offers a new way of seeing, studying and interpreting the extraordinary world around us.

A timely and compelling history of the springs of thought.

A wonderful insight into the way art and science can be interwoven.

Sir Ian Blatchford is Director and Chief Executive of the Science Museum Group and Director of the Science Museum in London. Previously Ian was Deputy Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He started his career in the City, working at the Bank of England and the merchant bankers Barclays de Zoete Wedd, before joining the Arts Council, where he was Deputy Finance Director. He then joined the marketing and design agency Cricket Communications as Financial Controller before becoming Director of Finance at the Royal Academy of Arts. Ian read law at Mansfield College, Oxford and holds an MA in Renaissance studies from Birkbeck College, University of London. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Currently Ian is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Member of the Athenaeum. He was awarded the Pushkin Medal in 2015. In April 2017 Ian became Chairman of the National Museum Directors’ Council. 
Dr Tilly Blyth is the Head of Collections and Principal Curator at the Science Museum in London, where she is responsible for the museum's Curatorial, Research, Library and Archives departments. The team have delivered award winning galleries exhibitions in subjects as diverse as Mathematics, Robots, Cosmonauts: the Russian Space story and Illuminating India: 500 years of science and technology. Tilly was Lead Curator of the Information Age gallery, which explored 200 years of information and communication networks and how they have transformed the world. Tilly studied Physics at the University of Manchester before migrating towards the social sciences, with a MSc in Science Policy and a PhD in the History and Sociology of Technology. Her particular research interest is in the history of computing, and women’s roles in the development of the computing industry. Tilly is a member of BAFTA and a trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which aims to put the power of digital making into the hands of people all over the world.

Based on the landmark Radio 4 series, this beautifully illustrated modern history of the connections between science and art offers a new perspective on what that relationship has contributed to the world around us. 
_______________ 
 
 Throughout history, artists and scientists have been driven by curiosity and the desire to experiment. Both have wanted to make sense of the world around them, often to change it, sometimes working closely together, certainly taking inspiration from each other's disciplines. The relationship between the two has traditionally been perceived as one of love and hate, fascination and revulsion, symbiotic but antagonistic. But art is crucial to helping us understand our science legacy and science is well served by applying an artistic lens. How exactly has the ingenuity of science and technology been incorporated into artistic expression? And how has creative practice, in turn, stimulated innovation and technological change? 
 
The Art of Innovation is a history of the past 250 years viewed through the disciplines of art and science. Through fascinating stories that explore the sometimes unexpected relationships between famous artworks and significant scientific and technological objects - from Constable's cloudscapes and the chemist who first measured changes in air pressure, to the introduction of photography and the representation of natural history in print - it offers a new way of seeing, studying and interpreting the extraordinary world around us.

Ian Blatchford

Tilly Blyth

Toby Jones

How art and science have inspired each other, a Radio 4 and the Science Museum collaboration.

The landmark BBC series exploring science in art, developed by Radio 4 in partnership with the Science Museum - with an introduction read by Toby Jones 
 
'A real treat' The Spectator 
 
Art and science are often considered to be in conflict, with art dealing in creativity and science in cold, hard facts. But the two disciplines have always been interconnected, taking inspiration from each other and shaping each other's worlds. In this fascinating 20-part series, Sir Ian Blatchford, Director of the Science Museum, and Dr Tilly Blyth, the Science Museum's Head of Collections, reveal how science's ingenuity has been incorporated into artistic expression - and how art's creativity has stimulated scientific progress and technological change. 
 
Beginning with the Enlightenment and concluding with our modern-day Age of Ambivalence, they take a chronological journey through 250 years of British history, looking at the often surprising relationships between iconic works of art and key scientific objects and ideas. Among the pieces they analyse are Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg's theatrical portrayal of the Industrial Revolution, Coalbrookdale by Night; Constable's cloud paintings; John Nasmyth's extraordinarily detailed photographs of the Moon; Roy Nockolds' Supersonic, the first abstract image to show the breaking of the sound barrier; and Longplayer, a 1000-year-long musical composition created by computer algorithm. 
 
From Joseph Wright's 1776 painting A Philosopher Giving A Lecture On The Orrery, illuminating a new scientific age of wonders, to Cornelia Parker's Einstein's Abstracts and Cold Dark Matter, shining cosmological light on what is yet to be known, we see that science and art are part of the same rich culture, engaged in an ongoing dialogue driven by mutual curiosity, creativity and imagination. 
 
Presented by Sir Ian Blatchford and Tilly Blyth 
Introduction read by Toby Jones 
Readers: Shaun Mason, Katherine Cusack and Sean Baker 
Music composed by Mark Russell 
Produced by Adrian Washbourne, in partnership with The Science Museum Group 
 
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates: 
 
The Scientific Sublime 23 September 2019 
Masters of Spectacle 24 September 2019 
Satirizing Science 25 September 2019 
Observing the Air 26 September 2019 
Tracking Progress 27 September 2019 
Plants on Paper 30 September 2019 
Reaching for the Moon 1 October 2019 
Dyeing to Display 2 October 2019 
Capturing Time 3 October 2019 
Celebrating Speed 4 October 2019 
Art as Protest 7 October 2019 
Humans in the Industrial Machine 8 October 2019 
Forms of Knowledge 9 October 2019 
Supersonic 10 October 2019 
Patterns from Atoms 11 October 2019 
Wonder Materials 14 October 2019 
Polaroid Perceptions 15 October 2019 
Protecting the Earth 16 October 2019 
Patterns of Thought 17 October 2019 
Imagining Matter 18 October 2019

Ian Blatchford

Books by Ian Blatchford

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