I would like to mention, yet again, what seems to be a major flaw in the way science, and academia in general, is conducted nowadays.

Partly because of the way universities are set up, with separate departments on different subjects (which makes sense, right?), there are all these semi-artificial divisions between domains/fields. What was meant to be a helpful but permeable membrane has become in many cases a steel gate. The sciences and arts/humanities are often treated as being completely separate, utterly unlike one another, with one adhering to the principles of the Enlightment, and the other with Romanticism. This is partly based on the reality of the practices people on either side adhere to, but, it’s partly a myth. Science and art are not as different as people think. Both rely on observation, questioning, and creativity. Scientists and artists can help each other tremendously, if they can get over the language barrier. It is even possible for one person to do both!

Even within one subject, there are many differing specialties. This seems good, because, after all, one person can’t do it all. However, this has gone too far when it becomes so incredibly difficult for a person to do/publish work that is “interdisciplinary” or crosses the boundaries of multiple established groups of experts. Inevitably, the people on either side of the boundary get extremely critical of the inter-disciplinary contribution, because they don’t feel it goes deep enough into the territory on their particular side of the fence.

Criticism is necessary and wonderful, but, I become very afraid when people are so attached to the notion of expertise that they refuse to look at anything outside their narrow specialty, or to try to talk to anyone who does not know their secret code. This runs completely counter to the real purpose of education, which is to lead others forward (educo, educere, eduxi, eductus V lead out; draw up; bring up; rear), not to lock them out.

I think this attitude might be stopping a lot of important new ideas from coming to light.

Mitsu asked me to document the visual art up at BronxArtSpace from the July 2010 {S0NiK} Fest and Synthetic Zero Event (click for links to the artists’ websites, etc). If your work is pictured here and you would like more (there are more, including some closeups of individual pieces) or higher-res images, please email me. I have a 12-megapixel DSLR; the originals are huge. Note that Circles & George (my feline charges) are not an art installation.

In other news, I’m taking the GRE this afternoon, and you can read my (totally fictional!) short story, “Locomotion,” which was published on Storychord today.

My friends and I posing with some of Miranda July‘s Eleven Heavy Things in Union Square Park.