Written by Ryan Saxby Hill on Friday October 19th, 2012

This weekend you don’t have to choose between art and science. You get a decent dose of both with the launch of the Art & Science Journal, a student run project out of University of Ottawa. I caught up with Lee Jones the editor and founder of Art and Science to learn more about the project and what we can expect from the journal.

Lee is hosting a launch party for the journal this Saturday night at Raw sugar. They’ve booked a DJ and will have a print making workshop with Spins and Needles. Addmission is $2 and you can buy a copy of the journal for $6. All the details are in the Facebook invite.

Apartment613: Can you give us an idea of your background? What brought you to this point with an interest in the intersections between art and science?
Lee: I’m currently doing a double major in English and Art History, and I see art first of all as a form of communication. There’s so much wonder to be found in the subjects of science, nature and technology. Because these subject can create wonder, a physical presence like art can be the most effective way to show this to others, and to get them excited about our world!  Artworks are a physical presence that can expand upon knowledge that we have read or heard about. Yes, humans can conceptually understand vast distances, numbers and quantities, but can we truly feel them? Art allows us to feel knowledge in a way that really makes ideas click. The added bonus with art is that through enlargement and artistic exaggeration, art can convey messages about these images and experiences, and can therefore be used for social awareness. Overall, Art & Science Journal isn’t about art for art’s sake, it’s art about ideas and the world we live in.

Apartment613: What is you vision for the magazine? What can we expect?
Lee: Art & Science Journal is a student-run publication about artworks that deal with themes of science, nature and technology. We feature this type of art daily on our website, but the print publication has a local focus and more in-depth interviews. In our first issue we have interviews and artworks by Sanjeev Sivarulrasa, Josée Dubeau, Cindy Stelmackowich, and Elaine Whittaker, along with exhibition reviews from the Ottawa area. It’s a small zine (24 pages) but it’s loaded with art that will blow you away.

Apartment613: How are you running things? Can people get involved?
Lee: Art & Science Journal is a work of self-publishing, and is both a print publication and a website with daily features. We aren’t affiliated with a university on purpose, because we want any student in the Ottawa-area to be able to write for us. We encourage artists to submit their work and for writers to shoot us an email. Writers can do weekly columns, or just a one-time article, depending on their preference. We’re currently a team of 8 writers, some who write for the website, some who write for the print publication, and some who write for both! The print issue is going to be a bi-annual publication, so the next one is already in the works and will be out in March.

Apartment613: Do you think that there are challenges in bridging the gap between artists and scientists? Are their two solitudes?
Lee: Ottawa is a really exciting place for this type of research because there are so many groups that are bridging art/science/tech. For example, Artengine, with the recent electric fields exhibition and mini-maker faire, PrototypeD, with their workshops on creating with tech, Pelling Lab, with their bio-hacking, and so many others. When art/science/tech collide, really cool things happen! Our goal is to show that art and science don’t have to be two solitudes, and it’s actually better when they aren’t. It’s interesting, by starting A&SJ it has lead us down a rabbit-hole, and we keep finding more and more cool projects in the Ottawa area.