Aaron Plasek

Metropolitan State College of Denver, USA

Abstract

Stars are Symbols; Reading and Gallery Show: Insights, Questions

Stars are Symbols is a collaboration between more than 30 writers, poets, artists, and scientists. Each writer/artist converses with a scientist about the research the scientist is currently conducting. They then generate new creative work inspired by this process. All the art, creative writing and scientific research is galleried, culminating in an Associated Writing Programmes Conference Off-Site Reading on April 7, 2010. This work will be permanently archived and viewable online at www.starsaresymbols.org.
This presentation considers some challenging questions that an exhibition like Stars are Symbols engenders. What can we hope to learn about the intersections of science and art by responding to these intersections in discipline-specific modes such as creative writing or fine art? How discuss such exhibitions in a precise manner that neither simplifies or misrepresents ideas in science, nor echoes trite bromides, but helps us recognize new perspectives about the discourses we are considering? Tentative comments to these questions and others will be offered in the hope of facilitating further discussion.   

Biographical Details

Aaron Plasek taught literature and composition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Colorado State University, and presently teaches as an affiliate instructor at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He has degrees in Physics, Astronomy, and English Writing, including a MA in Fine Arts in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In addition to publishing poetry and literary criticism in journals such as DIAGRAM, Alice Blue, Requited, Juked, and The Collagist, he conducted research on supermassive black holes and chaotic systems, and — most recently — worked on the construction of a dark matter detector and a neutrino detector at the University of Chicago.