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in this special episode I'm joined by scientist Tamas Zagyva and artist Bridget Kennedy to talk about creativity in Art and Science the sorts of skills and emotions that are involved and how they both find inspiration in their separate disciplines one of the things that I'm quite interested in is understanding how creativity is used in science and in art as well we tend to think of it as only being the domain of artists to be creative so tomash do you have any thoughts on how you use
creativity as a scientist so my research discipline is Material Science or chemistry researching Material Science you are creating new materials or improve their properties like making them harder tougher or more durable to achieve these research goals you have to work creatively uh why creatively working I mean using the existing Tools in a ways that no one has ever used them and I think glass making is actually a really great example for creativity because we are just simply mimicking
what nature teacher does walk the glasses actually that occurs in nature so when a volcanic lava cools down rapidly it forms a natural glass it is called obsidian when we are creating glasses it's actually just mimicking what nature does but the other example is when we are inspired by nature is uh synthesis of diamonds inspired by Nature we can create three stars that occur in nature by making laboratory conditions for example high temperature high pressure and by creating these
conditions it's actually possible to create new materials or improve their properties so I think in research you Material Science the creative work is basically just work with the existing Tools in a creative way and just think out that's what I absolutely love what you said so much about um using existing Tools in a way that they've never been used before and I think I would add from a sort of Fine Art perspective it's thinking about things in a different way so an artist
might bring two really kind of different things together and kind of go okay what happens when I bring religion the ideas from religion into a relation with nuclear waste what happens then it's kind of looking at either looking at connections or relationships between things from a different perspective and bringing something new in or making new connections I think because artists can kind of draw on so many different references that they can activate a subject matter from lots of different
sort of perspectives and also be quite sort of personal about it so bring your personal experience into that kind of conversation or that sort of process of connecting things and then I mean that I suppose that's all about the kind of conceptual approach to things so this sort of thinking and then yeah I would Echo what you said about using tools and also using material Aerials in a different way or perhaps putting materials into a different context exactly and there are so many available
tactics nowadays for example for sample preparation or analysis and I find it really fascinating my research that I can use tools that have never been used before in my research that were really useful for other science projects I think this is also something that is a creative thinking and that helps certain research to to to go forward and find new things do you look outside of your kind of area for tools well is there a situation where you would make a completely new tool oh definitely wanna
I'm doing my research I read a lot of science papers they're not all related to nuclear waste for example because my research field is working with nuclear based classes they also read papers or other research about Earth Sciences chemistry physics and it's really fascinating to see how so people for different research Fields think about certain materials that they really see things differently so obviously they are using sometimes different tools that could be useful in my science also when
you're talking about the volcanic glass and talking about obsidian one of the things that I've been really interested in is the use of obsidian black mirrors in Aztec culture but also by Mystics like John D for um scrying for looking to the Future for divination when I sort of make connections like that I get really excited the whole time scale of nuclear waste is so huge it's kind of Beyond human it's so difficult for us to kind of perceive or get a handle on so this
idea of this black glass being the material that is kind of capturing nuclear waste but for other cultures it's been a material that has been used to sort of try to understand the future ask questions about the future I just find that totally kind of mind-blowing actually really exciting I don't know if you've come across an object that British nuclear fuels made I think as a kind of souvenir or Memento to do with the vitrification plants that was built at sellerfield and it's it's meant to
represent the volume of nuclear waste that one person would produce if they were to use nuclear power for their whole lifetime to me it looks like a scrying mirror to me it just looks like the objects that John D was using to call Spirits into being there's several objects in the British museum one that's an Aztec obsidian Sky mirror one that's come from a different area it's a clawed glass which is more to do with landscape painting but they share the same
material properties they are black glass shiny round objects yes it's actually interesting to see how natural I've opened the glasses obsidians and the high level whisp human-made glasses look I was just a conference last year when they made a comparison and trying to draw conclusions how nuclear based glasses will behave on a geological thanks girl so we can use this other really similar materials to draw conclusions about durability of nuclear waste glasses is the goal if you're
putting waist deep underground the idea is it should stay locked away there for hundreds of thousands of years it does make sense in a way to look at geological examples that have been around for that sort of time scale to get an idea of what might happen yeah exactly it's interesting you must talk about sort of gaining Insight from drawing together disparate disciplines it sounds like it's quite a common theme in the Arts and in The Sciences as well yeah yeah I was just just thinking to
sort of add to the Deep geological disposal concept what I find interesting about that is there's a technical mechanical kind of process but you put humans into the mix and human humans not predictable humans are unpredictable I think that is actually one of the things that I find very interesting about this whole debate about putting this material into the ground and just leaving it and kind of trusting that people wouldn't interfere with it because history has proved time and time again
that that's not the case the pyramids being the classic sort of example no it's a good point it's one of those big questions like what will language look like in hundreds of thousands of years well people know not to go and dig in this area because we put something down there such a long time ago or will Society be completely different and we'll be digging underground for some other reason that we've not thought of so it's another interesting way to think about it and um something for other
researchers to find inspiration to figure out I think so on the theme of inspiration if you both do research how do you approach it how do you find inspiration I think a PhD journey is a really good example for both so I'm doing my PhD research at the moment being in the beginning of the research you gain inspiration mostly from the people's work you need to read a lot of science papers to be familiar with your research discipline so I think in the beginning
you have an idea based on other people's results and then you're starting doing research and uh during these experiments there are always unexpected things that happen so you'll find some new things and that drives you to do additional experiments find something new so I think in the beginning you probably gain inspiration mostly from other people's research But as time goes on and you become more familiar and more confident then you just simply find new ideas you
just gain inspiration from your own experiments I would agree with that I mean I think artists maybe have a site I mean not all artists do the same thing but I tend to find myself doing this or I don't know whether I'm intending it or not I gain a lot of inspiration by putting myself in a situation where I'm quite uncomfortable and I don't know anything it goes back to this idea of like why would an artist be looking at vitrified nuclear waste you know what has Art's got to do with that it's not
always an easy situation or a comfortable situation but I think it's really important to put yourself in this situation where it challenges your preconceptions and it challenges the people that you're in that situation with it challenges their possible preconceptions of you as an artist or as a scientist actually I think but I think I agree it's kind of seeking out the unexpected which is sounds kind of counter-intuitive but I think you can create situations or environments that
allow unexpected things to occur I feel like it's designed just on the one hand you don't want that to happen but at the same time we don't know everything so there will be unexpected things as much as we like to control all the variables we can't I kind of thought when I was going to say that that it may well be the opposite approach but then of course you like you just said Lord you don't know so you need to be at least kind of mentally prepared for it to not go
exactly how you expect for answers it's like you've set off on that path precisely because you don't know what's going to happen the goal is you find it out during the journey you may have some very open-ended questions which is quite difficult at the beginning of a PhD to explain what you're trying to do because you don't want to lock it down straight away you want things to kind of unfold in time and yeah and develop and kind of Stew otherwise I think it's straying
into sort of the Realms of design rather than fine art yeah I think you can also gain inspiration by talking to other people I really like the brainstorming sessions when I talk to other researchers or for example my supervisors or conferences but and when people are working from from different discipline on the same project they have so many ideas and it helps to create something new and and move the research forward I also gained a lot of inspiration from talking to other people
not necessarily from a research discipline even if I talk to family members about my research they might have some ideas so they don't need to fully understand everything they're really lean on half but I think talking to other people is also a source of inspiration absolutely I mean one of my methods is I just go to the site of Southfield and I hang out around there I walk around there and make little actions with a scrying mirror or with whatever tools I'm taking with me and
inevitably people you know go well what you're doing or you just sort of start chatting to people and it's yeah it's really really interesting because most people that you encounter there will have some kind of History with the site so you could yeah you can kind of gain insights on quite a kind of casual basis with people just walking their dogs or sitting looking at the sea I think I often find in science that talking to non-experts sometimes there's a more insightful conversations because
they think of questions that you've not even thought to ask because you've been in this community that all kind of working on the same thing and thinks in a similar way and someone says but why is that fundamental thing that you think is true why is that true and then you sit there and think actually that's quite a good question and that probably is a good answer I just don't really thought about that exactly and what I do always before presenting at conferences
as I presented to a family member or a friend who is not in that discipline and if they understand it that means I can explain my explain science correct and this is one of the the main goals of doing research is to make it available for everyone we're not doing it just for our own small research group if we want to make it publicly available and what I find interesting about what you both said is you both do research tend to think of it's only scientists that do
research but there's a lot of research in art as well it's just a different process oh yeah and I mean you know I do know quite a lot about sort of the vitrification process and the radioactive substances I couldn't just go into this thing like not knowing a fundamental kind of element of the scientific background of it and the historical background of it I mean sellerfield is such a complicated site in terms of How It's developed and potential for its future development as
well a great audience I always think for artists and maybe for scientists too as children you have children come into an exhibition and they just ask really difficult questions and they're totally uninhibited so it's it's great get a group of sort of seven to eight year olds in your exhibition and you really have to be on your toes usually they're more excited about a research they've been about years ago when I was just sitting in front of a microscope and
showing other people like insects or you know just zooming again children were so excited about just seeing how we can look into small things that they're more excited than that so it is really interesting to see do you also get excited about your own research or the other any other emotions that sort of feature in your day when you're doing science yeah definitely the most difficult that I feared when doing research is excitement because I believe I'm creating something valuable but also
I think research is sort of an emotional roller coaster because you always is uh find unexpected issues in your journey so it's basically a continuous problem solving I think doing research but what I really enjoy it so that there are definitely negatives sometimes frustration and saying things are not going the way how you want it but at the end you know you find a solution you'll come up with an idea and it's a really great experience yeah no I agree with
that kind of roller coaster feeling yeah excitement definitely for me one emotion that's quite important is for me is this vulnerability which is some sort of weird thing but I think it's quite important for me to kind of make myself vulnerable to a situation to kind of really dig into how I feel about something on the other hand I might actually feel kind of love for my research and kind of infatuation with it and fall in love with materials and be seduced by materials sometimes that's
dangerous sometimes you're getting seduced by material and you're not seeing what it's actually doing and it's not doing what you hope it's doing but you're just kind of like just just so shiny or so soft or you know whatever it is yeah and definitely it's curiosity that sort of is the main emotion that kind of drives you forward yeah and I think it's going to affect their efficiency of the work also for example I'm working with simple glasses and also with glass
Composites when there are crystals in the glasses they are always so interested in this crystalline materials for me it looks more exciting having a glass with you know tiny crystals and just looking at the glass I was so so amazed by that so I really focused on on the glass composite sample I should have worked on the simple glasses as well I mean I was just so curious what goes on in the inside is glass Composites when crystals start to form and it kind of
affects how your research goes but this is a good thing because if you're curious about material you put extra work in for that reason so I would say it is also a beneficial thing but it affects your progress yeah it's interesting that you would use the word efficient because I don't think that really comes into my sort of thinking about my processes I mean lots of processes that I use as a vastly vastly time consuming and inefficient sometimes that's really
important to the work it needs to have that like weight of time and attention put into it I think that's where you know sometimes the way something has been made is very important to the meaning that it's trying to convey sometimes things get made quickly and efficiently but sometimes they need to be made in a really inefficient way and you'll need a time to create something great so you can do it quickly so you'll need to be precise accurate you need to think thoroughly do the experiments with
us you cannot rush it you have to spend your time on a certain project to create something great and also just what you were saying about kind of getting seduced by these crystalline structures and there is this kind of drawing in and looking at something really details but then of course you need that time when you stand back and you look at the whole picture and you edit and you kind of go I love that but it's not doing what it should be doing you know that and that
happens in in art as well and sometimes it's the really sort of slight quick things that you've done that are the most important things and the things that you've labored over you have to just kind of let go one of my biggest weaknesses that I spend so much time on creating images or illustrations so I really want to you know present my research in a nice way and always find myself spending way more time on creating nice images illustrations and I should I think that's all part of being
a scientist though especially if you've got a passion for your work and sharing your work with other people you find good ways of doing it right and you want to take the time to do that and being scientist is about more than just sitting in a lab and generating results is you show on it's about finding inspiration communicating all these other transferable skills I do a lot of kind of very repetitive processes and things that you know take a lot of time I value that time because it's time that
I can think about stuff I think I'm sort of engaged in a process that is related to my research but it's that it's that kind of I don't know maybe you have to concentrate more when you're making these images but I find when I'm doing something that takes quite a lot of time my mind can kind of be semi-engaged and that is actually when I get really good ideas so I just I wondered when you're going through this long laborious process of making these images maybe that's valuable time it's really
interesting so my work approach changed over the years so in normal working hours I do that there's a proper research like writing down the results or doing experiments and I actually make these nice images or illustrations in my free time for me it's sort of a relaxation also I really enjoy it because it's visually appealing I would say that's exactly the environment for inspiration to come and ideas to come that's something very interesting you said about work and not working and not
thinking that things are work I have a weird relationship with the word work and what I do I think if you're passionate about what you're doing it doesn't feel like you're working all the time yeah I agree I agree I always feel that I'm an amateur and that I'm sort of finding my own way to do things and that I wouldn't necessarily kind of try to do something the right way or think that because I'd made something as an amateur that it was bad I think there's again
there's this interesting sort of debate between art and craft and skill and this comes in to my teaching quite a lot where students want to know the right way to do something and in my opinion the right way to do something is you your own individual way of doing it of course there are you know there are certain tools that are dangerous to use in particular ways I make things by hand a lot so it's kind of a slightly different approach you talk about the use of power tools and how you could
misuse them and then technically caught on yeah yeah of course there are certain things that you need to do for your own safety but I think there's a massive scope and range of ways to sort of operate with tools or to make your own tools talking about what skiers or abilities you need to do research obviously you need to know the technical terms you you have to understand your discipline doing Material Science you need to know about materials preparation techniques or analyzing them but I think
it's more important to have these sort of soft skills like communication or the ability to learn to adapt communication actually is a key to talking to other people asking how by discussing your research with other people you can really gain ideas it helps creativity determination so the willingness to put work into the research obviously being a scientist about being emotional and being creative and those things also feature in art so there are an awful lot of parallels it sounds like foreign
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