Guillaume SCHWEICHER - Studiotopia

Guillaume SCHWEICHER (BE/LU)

Scientist in Residency with Dmitry GELFAND & Evelina DOMNITCH

Biography

Guillaume Schweicher is a FNRS Postdoctoral Fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium) and a visiting scientist at the University of Cambridge (UK) and at IMEC (Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre, Belgium). He received his Master in Chemical Engineering (2008) and Ph.D. (2012) from ULB, followed by post-doctoral appointments at Stanford University (US, 2013, Zhenan Bao) and the University of Cambridge (UK, 2014-2019, Henning Sirringhaus).

His current research interests aim at developing novel organic and hybrid semiconducting materials for greener and more sustainable electronics. For him, microscopy images are bridging the gap between science and art, intriguing and leading to reflection.

Since October 2019, he started to interact with Ohme, a Belgian transdisciplinary and creative label, as an Associate Researcher on the establishment of art and sciences contents in accessible, educational, and interactive formats. Some of his shots have been presented during the exhibition “IMG. | des images qui se regardent” 08-09/2020, See U, Brussels, Belgium.

So far, the most notable outcome from this collaboration is the realisation of the audiovisual performance: “<a href="https://ohme.be/studio/tales-of-entropy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tales of Entropy</a>”, staging the irresistible beauty and poetry of an organic compound changing its physical state in a thermal gradient, under polarized light, premiered 2020/10/23 Pilar, Brussels. <iframe title="vimeo-player" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/481243645" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"/> Why should art and science work together? "Arts and sciences are not opposite ends of a spectrum, rather different paths taken by human creativity and need for inquiry that evolved in different, sometimes complementary directions. Artists and scientists share similar cognitive processes, and an ease to deal with abstract concepts. Experimentation is key to both artistic and scientific practices. The separation between the so-called “Two Cultures” is now slowly being overcomed, for the benefit of artists, scientists, and society as a whole. These benefits can be identified as more agile and diverse development in research, in its unexpected application, in the spreading and accessibility of knowledge. The hyper-specialization that our society has been fostering over the past century should go along with the capacity to make unforeseen connections between disciplines and practices to create a more integrated approach to knowledge creation and sharing. Arts and sciences together can achieve this goal for everyone’s benefit." <tr style="height: 23px;"><td style="width: 47.15189873417721%; text-align: center; height: 23px;"> </td> <td style="width: 3.08175%; height: 23px;"> </td> <td style="width: 49.7664%; height: 23px;"> </td> </tr><table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;" border="0"><tbody><tr><td style="width: 100%; text-align: center;"> </td> </tr></tbody></table>

So far, the most notable outcome from this collaboration is the realisation of the audiovisual performance: “Tales of Entropy”, staging the irresistible beauty and poetry of an organic compound changing its physical state in a thermal gradient, under polarized light, premiered 2020/10/23, Pilar, Brussels.

Why should art and science work together?

“Arts and sciences are not opposite ends of a spectrum, rather different paths taken by human creativity and need for inquiry that evolved in different, sometimes complementary directions. Artists and scientists share similar cognitive processes, and an ease to deal with abstract concepts. Experimentation is key to both artistic and scientific practices.

The separation between the so-called “Two Cultures” is now slowly being overcomed, for the benefit of artists, scientists, and society as a whole. These benefits can be identified in a more agile and diverse development in research, in its unexpected application, in the spreading and accessibility of knowledge. The hyper-specialization that our society has been fostering over the past century should go along with the capacity to make unforeseen connections between disciplines and practices to create a more integrated approach to knowledge creation and sharing. Arts and sciences together can achieve this goal for everyone’s benefit.”