Caged canaries were placed in coal mines to warn of poisonous gases in the twentieth century. Programmes to insert artists into laboratories proliferated in the 1990s, just as the canaries had been phased out. Do these 'artists-in-residence' act as metaphorical canaries, detecting practices that are potentially noxious? Or are they cuddly creators, obedient poodles who translate scientists' work into publicly accessible forms?

Two of the largest science–art schemes raise most of the big questions and provide some answers about the nature of these collaborations. The first, the Sciart grant scheme of the Wellcome Trust, Britain's leading biomedical charity, was introduced in 1996 and has lent its name to the whole area of activity. The second is a laboratory, equipped with experimental apparatus and organic materials but staffed by artists. The SymbioticA research centre at the University of Western Australia, Perth, was inaugurated by artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr as the Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A) in 1996, and was formally incorporated into the university as SymbioticA in 2000. It marked its tenth anniversary with a provocative exhibition at the Science Gallery of Trinity College Dublin (see Nature 470, 334; 2011).

Bridging the gap

Semi-Living Worry Doll A covered by living cells (left) grown on a 2-cm-high scaffold (right). Credit: THE TISSUE CULTURE & ART PROJECT, SEMI-LIVING WORRY DOLL A (2000)/ARS ELECTRONICA

The intellectual breeze that fanned the flame of initiatives such as these arose from a concern among many artists and scientists that the divorce between their disciplines was unhealthy. Without subscribing to the more bilious aspects of C. P. Snow's 1959 diagnosis of the 'Two Cultures', it was easy to agree that mid-twentieth-century art and science had become dangerously isolated from each other and from society at large (see Nature 459, 32; 2009). Stories in the press reinforced the perceived weirdness of artists and scientists in the public mind. Notorious images such as the mouse bearing a cartilaginous human-like ear on its back, created by the scientist Charles Vacanti, and the green fluorescent rabbit engineered by the artist Eduardo Kac, fed Frankenstein fantasies in the public imagination.

The Wellcome scheme proved that there was a substantial demand for bridge-building. After a decade, it had received nearly 1,500 applications and made 124 awards totalling almost £3 million (US$4.8 million). Some projects were initiated by scientists, others by artists. In 2006, the scheme was replaced by an extended programme with an investment of £1.2 million a year.

Funding in the sciences and arts is usually formalized around predetermined programmes, standard research protocols and predictable outcomes. Risk has been leached out. The Wellcome Trust rightly recognized that unproven collaborations between imaginative scientists and creative artists needed a different approach at every stage. Risk had to be embraced. The trick was to identify a special creative chemistry between high-level participants.

Although Ken Arnold, the administrator of the scheme, admitted after two years that it wasn't obvious what the ingredients were for success, he and subsequent evaluators now agree that most of the funded projects have had positive outcomes. Many have resulted in exhibited art of high quality or have generated scientific, social, cultural, economic and personal gains for participants and the public (see the Wellcome Trust's report at http://go.nature.com/xz6gnb).

Defining the gains for scientists has proved more elusive than evaluating how artists have benefited. In a gratifying number of instances, host scientists reported that they had acquired broader perspectives on their work or its communication. The artistic presentation of their research in galleries and public spaces has proved salutary for them. Once an image is in the public domain, strict management of its reception is no longer possible, and that can be discomforting and educational. Good artists are expert in this slippery domain and have much to teach the scientists.

Asymmetries

Asymmetries abound in these collaborations. The projects matter in professional terms far more to the artists than the scientists. Little, if any, kudos is to be gained by the scientist in having a Sciart project on his or her CV. It would be good if scientists received more recognition for their participation. For the artist, the collaboration can be an important career move, opening up new venues and audiences. Participating scientists tend to be well enough established not to have to worry about 'wasting time' on an art project. They are often older, male and of high status. Large numbers of the artists are female, young and aspiring.

Some projects are marred by a scientist's belief that he or she can enjoy becoming an artist. It is usually taken as read that the artists will not become professional research scientists during this brief spell. It is a commentary on a general view of artists that the reverse is not seen to hold true. Art, like science, requires highly specialized skills honed over long periods of education and experience.

The grants involved — mostly in the region of £30,000, with a few greatly exceeding this — are substantial for the arts but relatively minor for a successful lab. Much of the money in the early days of the Sciart scheme went towards costs, with artists receiving little or no payment for a great deal of hard work. By contrast, the scientists are likely to be in receipt of a regular salary. Recently, the Wellcome Trust has endeavoured to ensure that the artists receive adequate remuneration.

The SymbioticA model is different. As residents in their own lab, the artists there have the same academic status as experimental scientists on campus. The lab competes for funding within the university and outside. The experimental apparatus and materials are used in a scientific manner, but the resulting research is not published in the way that a scientist would recognize. SymbioticA's greatest achievements have been to establish a different institutional model and attitude towards the end products.

Artistic concerns

The project Semi-Living Worry Dolls, by Catts and Zurr, still working under the name of TC&A, is as much about the process and its recording as it is about fixed artistic products. Traditional worry dolls are given to Guatemalan children so that they can share their concerns with a trusted confidant. The dolls by TC&A are confected from degradable polymers and surgical sutures. The polymers are progressively replaced by living cells within a micro-gravity bioreactor.

First exhibited in Linz, Austria, in 2000, the dolls were the first tissue-engineered sculptures to be presented alive in a gallery. Viewers are invited to speak their worries to the dolls into an adjacent microphone. The anonymous responses have gone further than the anticipated concerns about biological engineering; visitors often spoke about personal issues. SymbioticA's style of artwork is about process and participation, not an enduring material object.

Art–science collaboration is becoming established as a distinct curatorial practice that has a defined public engagement through exhibitions. Educational initiatives are arising, ranging from school programmes to master of arts degrees, such as the two-year postgraduate course at the University of the Arts in London. The notion of artists and scientists collaborating is no longer a surprise, and is a well recognized strategy in the art world.

As the Wellcome and SymbioticA examples show, artists in laboratories come to understand the science in such a way that they act as neither canaries nor poodles in a crudely critical or acquiescent manner. At their best, the artists present works of complexity and subtlety that engage the spectator's imagination in a non-prescriptive way. Ultimately, as with all artworks, the artist lays down the melody while encouraging the visitors to sing their songs in their own way.