See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/344132001

Interdisciplinary Arts

Chapter · January 2017

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198733522.013.12

CITATIONS READS

3 1,273

1 author:

Tanya Augsburg
San Francisco State University
28 PUBLICATIONS 309 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Tanya Augsburg on 28 May 2023.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Chapter 10

In terdiscipli na ry A rts
Tanya Augsburg

The interdisciplinary arts have yet to receive their fair share of attention within the exist-
ing literature on interdisciplinarity even as interrelations between the arts have become
increasingly commonplace. As David Cecchetto et al. point out, “previous research on inter-
disciplinarity between the arts has been strangely piecemeal, especially when one consid-
ers the abundance of recent scholarly writing devoted to the challenges and possibilities of
academic interdisciplinarity” (Cecchetto et al. 2008, p. xii). To note one prominent example,
Julie Thompson Klein’s seminal 1990 study Interdisciplinarity includes bibliographies for
the social sciences, the humanities, and the sciences—​but none for the arts. The tendency
among scholars whose expertise lies outside the arts to conflate the study of art history or the
study of musicology with the study of interdisciplinary arts has perhaps contributed to this
relative lack of attention—​again within the literature on interdisciplinarity, which has tradi-
tionally focused more on the social sciences, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the sciences
and the humanities.
Complicating matters has been the lack of consensus about what the interdisciplinary arts
entail, which is not surprising given ongoing debates about the arts in general. Authoritative
definitions for the interdisciplinary arts written by interdisciplinary artists and scholars are
difficult to find. As historians of multimedia Randall Packer and Ken Jordan concede, “defi-
nitions are confining” (Packer & Jordan 2001, p. xxxiii). Artists who value artistic freedom
and originality have been known to resist participating in normative discourses that defini-
tions often serve to establish. Tactics of resistance can include downright refusals but they
can also entail deferrals from answering the question, “What are the interdisciplinary arts?”
by highlighting the lack of canonical definitions—​which happens to be the approach Eckerd
College’s long-​standing interdisciplinary arts program takes on its website: “Look in any arts
or cultural history text and you’ll not likely find an entry for Interdisciplinary Arts” (http://​
www.eckerd.edu/​academics/​interdisciplinaryarts/​about/​index.php).

10.1 Interrelations

Just because definitions are scarce or not yet authoritative does not mean they do not exist.
Two well-​crafted definitions are worth noting here: the first within the interdisciplinary

Augsburg, T., Interdisciplinary Arts. In: The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, Second Edition. Edited by
Robert Frodeman, Julie Thompson Klein, and Roberto C. S. Pacheco: Oxford University Press (2017). © Oxford
University Press. DOI 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198733522.013.12
132   Interdisciplinary Arts

studies (IDS) literature, and the second, apparently influenced by it. Within the IDS litera-
ture, James W. Davis offers the following definition in his history of the well-​regarded albeit
eventually ill-​fated interdisciplinary arts program at San Francisco State: “ ‘Interdisciplinary
arts’ … came to be defined as original, creative works that synthesized theory and practice
(ideas and applications), and that also integrated two or more elements of expression (choos-
ing from sound, images, movement, text, and spatial/​temporal modes of expression)” (Davis
2009, p. 103). Alternatively, the interdisciplinary arts program at Arizona State West defined
the interdisciplinary arts on its former website as a course of study: “Interdisciplinary arts
means an approach to study and training in the arts, performance and creativity that focuses
on how multiple artistic disciplines combine in an integrated way with an emphasis on new
concepts and experiences and artistic way of working.” Both definitions emphasize integra-
tion not only of art forms, disciplines, mediums, or media but also the synthesis of ideas and
artistic practice in the study and production of interdisciplinary artworks. More specifically,
both definitions suggest that the interdisciplinary arts involve more than the synthesis and
integration of art media, mediums, and disciplines. In other words, the interdisciplinary arts
are reflective of, and characterized by, their interrelations with academic disciplines, fields,
and discourses within and outside the realm of art. At their core the interdisciplinary arts
exemplify what has been termed as either a wide or broad form of interdisciplinarity (Newell
1998; Klein & Parncutt 2010).
Their broadness suggests additional qualities. Broad interdisciplinarity connotes inclu-
sivity, another integral feature of the interdisciplinary arts. Inclusivity in turn implies
openness to continuous change and innovation. Outwardly and continually inclusive,
expanding, evolving, and innovative, the interdisciplinary arts defy attempts at not only def-
inition but also periodization, categorization, comparisons, theorization, and typologies—​
in other words, the established arsenal of concepts, methodologies, and approaches that
scholars have deployed to study and understand the arts (Klein 2005, pp. 108–​109). Rather
than aim for the definitive, scholars interested in studying and researching the interdisci-
plinary arts would do well to accept from the onset that they will never have the last word
on the subject.
The rest of this chapter offers a brief and necessarily incomplete overview of what has been
written on the interdisciplinary arts within academic scholarship on the creative arts. The
comprehensive and authoritative history of interdisciplinarity within all of the arts across
cultures has yet to be written, and space limitations prohibit any attempt here. Instead, this
chapter is offered as an initial overview on which subsequent research on interdisciplinarity
in general, and the interdisciplinary arts in particular, can build. My outline draws from an
extensive review on the existing literature on interdisciplinary arts, which has focused its
attention on a few established traditions within the creative arts literature while ignoring
many other important strands of interdisciplinary arts such as my own areas of specialty,
performance art and feminist art. This chapter does not include a discussion of interarts
research within art history and musicology, as Klein has offered such accounts elsewhere
(Klein 2005; Klein & Parncutt 2010).
From my research, I have identified five major integrative aspects highlighted in the
existing literature on the interdisciplinary arts: (1) the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, the
perceived fusion between the arts, that is, the “unified” or “total work of art”; (2) the legacy
of the historical avant-​garde, with its focus on radical juxtaposition; (3) the continuation
of post–​World War II arts experimentation in between and among multiple art mediums
 The Quest for Unity and the Total Work of Art    133

simultaneously with Happenings, intermedia, and multimedia; (4) the intersections between
art, science, and/​or technology, particularly that which is known as electronic or digital arts
since the rapid developments in computers, communications technology, biotech, and new
media; and (5) interdisciplinary arts as its own emergent subject of inquiry, practice, and
research that encompasses the previous four aspects as well as a rhetoric of its own.

10.2 Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk:

The Quest for Unity and
the Total Work of Art

Interdisciplinarity is often viewed as dependent on, and a response to, the concept of dis-
ciplinarity. The concept of the interdisciplinary arts is not only a reaction to the division of
art mediums—​it also counters the valorization of the “purity” and “autonomy” of each art
medium by modern and modernist aesthetics since the late eighteenth century. Writing
in 1920s, the philosopher Walter Benjamin observed that the impulse toward unifying
the arts was evident as far back as the seventeenth century, while in the nineteenth cen-
tury Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Richard Wagner traced back interrelations
between the arts all the way back to Ancient Greek drama (Koss 2010). Nonetheless, as
the art historian Juliet Koss points out in her monumental study on Wagner’s influence on
modernism,

within the discipline of art history … scholars regularly invoke the Gesamtkunstwerk as a
countermodel for the “advanced art” of European modernism, conveniently erasing the con-
cept’s revolutionary origins… . Such assessments invariably oppose the Gesamtkunstwerk
to such basic principles as artistic purity, autonomy, and medium specificity (the idea that
each art work should develop and present those attributes specific to medium). (Koss 2010,
pp. xi–​xii)

Many existing theoretical considerations and historical accounts of the interdisciplinary

arts begin with Wagner’s oft-​misunderstood concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, which contained
elements of complete integration or fusion while still respecting each medium’s autonomy.
Neither the term Gesamtkunstwerk nor the dream of total unity, however, originates with
Wagner. The term has been traced back to an 1827 text of philosopher Karl Friedrich Eusebius
Trahndorff (Koss 2010). Koss points to a 1803 lecture by Schelling, in which he simultane-
ously exalted ancient Greek tragedy’s unification of art forms while expressing a hope for
future synthetic form of opera, as laying the groundwork for Wagner’s later ideas (Koss 2010,
p. 11). In two essays, Art and Revolution and The Art-​Work of the Future, Wagner envisioned
a total artwork that would unify and synthesize poetry, music, and dance in order to create
an “integrated drama,” “the consummate artwork of the future.” Nevertheless Wagner’s con-
cept of the Gesamtkunstwerk was paradoxical, as it unified multiple art forms while keeping
their individual distinctness and independence as they contributed to its creation. In other
words, it suggests both unity and autonomy. So the term Gesamtkunstwerk in itself is an inte-
grated term, containing elements of what in the literature on interdisciplinarity considers
both multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity.
134   Interdisciplinary Arts

In Wagnerian opera, much more that art forms were unified. The theater was designed
to give audiences a total immersive experience, which, as Koss points out, “often stands for
an artistic environment or performance in which spectators are expertly maneuvered into
dumbfounded passivity by a sinister and powerful force” (Koss 2010, p. xii). The orchestra
pit was lowered to become hidden, and elaborate sets masked intricate mechanics. Wagner’s
ideas for his Festival Theater additionally blurred the traditional distinctions between audi-
ence and stage.
Moreover, the Gesamtkunstwerk attempted to go beyond the aesthetic realm to unite
with nationalistic and political aims. While Wagner may have envisioned a new Athens, the
philosopher Theodor Adorno would subsequently link it with anti-​Semitism and German
fascism of the 1930s (Adorno 2005; Koss 2010, p. 279). Wagner’s antimodern and anticosmo-
politan stances, which ultimately resulted in his decision to locate his Festival Theater in the
small town of Bayreuth, nonetheless set the stage for revolutionary innovation within the
arts beginning with the historical avant-​garde during the first three decades of the twentieth
century.

10.3 The Historical Avant-​Garde

and Radical Juxtapositions

The close associations of interdisciplinary arts with new and experimental art developments
harken back to the tradition of the historical avant-​garde movements (Futurism, Dadaism,
Constructivism, and Surrealism). The invention of new art forms such as collage, concrete
poetry, sound poetry, performance art, montage, photomontage, assemblages, construc-
tions, readymades, mobiles, and kinetic sculptures was grounded in artistic innovation, rev-
olutionary aspirations, and a sense of the new. They were also foundationally integrative as
the avant-​garde combined established art genres and incorporated materials not previously
included in, or considered as, art or art media.
For example, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in 1912 invented collage—​the integration
of paint on two-​dimensional planes with nonpaint such as newspaper fragments in paint-
ing that would later extend to three dimensions with their cubist constructions and Kurt
Schwitters’s assemblages. The Italian Futurist composer Luigi Russolo made the case for
composers to consider the noises of modern life for the renewal of music in his 1913 mani-
festo The Art of Noise. Marcel Duchamp laid the groundwork for both conceptual art and
kinetic art when he created his first readymade Bicycle Wheel (1913) by attaching a bicycle
wheel to a stool. When several years later in 1917 Duchamp signed the fictive name R. Mutt
on a urinal, he challenged philosophically the limits of art by calling into question both the
originality and status of the art object.
The Dadaist Hugo Ball is often credited with launching performance art when he recited
noise poetry at the Café Voltaire in Switzerland in 1916. The Russian Constructivist Arseny
Avraamov in 1922 composed and organized The Symphony of Sirens, an outdoor public event
performed by thousands of musicians and workers, incorporating synthetically modern
sounds such as cannon shots, foghorns, and factory sirens into his musical score. In 1924,
Sergei Eisenstein created a novel way to forge continuities and overlaps within different
 Intermedia and Multimedia Experimentations after World War II    135

strips of film with his editing technique of montage. Comte de Lautréamont’s poetic line “as
beautiful as a chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table”
found form with Surrealism, which borrowed heavily from the ideas of Freudian psycho-
analysis to unleash the powers of the unconscious through art by means of strange juxtaposi-
tions to create startling effects.
The integrative strategies and techniques of the avant-​garde remain to be considered at
length within the literature on interdisciplinarity. The avant-​garde emphasized radical juxta-
position, particularly collage in all its manifestations, to create a sense of “shock of the new”
and “startling effects” that enabled new perspectives and insights. Avant-​garde composers,
artists, and filmmakers provoked viewers to find common ground between two different
entities with the confidence that such common ground was always possible. Many avant-​
garde innovations would advance further during the rise of intermedia and multimedia as
art disciplines in their own right beginning in the late 1940s.

10.4 Intermedia and Multimedia

Experimentations after World War II

The period after World War II witnessed an unprecedented mixing of arts to create new art
media that had their roots in the avant-​garde. Already in 1916, Italian Futurists “declared
film to be the supreme art because it embraced all other art forms through the use of
(then) new media technology” (Packer & Jordan 2001, p. xx). They saw film as the means
toward what they called polyexpressiveness, “towards which all the most modern artistic
researches are moving” (Marinetti et al. 2001, p. 12). Among the qualities they sought for
Futurist cinema was simultaneity, a quality composer John Cage explored with other art-
ists at Black Mountain College in 1948, when he orchestrated an untitled event at Black
Mountain College. Cage collaborated with the painter Robert Rauschenberg, choreogra-
pher Merce Cunningham, and poets Charles Olson and Mary Richards, among others to
create a multidisciplinary work that was based on the concepts of simultaneity and action.
The performance scholars Rosemary Klich and Edward Scheer have described the event as
follows:

Numerous artistic forms were employed within the event: as Cage spoke about the “relation of
music to Zen Buddhism,” Rauschenberg played records on a gramophone and projected slides
and film on the ceiling. Merce Cunningham danced through the audience while Olson and
Richards read their poetry and Jay Watt sat in the corner and played different instruments. It
was significant that these events/​processes/​performances occurred simultaneously, and could
be considered equally important, without any mode being relegated to a supportive role… .
Performers were given a score which indicated time brackets only—​the rest was up to them.
The performances were simultaneous events unified by the theatrical frame, and by the audi-
ences’ experience. (Klich & Scheer 2012, p. 28)

Cage’s experiments were considered to break down the boundaries between the arts, as well
as require more active participation of audiences to make meaning of what they were experi-
encing as art. The painter Allen Kaprow would subsequently explore these ideas though the
136   Interdisciplinary Arts

avant-​garde technique of assemblage—​the mixing of three-​dimensional objects. Kaprow’s

first Happenings in 1959 expanded assemblages to room environments and involved what
the critic and scholar Richard Konstelanetz would later term a “theater of mixed means”
(Konstelanetz 1968). Participants (rather than audience members) would take part in a
Happening event by moving around three room environments and interacting with the
players (rather than actors or performers) according to Kaprow’s written instructions dis-
seminated beforehand. In his essay “Untitled Guidelines for Happenings” Kaprow asserted
“that audiences should be eliminated entirely. All the elements—​people, space, the particu-
lar materials, and character of the environment, time can in this way be integrated” (Kaprow
2001, p. 313).
Kaprow’s Happenings brought together elements from multiple established art forms—​
theater and painting—​as well as emergent media of installation and assemblage to create
works that at the time seemed “in between” art disciplines. In 1965 the Fluxxus artist Dick
Higgins published an influential essay in which he coined the term intermedia, although
he claimed to have borrowed the term from Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Writing a postscript
to the text in 1981, Higgins noted that Coleridge used the word in 1812 “in exactly its con-
temporary sense—​to define works which fall conceptually between media that are already
known” (Higgins 1984, p. 23). Scholars have since largely dismissed his claims as exagger-
ated, since Coleridge only used the term intermedium as an adjective once in 1812, whereas
Higgins succeeded in popularizing the term as an important concept for thinking about
new developments in art, even as he eventually lost some of his initial enthusiasm for the
term, warning that “it is more useful at the onset of a critical process than at the later
stages of it” (Higgins 1984, p. 28). Nonetheless, Higgins’s concept of intermedia has been
used to describe both the blurring of disciplinary boundaries and artworks regarded as
“in-​between” established art mediums. The concept of intermedia thus introduced mul-
tidimensionality to interdisciplinarity with a sense of place (in-​betweenness) and time
(simultaneity).
“Intermedia” became a popular term during in the 1960s to describe the experimen-
tations by painters, sculptors, dancers, musicians, and filmmakers associated with the
Judson Church and the Fluxxus art movement who freely combined visual arts, sculp-
ture, film, slide photography, and dance in their work. A year after Higgins published his
essay in 1965, the term “multimedia” also started to be used, especially for art that involved
video, film, and electronic music. The advent of video and personal computing as well as
advances in communication technologies during the 1960s eventually shifted the mean-
ing of multimedia: By the early 1980s it focused more on electronic and computer-​based
art. In contrast to intermedia, multimedia has emphasized the simultaneous multiplicity
of art forms while also aligning itself with the technology and art movement, which has
prompted Packer and Jordan (2001) to proclaim, “multimedia is emerging as the defining
medium of the twenty-​first century” (p. xv). While they view integration as “the founda-
tion of multimedia,” (p. xxxvi), they also list interactivity, hypermedia, immersion, and
narrativity as characteristics, concluding that “the medium’s only defining element is its
mutability” (p. xxxviii). In a very real sense the multimedia experiments during the 1960s
paved the way for the acceleration of the technology and art movement. As Packer and
Jordan point out, “it was not until Bell Labs scientist Billy Klüver placed the potential of
advanced engineering into the hands of artists in New York that integrated works of art
and technology began to flourish” (p. xxi).
 Science, Technology and Art    137

10.5 Science, Technology and Art: Hybridity,

Research, and Opposing Worldviews

Artists have always been interested in incorporating science and technology in art. As
Klüver observed, “technology has always been closely tied in to the development of art. For
Aristotle, Technê means both art and technology. As they became different subjects they still
fed on each other” (Klüver 2001, p. 35). Leonardo da Vinci drew on his skills as an artist to
further his studies in science and engineering. Nineteenth-​century painters drew on scien-
tific research on light and motion. Beginning with the Italian Futurists, avant-​garde artists
began to view technology as an art medium in its own right. Lásló Moholy-​Nagy experi-
mented with light and making art with telephones while at the Bauhaus, the German mod-
ernist precursor for contemporary interdisciplinary arts education. Marcel Duchamp called
Alexander Calder’s hanging moving objects mobiles in 1932. By the late 1950s, kinetic art
was firmly established as a strand of modern art. For the most part, kinetic art explored the
aesthetics of motion. In 1960 Jean Tinguely created Homage to New York, a machine perfor-
mance in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern art during which a machine that
he created with other artists and engineers destroyed itself. Tinguely’s machine performance
set the stage for postmodernist and poststructualist technological art that coincidentally cri-
tiqued the very technologies in which it participated.
One of Tinguely’s collaborators, the aforementioned engineer Billy Klüver, cofounded
Experiments in Art and Technology, also known as E.A.T, in 1961 to bring artists and engi-
neers together to create new artworks (Packer & Jordan 2001, pp. xxi–​xxii). By 1965 the
Fluxxus composer Nam June Paik pioneered electronic and new media art by combining
television, music, and live performance with the new medium of video. The 1970s saw the
rise of new media art using video, television, film, and satellite technologies. With the advent
of personal computing, computer-​mediated communication technologies, the Internet, and
the World Wide Web, the term multimedia became increasingly associated with electronic
forms of imaging and what Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin call “remediation,” the representa-
tion of an artwork in another medium (Bolter & Grusin 1999).
The developments in art, science, and technology are too vast and large in scope to be
summarized here. Numerous encyclopedic compendiums have attempted to document
comprehensively the developments in technology, science, and art even as their authors
acknowledge the impossibility of completing the task. Margo Lovejoy’s Digital Currents: Art
in the Electric Age remains an influential pioneering survey after several editions (Lovejoy
2004; first published 1989). Among the most authoritative studies have been those published
as part of the Leonardo journal series published by MIT Press, such as Steve Wilson’s (2002)
Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology and Steve Dixon’s Digital
Performance (Dixon 2007).
Despite the considerable growth in art and technology scholarship, little emphasis has
been placed on interdisciplinarity. Lovejoy (2004), Wilson (2002), and Frank Popper (2007)
each note that artists working with science and technology must reconcile with opposing
worldviews—​that of science and what Wilson (2002) calls “critical theory,” that is, the cul-
tural critique of science and technology. Wilson asserts that artists have responded to that
opposition three ways: “(1) continue a modernist practice of art linked with adjustments for
138   Interdisciplinary Arts

the contemporary era; (2) develop a unique postmodernist art built around deconstruction
at its core; (3) develop a practice focused on elaborating the possibilities of new technology.”
Wilson adds, “In reality, the work of artists interweaves these approaches” (p. 26).
Two of the three responses Wilson (2002) identifies can be regarded as integrative. The
second response, creating art that contains either a reflection on or critique of technology,
maintains two opposing views simultaneously without necessarily offering any common
ground. Wilson asserts that for artists who pursue deconstruction as art practice, “theory,
writing, and art production become intertwined in intimate ways” (p. 27). The third response
requires that artists “participate in research activity rather than remain distant commenta-
tors, even while maintaining reservations about the meaning and future of the scientific
explosion” (p. 28). Wilson furthermore suggests that the third response offers artists the fol-
lowing opportunities:

Free from the demands of the market and the socialization of particular disciplines, artists
can explore and extend principles and technologies in unanticipated ways. They can pursue
“unprofitable” lines of inquiry or research outside of disciplinary priorities. They can integrate
disciplines and create events that expose the cultural implications, costs, and possibilities of
the new knowledge and technologies. (Wilson 2002, p. 28)

Additional integrative techniques can be noted. First and foremost is that of hybridization, a
methodological concept borrowed from biology and agriculture. It implies seamless, if not
organic, integration of two or more different form or materials. In 1972 James W. Davis iden-
tified seven different types of hybrid elements in art (Davis 1972). The result of hybridization,
hybridity, as a concept has been increasingly used since the 1990s extensively to describe
not only technological art but also contemporary art in general (Drucker 2005). Simon
Shaw-​Miller goes so far as to assert “that hybridity … is perhaps the general condition of
the arts” (Shaw-​Miller 2002, p. 32), a sentiment shared by James W. Davis in his book Hybrid
Culture: Mix-​Art (2007).
Within the constellation of possible intersections between technology and art, the tech-
nology itself can be considered as integrative. Immersive art is often used to describe the use
of technology and art to create immersive environments such as those produced by virtual
reality. Such artworks mix “real-​world realities” with those that are mediated (Benford &
Giannachi 2011). Network or communications arts are based on the use of communication
technologies or computer-​mediated communication such as the Internet. Transgenic arts
describe the artist creation of new life forms by new combinations of DNA, such as Eduardo
Kac’s transgenic bunny, Alba, that glowed green under florescent light. The more technologi-
cal or scientific the art, the greater the possibility of collaborations between artists, scientists,
and engineers that can be best categorized as research. Paradoxically, while the interrelations
between science, technology, and art are increasingly research based, the theorization of
interdisciplinary arts continues to be more associated with arts and humanities scholarship.

10.6 Recent Interdisciplinary Arts Research

By now it should be evident that current notions of the interdisciplinary arts have been to
no small extent cobbled together from the past, particularly from overlapping accounts of
 Recent Interdisciplinary Arts Research    139

the Gesamtkunstwerk, the historical avant-​garde, intermedia, multimedia, and technologi-

cal arts. New ideas about the interdisciplinary arts are drawing heavily from metaphor. As
Klein (1990) points out, metaphors are indispensible tools for both thinking about and doing
interdisciplinarity. For example, hybridity remains a central yet still undertheorized inte-
grative metaphorical concept in more recent interdisciplinary arts. First used to describe
integrations between art, science, and technology, it has emerged as a fundamental term
for understanding contemporary art in general. Its discursive journey from the sciences to
the arts as a concept also illustrates Mieke Bal’s theory of traveling concepts, which Bal has
espoused as fundamental for interdisciplinarity within the humanities (Bal 2002).

10.6.1 Collision as an Emergent Interdisciplinary

Arts Metaphor
Collision has emerged as another significant metaphorical interdisciplinary arts concept.
In 2005 a group of graduate students organized an inaugural conference investigating the
interdisciplinary arts titled Collision at the University of Victoria, which was followed by
another symposium on the topic the following year. In 2008 a volume of essays from the two
meetings was published, and in its introduction the editors explain their choice of metaphor.
Noting that the most common image of collision comes not from physics but from popular
media—​the image of cars colliding—​the editors describe the interdisciplinary arts in terms
resonant of Wagner: “In this book the productive struggle between two or more art forms or
disciplines is described as a radical exteriority, suggesting continual movement while resist-
ing any final unity or acceptance of one form’s dominance over another” (Cecchetto et al.
2008, pp. xi–​xii).
Distancing the interdisciplinary arts from the interarts model, “where one art form bor-
rows or adopts characteristics from another,” the editors embrace instead “Roland Barthes’
[sic] disruptive notion of interdisciplinarity as an act that results in mutation when ‘the
solidarity of the old disciplines breaks down-​perhaps even violently’ (Barthes 1984, p. 56)”
(Cecchetto et al. 2008, p. xiii). For these scholars, “this rupturing of boundaries points to
the sense in which the term ‘collision,’ while maintaining its suggestion of forceful impact
between two or more distinct masses moving in different directions, also conveys a poten-
tially productive learning from differences” (p. xiii). Elsewhere in the volume, the contribu-
tor Tanya Augsburg (2008) cites another passage about interdisciplinarity from Barthes that
emphasizes creative innovation: “In order to do interdisciplinary work, it is not enough to
take a ‘subject’ (a theme) and to arrange two or three sciences around it. Interdisciplinary
study consists in creating a new object, which belongs to no one” (Barthes 1981, p. 72).

10.6.2 An Interdisciplinary Arts Typology

The Collision editors cite Shaw-​Miller (2002), who has made an attempt at developing a
typology for the interdisciplinary arts based on the philosopher Jerrold Levinson’s prior
distinctions. Levinson (1984) borrows the concept of hybrid to distinguish three types of
“hybrid art forms”: (1) juxtaposition, (2) synthesis, and (3) transformation. Shaw-​Miller
140   Interdisciplinary Arts

superimposes interdisciplinary typology on Levinson’s categories: juxtaposition as multidis-

ciplinary, synthesis as interdisciplinary, and transformation as cross-​disciplinary. Examples
of multidisciplinary juxtaposition would include Cages’s untitled 1952 event at Black
Mountain College as well as Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s collaborative opera Einstein
on the Beach (1976). Synthetic interdisciplinary work would be more evident with Wagner’s
Gesamtkunstwerk as well as collage. Cross-​disciplinary transformation is “characterized by
an instable relationship between its constituent elements,” where “one art form crosses over
into the territory of the other(s) as in kinetic sculpture,” which Levinson defines as “ordi-
nary sculpture modified in the direction of dance” (Levinson 1984, p. 33). For Shaw-​Miller,
whether the art is juxtapositional, synthetic, or transformational, “the combining of music
and the visual arts draws attention to points of similarity, difference, and contrast” (Shaw-​
Miller 2002, p. 27). Arguably his attempt at typology does not go far enough, given the recent
interest in conceptualizing the transdisciplinary arts.

10.7 Toward Transdisciplinary Arts

The existing scholarship on transdisciplinary arts has yet to catch up to its burgeoning prac-
tice. Recently established transdisciplinary arts programs such as the transdisciplinary
media arts and technology graduate program at University of California, Santa Barbara, and
the MA/​MFA trandisciplinary new media program at the Paris College of Art emphasize
the intersections between science, art, technology, and new media. The Paris College of Art
appears to draw from definitions of transdisciplinarity as a collaborative practice in its pro-
gram description:

Designed for those who are interested in exploring the wide-​ranging creative field of New
Media that goes beyond traditionally defined art and design disciplines, this program employs
methods of transdisciplinary practice through collaborative teamwork. Through a shared cre-
ative process, students will re-​frame their current understanding of different tools, technolo-
gies, theories and methods, developing hybrid systems and solutions that go beyond any one
discipline. (https://​www.paris.edu/​departments/​in_​program/​19/​66)

The above description points to the transdisciplinary arts as art that is collaborative while
transcending disciplinary boundaries altogether. In 2005 Ami Davis described transdisci-
plinary arts by distinguishing them from the interdisciplinary arts:

In interdisciplinary pursuits, disciplines collaborate. Scientists and artists, commonly

regarded as ideologically opposed practitioners, can intersect and contemplate their com-
mon relationships. However, these interacting disciplines ultimately retain their identities as
isolated from each other. Transdisciplinary projects have also an agenda to explore common
practices among disciplines, but with a more holistic approach. By transcending conventional
notions of what appropriate activities within a discipline are, participants attempt to bridge
disciplines in innovative ways… . In transdisciplinary projects, the traditionally assumed
binary nature of art and science is exposed, and not taken for granted. (A. Davis, 2005)

For Ami Davis (2005), the overriding metaphor for transdisciplinary arts is transvergence.
In 2012 for the Second Annual Conference on Transdisciplinary Imaging the metaphorical
 Conclusion   141

theme was interference as a strategy for art. The proceedings from this conference were
published in 2014 as a volume of Leonardo Electronic Almanac titled Interference Strategies,
coedited by Lanfranco Aceti and Paul Thomas. According to Aceti, interference “is a word
that assembles a multitude of meanings interpreted according to one’s perspective and ideo-
logical constructs as a meddling, disturbance, and an alteration of modalities of interaction
between two parties… . Interfering artworks … by their own nature challenge a system”
(Aceti 2014, p. 10). For Thomas (2014), “the theme of `interference strategies for art’ reflects
a literal merging of sources, an interplay between factors, and acts as a metaphor for the
interaction of art and science, the essence of transdisciplinary study” (p. 13). Interference is
explored as “a key tactic for the contemporary image in disrupting and critiquing the con-
tinual flood of constructed imagery,” and as “an active process of negotiating between differ-
ent forces” (p.14). The contributor Anna Munster points out that as a concept, interference
has been conceived within physics “as a phenomenon and then technique for generating a
diverse range of scientific imaging from the mid-​twentieth century onward” (Munster 2014,
p. 155). It is an ethical tactic for interfering with static and authoritative contemporary scien-
tific imaging.

10.8 Conclusion

Interdisciplinary arts are thriving, although the scholarship on the interdisciplinary arts has
yet to catch up with practice. Views of the interdisciplinary arts have shifted from Wagnerian
ideals of a unified total artwork to theoretical considerations of certain current artistic prac-
tices. Presently the literature reflects a fascination with latest technological developments,
as it borrows heavily from the scholarship on science, technology, and art. As it currently
exists, the literature is not only incomplete but also mostly devoid of considerations of inter-
disciplinary art that foregrounds social, global, and environmental awareness and activism.
Consequently, it is out of sync with much of the thriving interdisciplinary developments evi-
dent in theater, film, music, performance art, dance, feminist art, disability arts, contempo-
rary art, social practice art, and more. Nonetheless, it is an important discourse to review
and consider, as advances in understanding what are the interdisciplinary arts propel the
understanding of all the arts forward. It also serves to advance the understanding of interdis-
ciplinarity in general, and possibilities for integrative techniques in particular.

References
Aceti, L. (2014). Interference strategies: Is art in the middle? Leonardo Electronic Almanac 20
(2), 10–​12.
Adorno, T. (2005). In search of Wagner. Edited by R. Livingstone, Foreword by S. Zizek.
London: Verso.
Augsburg, T. (2008). Blurring scholarly research and art: Joanna Frueh’s performances
of the interdisciplinary feminist self. In D. Cecchetto, N. Cuthbert, J. Lassonde, &
D. Robinson (Eds.), Collision: Interarts practice and research, pp. 209–​224. Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
142   Interdisciplinary Arts

Bal, M. (2002). Traveling concepts in the humanities: A rough guide. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. Translated by Richard Howard.
New York: Hill & Wang.
Barthes, R. (1984). From work to text. In The rustle of language, pp. 56–​64. Translated by R.
Howard. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Benford, S., & Giannachi, G. (2011). Performing mixed reality. Cambridge, MA, and London:
MIT Press.
Bolter, J., & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding new media. Cambridge, MA, and
London: MIT Press.
Cecchetto, D., Cuthbert, N., Lassonde, J., & Robinson, D. (Eds.). (2008). Collision: Interarts
practice and research. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Davis, A. (2005). Transvergence in art history. Switch, 20, CADRE Laboratory for New Media,
San Jose State University, CA. Retrieved March 2, 2015, from http://​www.ekac.org/​transver-
gence.html
Davis, J. W. (1972). Unified drawing through the use of hybrid pictorial elements and grids.
Leonardo, 5, 1–​9.
Davis, J. W. (2007). Hybrid culture: Mix-​art. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.
Davis, J. W. (2009). From cutting edge to cutting board: The Inter-​Arts Center at San Francisco
State University. In T. Augsburg & S. Henry (Eds.), The politics of interdisciplinary stud-
ies: Essays on transformations in American undergraduate programs, pp. 102–​111. Jefferson,
NC: McFarland.
Dixon, S. (2007). Digital performance: A history of new media in theater, dance, performance
art, and installation. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press.
Drucker, J. (2005). Sweet dreams: Contemporary art and complicity. Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press.
Higgins, D. (1984). Horizons: The poetics and theory of the intermedia. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press.
Kaprow, A. (2001). Untitled guidelines for Happenings. In R. Packer & K. Jordan (Eds.),
Multimedia: From Wagner to virtual reality, pp. 307–​314. New York and London: Norton.
Klein, J. T. (1990). Interdisciplinarity: History, theory, and practice. Detroit, MI: Wayne State
University Press.
Klein, J. T. (2005). Humanities, culture, and interdisciplinarity: The changing American acad-
emy. New York: SUNY Press.
Klein, J. T. (2010). A taxonomy of interdisciplinarity. In R. Frodeman, J. T. Klein, & C. Mitcham
(Eds.), The Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity, pp. 15–​30. Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press.
Klein, J. T., & Parncutt, R. (2010). Art and music research. In R. Froderman, J. T. Klein, &
C. Mitcham (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity, pp. 133–​146. Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press.
Klich, R., & Scheer, E. (2012). Multimedia performance. London and New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Klüver, B. (2001). The great Northeastern power failure. In R. Packer & K. Jordan (Eds.),
Multimedia: From Wagner to virtual reality, pp. 3–​38. New York and London: Norton.
Koss, J. (2010). Modernism after Wagner. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Konstelanetz, R. (1968). The theatre of mixed means. New York: Dial.
Levinson, J. (1984). Hybrid art forms. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 18 (4), 5–​13.
 Conclusion   143

Lovejoy, M. (2004). Digital currents: Art in the electronic age. Third Edition. New York and
London: Routledge.
Marinetti, F. T., Corra, B., Settimelli, E., Ginna, A., Balla G., & Chiti, R. (2001). The futurist cin-
ema. In R. Packer & K. Jordan (Eds.), Multimedia: From Wagner to virtual reality, pp. 10–​15.
New York and London: Norton.
Munster, A. (2014). Transversal interference. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 20 (2), 146–​156.
Newell, W. H. (Ed.). (1998). Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the literature. New York: College
Entrance Exam Board.
Packer, R., & Jordan, K. (2001). Overture. In R. Packer & K. Jordan (Eds.), Multimedia: From
Wagner to virtual reality, pp. xv–​xxxviii. New York and London: Norton.
Packer, R., & Jordan, K. (Eds.). (2001). Multimedia: From Wagner to virtual reality. New York
and London: Norton.
Popper, F. (2007). From technological to virtual art. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press.
Shaw-​Miller, S. (2002). Visible deeds of music: Art and music from Wagner to Cage. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.
Thomas, P. (2014). Interference strategies. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 20 (2), 13–​15.
Wilson, S. (2002). Information arts: Intersections of art, science, and technology. Cambridge,
MA, and London: MIT Press.

View publication stats