For me, art in our time is strongest when it is aware of science, includes science, is inspired by science, or is about science. On the linguistic level, the new words coined by scientists to describe their new discoveries fp>orm a giant growing lexicon that means English is simply bursting with new possibilities, resembling the Elizabethan age in that respect. Then conceptually, science is creating new stories to tell, by deluging us with new information and potentialities. In this deluge we need art to do its usual job of sorting things out, by giving things their human dimension and by exploring how they might feel and what they might mean. So to me the arts and the sciences are completely intertwined. Maybe that’s always been true, but now more than ever.
For some artists working today, art has already left the galleries and the museums, and since I was thinking about world-making as an art form, this “making art everywhere” was really suggestive. The landscape art of Andy Goldsworthy, and the performance art of Marina Abramovic, were particularly important to my book, so much so that in 2312 their names have turned into nouns for their particular genres.
—–Kim Stanley Robinson