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  • SEAD:The Network for Sciences, Engineering, Arts and Design
  • Carol LaFayette

Innovations emerging from the intersection of the sciences, engineering, arts and design are transforming our economy, culture and learning contexts. This transformation is emerging through development of products, methods and questions that are fundamentally hybrid, such as software developed for human play, hardware designed for aesthetic elegance, or the plethora of scientific and cultural information requiring new means of interpretation and expression in order to enable greater understanding of complex dynamics.

As our world undergoes rapid change, we need to generate new ways to create and engage knowledge, drawing from multiple disciplines as we seek to understand the ever-increasing complexity. Collaborators can provide insights into dilemmas that elude understanding through singular inquiry. Global economic interests are at stake: We anticipate that the industries that will come to dominate our economies in 20 years are only now undergoing invention. New forms of partnership among political, academic and civil sectors of society are required if we are to bring about needed changes intelligently and humanely. Innovation stemming from interdisciplinary creativity is a major contributor to the development of new, sustainable economies and harmonious, cooperating societies.

The (U.S.) National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Information & Intelligent Systems (IIS) program sponsored five workshops in 2010-2011, bringing together artists and scientists from across the United States to address the needs of the burgeoning community of groups and individuals engaged in transdisciplinary practice. This effort resulted in the genesis of Sciences, Engineering, Arts and Design (SEAD), a new network focusing on advocacy and dissemination of innovative methods for connecting and supporting a distributed community across academia, nonprofit organizations, civil society, industry and funding entities. The network facilitates research community development; collaboration and project matchmaking; expertise referrals; large-scale collaborative teaching; forums to share best practices in lifelong learning; and philanthropic opportunities for funding organizations. The growing interdisciplinary community continues to face challenges in its efforts to self-organize in the face of constraints imposed by academic systems and historical biases; we continue to seek a dynamic and synergizing research and outreach exchange. We recognize an urgent need for a paradigm shift that can overcome such biases and fully address, in an integrated manner, the documentation needs of the science-art community. To this end, a partner group, XSEAD, is developing a 21st-century portal to provide a community platform offering a centralized view of this emergent field; rapid dissemination of multimodal research outcomes; extensive databases of prior and current research; an informed record of science-art curricula; support for structures for science-art careers; and evidence of societal impact of interdisciplinary integration.

The network addresses fundamental challenges, including the need to align academic pedagogies with 21st-century thinking skills; to promote diversity of perspectives, approaches and people in the creative economy; and to identify best practices that create critical thinkers and leaders for the ever-changing job market. We are providing a platform to generate and disseminate public dialogue about the intellectual, cultural and economic potential of creative intersections of art, science and technology. [End Page 194]


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Top 75 words found in compiled notes and reports from meetings about a network, from Alexandria to Baltimore (2010-2011), via wordle.net.

The SEAD Network

XSEAD and NSEAD are two NSF-funded groups. XSEAD (Virtual Exchange for Science, Engineering, Arts and Design) is developing a digital archive and resource for researchers, makers, and educators. NSEAD (Network for Sciences, Engineering, Arts and Design) is developing innovative methods for connecting and supporting community across academia, nonprofit organizations, industry, and funders. The SEAD network combines these two groups.

Vision

We will become the leading advocate for collaboration among the sciences, engineering, arts and design, fostering innovation and learning that promote community sustainability and economic growth.

Mission

We operate via entrepreneurial, sustainable methods to identify and promote broader impacts for communities and individuals in new areas of practice, research and critical discourse, achieving creative excellence and intellectual merit.

Goals

Advocacy for Research and Creative Work.

The network facilitates experimentation with new methods, materials and modes of creative inquiry and understanding in order to spawn groundbreaking discoveries...

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