Discovering inspiration

Inspiration can be discovered in the strangest places. That much was clear at the first symposium this month led by the University’s new Visiting Professor of Inspiration and Discovery David Mach. For him a hair curler gave the design for a new motorway bridge. On another day it might have been a coat hanger, a matchstick, a heap of autumn leaves or a pile of magazines that stimulated the self confessed "materials junky" into creative mode. Others dealt in anatomy, the beauty of bodyparts, in fungi ("our closest relatives in evolutionary terms"), in microscopic images of cells and subcellular structures, in potato pathogens and penguins, in war and Cumbernauld, in Japan, in stunning computer game visuals and the Swiss Army Knife.

At the end of a mind-bending day, cortically stretching to accommodate 10 presentations from artists, medics and scientists, one thing was clear: where different disciplines collide you can expect explosions of creativity.

David Mach creates his own explosions - sometimes, as in the case of his matchmaking sculptures, quite literally. In a life-charged, funny, irreverent and inspirational presentation he romped the audience of 70 artists and scientists through a career which began with his student days at Duncan of Jordanstone College when he created a real carpet of leaves - hand sown - surreally stretching skywards in Camperdown Park, through his "magazines period", his "matches period", his "coathangers period", to his current international cutting edge of contemporary art status: though he would never put it in those terms. Exuberant diversions en route incorporated rusting cars, grand prix racers, brick trains and Battersea chairs. Now as the UK’s first Professor of Inspiration and Discovery he will have unique access to a new landscape of life science images, ideas and issues.

"I just think I'm incredibly lucky. This is exactly the kind of job you want as an artist," he said. "Very often museums and galleries are the worst places in the world to work - they're dull, boring and not stimulating at all. This is going to be very, very exciting."

For all of us. No-one knows where this project will lead. Already the first symposium took the audience through some extraordinary landscapes - Chris Rowland and John McGhee's stunning 3D computer games visuals applied to medicine; Graeme Houston taking the high end of technology and refocusing it on communication with patients; Tim Frank honing the design of surgical instruments to a spare ergonomic and aesthetic purity; Elaine Shemilt seamlessly shifting the application of her art from archives of environmental data through the wastage of war to musical interpretations of the potato pathogen. Geoff Gadd engaging all with his appreciation of fungi and bacteria "they make your food rot and your feet smell"; Gair Dunlop with his archive footage of smiling futuristicscience as seen from the perspective of the 50s, interlaced with Cumbernauld; Paul Harrison whose stunning images make words unnecessary; Alan Prescott who opened a window onto a world invisible to the naked eye and, at a stroke created the intriguing possibilities of bringing together Doom Games and stomata; and finally Tracy MacKenna and Edwin Janssen tracing their artistic reactions to experiences in Japan. When science meets art, anything can happen.

Over a series of visits in the coming year, David will meet with scientists and artists, catalysing the process of inspiration and discovery. At the end of it all there are plans for an exhibition, for a publication and for drawings and models of a public work of art inspired by the life sciences. What it might be and where is anybody's guess at present but the adventure of inspiration and discovery has barely begun.