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E-BOOK EDITION

CONTRIBUTORS: Conrad Shawcross, Matthew Watkins

Secrets of Creation documents a residency project bringing together artist Conrad Shawcross and mathematician Matthew Watkins to reflect on the ways in which artists use, misuse, or ‘dramatize’ scientific and mathematical concepts.

Navigating a route that tacks between formalism and natural language, experts and laymen, quantity and quality, poetics and mechanics, the two participants gradually forge a shared discourse where the concerns of the artist and those of the mathematician can find common ground. The project ends with their joint creation of an assemblage that was neither artwork nor mathematical model—or both.

Documenting the project in full, Secrets of Creation provides an intriguing and amusing account of this meeting of worlds, presenting both the week’s discussions and debates and the project upon which Shawcross and Watkins subsequently embarked.