Performative Experiments

In this dissertation I argue that artworks that mimic scientific experiments can transform our philosophical understanding of scientific experiment itself. The collection of artworks that form the basis of my case studies includes imaginary scientific instruments, responsive sound environments, genetic portraits and live scientific demonstrations. Despite their heterogeneity, each of these artworks embodies a certain idea of experiment through its physical form. I read these artworks as material representations of the logics and practices described by philosophers and historians of scientific experimentation. Much as scientific models mediate between theories and the real world, artworks, in my analysis, mediate between the philosophical descriptions of science and its material instantiations. Like models, artworks are not merely illustrations of preconceived ideas but also have lives of their own. The very idea of using artworks to explore the nature of experiment has its roots in Kant's theory of exemplarity, developed in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Artworks are considered exemplary when they give sensuous embodiment to an idea that has not yet been fully formed in though