This rich legacy includes early work in computer graphics and animation by scientists at Bell Labs and elsewhere in the 1960s; the collaborations between artists, scientists and engineers in groups such as Experiments in Art and Technology or the Computer Arts Society in the same period; the investigations into complexity in the 70s and 80s by artists from art schools such as the Slade and scientists in Sante Fe; the long tradition of artistic investigations into the possibilities of robotics and artificial intelligence, from Edward Ihnatowicz to Simon Penny and beyond; and work made in collaboration with scientists about genetics and neuroscience by artists such as Oron Catts, Annie Cattrell, Ruth McLennan and Jane Prophet. Particular mention should be made of the recent work of the Critical Art Ensemble looking at the cultural meaning and effects of biotechnological research - especially given CAE member Steve Kurtz's recent arrest under the Patriot act in the US (www.caedefensefund.org).
CP Snow's two-cultures argument is wheeled out again as if it is a deep truth about our culture, rather than a now-irrelevant piece of polemic. If there is a rift, it is not in modern culture in general, but in how institutions such as Tate and the Science Museum perpetuate and reinforce unjustifiably hard and fast distinctions between the arts and sciences.