Interdisciplinary approaches between physics and art using the example of optical experiments and artistic light installations

The disciplines of physics and art are often seen as antithetical in social and educational contexts. However, in recent years, STEAM education has promoted the collaboration of art and STEM. Linking the subjects together offers a wide range of learning opportunities. For example, the design of (video) light installations can develop both artistic and physical skills. Such a teaching approach allows to address different types of interests within the same lesson. In this article, two basic ways of meaningfully combining artistic and physical topics are presented: ‘STEAM design’ and ‘STEAM explanation’. The approaches are described using the example of teaching optics at secondary school level, but in principle they can be applied to other grade levels or physical subjects.


Introduction
On the surface, physics and art appear to be polar opposites.To put it bluntly, physics aims to describe matter, energy, space and time in a quantifiable way, while art encompasses an imaginative realm of aesthetic qualities.As a result, physics is often described as an objective description of reality, while art tends to be described as the subjective result of artists expressing 'their' reality (Shlain 1991).However, a closer look beneath the surface reveals many connections between physics and art.
Historically, from prehistoric times through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, there have been many directly related developments in science and art.Examples include the work of universal scholars such as Leonardo Da Vinci or Galileo Galilei (Godinovic 2019).As far as concrete joint initiatives with common objectives are concerned, one should mention the programme 'arts at CERN' (CERN 2021(CERN , 2022)).Since 2012, the programme has fostered a fruitful dialogue between the disciplines.While artists from all creative disciplines are inspired by scientific insights into the big questions of the universe and of life, they in turn create works of art that can be used to attract visitors to CERN with a low-threshold approach to the highly abstract issues of, for example, quantum physics (CERN 2021(CERN , 2022)).
Providing affective teaching and learning approaches to the abstract topics of physics as a mediator is one of the most important goals of physics educators (Bao and Koenig 2019).Based on the 21st century skills as defined by the National Research Council, reasoning, creativity, and open problem solving should be fostered in physics education (Bao and Koenig 2019).In order to encourage these skills, collaborative initiatives of STEM and the arts can be formed in STEAM education (Liao 2019).Based on this idea of a fruitful collaboration, this article is dedicated to the development of indications of how the subjects of physics and the arts can be meaningfully combined.The structural indications are accompanied by concrete teaching materials on optics, which combine physics experiments and artistic light installations in a way that can be used to provide STEAM education at an introductory level.

Physics and art in education
Making connections between seemingly disparate ideas or facts is known to be 'one of the greatest pleasures students can experience' (Campbell 2004, p 479) and can therefore enrich their experiences.The STEAM education movement promotes such a connection between the five content areas 'A-Arts' and 'STEM-Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics' (Bush and Cook 2019).The case for STEAM has both educational and economic dimensions.Firstly, STEAM has the potential to improve the overall performance of young people, as the arts can improve cognitive outcomes.Second, STEAM has the potential to improve innovation, as studying both science and the arts can lead to increased creativity and therefore improved innovation.Thirdly, STEAM could motivate and engage young people in STEM subjects and careers (Colucci-Grey et al 2017, pp 29-30).
There are a variety of approaches to defining how the arts and STEM can come together in STEAM education (Colucci-Gray et al 2017, p 30, Liao 2019, p 37).On the one hand, the approach of arts integration emphasises STEM subjects.Arts integration has been criticised for only helping to increase science achievement (Graham and Brouilette 2016) and for diluting the arts (Liao 2019, p 42).For example, in practice, 'art is often reduced to the aesthetics of a project' (Liao 2019, p 42).On the other hand, there are art projects that have design or science as their central theme, but still focus primarily on art (Liao 2019, p 44).In the middle of this spectrum of approaches are the collaborative approaches, which focus on combining arts and STEM on an equal footing (Liao, p 40). 'Collaboration in STEAM usually means that teachers/students from different disciplines work together.However, individual disciplines taught as discrete areas of focus still constitute the foundation of this approach.In other words, collaboration is based on the idea of benefiting from each other's differences' (Liao 2019, p 40).
Looking at physics and art, current approaches also differ fundamentally in the way they consider the relationship between the two disciplines.On the one hand, many approaches that include both physics and art do not include the other discipline on an equal footing, but in an exemplary form, such as the approach of using artworks to illustrate a context or explain the nature of science (Herklots 2004, Coletti 2017).These approaches make connections between physics and art, but remain in the realm of a physics lesson.On the other hand, there are approaches that consider and integrate both disciplines equally.In order to do this, and to take full advantage of the reciprocal relationship, it seems desirable to promote equal cooperation between the two subjects.
An example of such an equal collaboration is an experimental course on flow visualisation at the University of Colorado (Hertzberg and Sweetman 2004, p 9.29.1).The course included lectures on fluid flow, photographic techniques and the history of photography.The engineering and art students were tasked with creating aesthetic photographs of their self-created fluid flows.Hertzberg and Sweetman (2004, pp 9.29.9-9.29.10) state that the course led to an increase in student motivation, a change in their perception of both subjects and their view of their surroundings.
Looking at the developments so far, they are very helpful for specific lessons, but provide little overarching guidance on how to realise the collaboration between physics and art itself.It therefore seems important to provide guidance on how the content of physics and art can be meaningfully linked, and to give an insight into how these indications can be applied when designing concrete teaching projects.
This article identifies two different types of approaches to combining physics and art that can be applied to different content.The application in the context of the article is exemplified by specific activities that integrate experiments in optics and student design of artistic light installations.Light installations are artistic objects that use the colours of light or its reflection or refraction to create a certain atmosphere for the viewer.

Activities for the collaboration of physics and art
Two approaches to developing activities that combine physics and the arts, or general science and the arts as defined by collaborative STEAM education, are presented below.With reference to the Next Generation Science Standards (National Research Council 2012), the approaches can be placed in the 'constructing explanations and designing solutions' domain of practices for K-12 science education.In each case, the two approaches focus on one of the two aspects of 'constructing explanations' or 'designing solutions'.Since the readers of physics education are likely to be physics teachers, the starting point for both approaches is the physics pre-teaching, after which the art and physics teachers should work together to facilitate collaborative STEAM learning in both physics and art classes for the duration of the approach.For this period, subject boundaries are removed and ideally both teachers teach in pairs.
In the case of Type I activities, 'STEAM design', which focuses on the 'designing solutions' aspect, physical knowledge is learned in science-based experiments and then applied by learners to purposefully use or cause certain phenomena in the design of an art object.Learners take abstract knowledge of a physical fact and apply it to the design of the intended art object.This requires transfer skills to concretise the abstract knowledge, apply it to available materials and transform it into a real object.The cycle from physics to art can therefore be repeated several times during the creative process.As a final step, students present their artwork, taking into account the physical and artistic considerations that led to their result.The process of Type I activities is illustrated in figure 1.
In the case of the activity type II (figure 2), 'STEAM explanation', which focuses on 'constructing explanations', the learners first design an art object after the physics pre-teaching.Here, the learners can use their creativity to the full.They are guided by the task but can initially act free from dominant physical questions when developing the art objects.However, the task already takes into account that physical phenomena will be created or made visible on or through the art objects, which the students will then analyse.The artistic design is followed by a second phase in which the observed physical phenomena are described and  explained, using the knowledge from the physics pre-teaching.The students act in the context they have created.By looking at different aspects of the artwork, the cycle from artistic features to their physical explanation can be repeated several times.The final step is a joint presentation of the artwork and associated explanations of the physical phenomena used.The process of type II activities is illstrated in figure 2.

STEAM activities in optics designing artistic light installations
The two activities described in general terms are followed by concrete examples.The examples illustrate how STEAM design or STEAM explanation teaching projects can be implemented and used in the classroom, applying them to the field of optics and the development of artistic light installations as art objects.

STEAM design: colour mixing
In terms of the STEAM design approach, the design of a light installation using the physical phenomena of additive and subtractive colour mixing is presented below.The specific approach follows a four-step process illustrated in figure 3.
Step 1: Learning stations on geometric optics First, students are introduced to additive and subtractive colour mixing at learning stations.They will be introduced to the duality of these types of colour mixing and will be able to compare and differentiate between them.For example, they learn that subtractive colour mixing can be observed when mixing coloured media such as paint.They will also learn that additive colour mixing can be found in the human eye, which only has receptors for blue, green and red light.As well as learning through text, images and videos, students are also encouraged to carry out basic experiments using colour filters of different colours and varying numbers of light sources.
Step 2: Experiments, small design tasks In a second step, students are encouraged to be more creative in their experiments.For example, they are asked to design their own colour filters using glass paint, or to mix certain colours using only the six basic colours of the two colour mixing models.This step is crucial in terms of beginning to apply their knowledge of colour mixing, as well as opening their minds to being creative with the materials provided.
Step 3: Designing the final lighting installation The next step is to use your knowledge and preparation to design a carefully planned light installation.The light installation should create a certain artistic atmosphere in a room while highlighting the different types of colour mixing.Students have to decide which colours to use and how to store them.They also have to consider the effects of using one or more light sources.Their experience of learning and experimenting in the previous station will come in handy.As well as the physical aspects, students must also consider their artistic intentions when designing.
The example shown in figure 3 (steps 3 and 4) illustrates both of these thought processes.The light installation example focuses primarily on the use of subtractive colour mixing in the design process, as many of the colours used to paint the glass cube have to be mixed.However, additive colour mixing is crucial in explaining how the viewer sees the colours.For example, the yellow glass paint absorbs the blue part of the light spectrum, while the red and green parts pass through the filter.As our eyes have receptors for red, green and blue light, the absorption of blue light results in the yellow appearance.Other installations could use additive colour mixing as their main principle, using multiple light sources, with the light beams passing through different colour filters and creating new colours on a surface where the light beams meet.The finished example installation shown in figure 3, step 4, is called 'emerge' and, from an artistic point of view, mimics the feeling of 'emerging from the dark'.This atmosphere is created by using a face motif in combination with the placement of the light source within the painted acrylic cube.As can be seen in figure 3, Step 3, students have to find a particular placement of the light source to achieve this expression.If the cube is placed differently, it will not create the same atmosphere.
Step 4: Presentation All this thinking culminates in the presentation.During the presentation, the students are asked to display their light installation and act as 'experts' for their classmates, discussing the colour mixing models they used in their installation and explaining certain steps that were necessary to archive their artistic expression.

STEAM explanation: light refraction
In terms of the STEAM explanatory approach, the design of a video light installation using light refraction is presented below.This approach also follows a specific four-step process, illustrated in figure 4.
Step 1: Learning stations on geometric optics This process also starts with learning stations on geometric optics, this time with refraction and total reflection.Dispersion is also introduced when learning about refraction at a prism.Students can experiment with a prism and explore the refraction of light in more and less optically dense media.
They are also introduced to total reflection as a phenomenon in the context of sparkling diamonds.
Step 2: Designing the video light installation In the second step, the students are given a set of materials, including some prisms and a light source, and are asked to design an artistic light installation.The materials provided are chosen in such a way as to enable the students to create the optical effects they have learnt about in the learning stations.So, in this phase, apart from the structured planning, they can use the materials in any way they want to create a video light installation.Unlike the light installation in the STEAM design approach, this installation is a video light installation and should therefore include movement, which is then documented on camera.This offers two opportunities: Firstly, it exposes the students to video art in combination with light installations, which offers a new field of artistic possibilities, and secondly, the finished product of their artistic work is available at any time.
This second chance is particularly important for the next step in the process, the analysis of the video.
Figure 4 shows an example of such a light installation.As the video itself cannot be shown here, its final scene is shown in the photograph.The full video can be viewed at https:// kunstphysiklicht.com/lights-on/.The installation is an artistic reference to the structure of the atomic lattice of crystals, taking the 'sparkle of diamond' as its theme.As well as finding ways to incorporate the artistic intention into the artwork, for example by placing the prisms on the wire, students need to think about how to incorporate movement into their video.In the example video, the light source moves closer to the installation.As it does so, the reflections and refractions on the floor increase and move outwards, creating an explosive effect.
Step 3: Analysis of the video In a third step, the video is analysed for visible optical effects.The knowledge from the learning stations is now used to identify and explain certain effects that can be observed.For example, students can look at the visible light spectrums on the ground and use their knowledge of dispersion to explore how they are produced in this case.They can also look at the shape of the prisms they used and make comparisons with the diamonds they learned about in the learning stations.They can also experiment with just one of their prisms and a light source and observe which angle leads to refraction.
Step 4: Presentation The results of these investigations and the finished videos are then presented in the final step of the process, the presentation.Each group of students presents their video and their explanations, which are then discussed by all the students.

Materials
All materials from the two examples can be found online at https://kunstphysiklicht.com/home/.The website includes the full projects as well as finished examples and additional materials for teachers.In addition to the two examples presented here, there is another project on the website about mirrors and reflection.This additional project follows the STEAM design approach.
The website presents all three projects as being designed to be combined in an interdisciplinary series of lessons, estimated to last 6-7 weeks, including an exhibition of the finished artworks.However, the projects can also be used on their own as a smaller interdisciplinary project or as inspiration.

Conclusion and outlook
The combination of physics and art offers learning potential for physics and art lessons in the sense of STEAM education.In the article, two basic ways of combining art (projects) and physics education were discussed: 'STEAM design' and 'STEAM explanation'.
An evaluation of the methodological approaches as well as of the whole series of lessons is planned for the future.One of the main questions in this context is the effectiveness of the approaches described here, i.e. to what extent they actually support students in achieving the learning goals, especially in comparison with traditional physics teaching.Furthermore, it is crucial to investigate possible effects on students' motivation and interest in physics before and after the teaching projects.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Illustration of the sequence of physics and arts for activities Type I: 'STEAM design'.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Illustration of the sequence of physics and arts for activities Type II: 'STEAM explanation'.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Illustration of the STEAM design process during the design of a light installation using the principles of additive and subtractive colour mixing.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Illustration of the STEAM explanation process during the design of a video light installation using the principles of light refraction and reflection.
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