I read this a while ago and realized I should probably post it here. It’s an Edge talk with artist Hans Ulrich Obrist . Here are two sections that you’ll find interesting in relation to SciBarCamp (and you can go and check out the rest yourself. It’s very long. These are long quotes but only a small part of the whole thing!)

“In the meantime I had started to work as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and each time a well-known scientist would visit Paris, Christa would ring me, and would say, “Show him your museum.” I started to walk with biologists and neuroscientists through the Mark Rothko exhibition at our museum and that was really the beginning of how this whole bridge with science began.”

and

“(...) we decided, a few hours before the event was supposed to take place, to cancel the conference and to just do a “non-conference.” It had all the ingredients of a conference — badges, tee shirts, bags with all the speakers’ CVs, a hotel where all the people would stay, a bus to pick them up in the morning and bring them to the science center, people at the airport picking the guests up, all of the logistics — but the conference no longer was there. It was just a coffee break. It was the invention of this idea that we should just do a coffee break. And it was my first project with art and science.”

I think he would have enjoyed SciBarCamp! We should send him an invitation next year! (Has he never been (invited) to SciFoo either?)