Wingate: SESSION TWO brief answer

From: Richard Wingate
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 06:19:27 -0400 (EDT)

1) What is a laboratory? I don’t think of the laboratory is as a creative space - it’s more like a battleground. I’s a place where we wrestle with temperamental equipment anddiscomfort and the site of almost constant defeats and only the occasionalheart-stopping victory and revelation. It’s also a collegiate atmosphere ofconstant banter, gossip and humour, flirtation even. Because so many peoplepass through and invest each inch of bench surface with the story of theirstruggle the laboratory is often redolent with memories and evidence of pastcolleagues - a very “human” (and I’m conscious of the conversations inthis session) environment, not at all impersonal. Scientific creativity is inmy experience exercised on whiteboards and paper, in offices and seminar rooms, on the commute into work and at home in the late night around the kitchentable.

The studio, by comparison, seems enormously liberating - a playground. However, I’d imagine that what the studio shares with the laboratory is a love-hate relationship with their respective occupants. Is this true?