STEAM at Work: “Translating” Science into Dress

Abstract

Translation is considered a highly effective means for introducing new ways of thinking and inducing significant cultural change. At a time in which collaborations between STEAM and the Arts are perceived as a necessary cultural change, this article employs the concept of inter-semiotic translation to explore the role that textile art in the form of dress and accessories can have translating, metaphorically, scientific concepts and ideas into a material incarnation, and what is at stake in this materiality. As the discourse around the art/science dichotomy is a gendered one, the article employs feminist translation as the theoretical framework to shed light on the agency of the artists/translators who contribute not only to the dissemination of science across national and cultural borders—between “the two cultures” of arts and science—but who may also play a role in the constitution of scientific discourse itself, since the textile metaphors they construct may eventually bear upon the scientific concepts that develop.