Though challenging a scientific fact might not be the starting point, or even the motivation, for an artist coming into the sciences, an attraction to scientific controversies very well might be. After all, scientific controversies and the aspects of life we simply don't know about are the ones most vulnerable to exploitation in the public media and other interfaces designed to serve as mediators between scientific pursuit and political decision-making.

Eventually, after having followed the endless literature threads, Latour's "Dissenter" will have to enter the place where he believes the published results originated: the labora­tory of the lead scientist. Whereas artists might not always be as diligent in reading all the involved literature first, they will find themselves at the same location. After all, science is best understood through practice!

What will the dissenter/artist find at this location? Instruments. Not really that much closer to the actual natural phenomenon being studied, instruments are serving as the interface between “nature" and its human interpreters. Graphs, curves, and images are provided by these devices in order to assist with the task of studying and interpreting, as well as fostering, a scientific claim at hand.

Now instruments (as well as observation skills!) are something that artists are used to dealing with. Be it a scale to balance the right ingredients for paint or sculpture material, or an oscilloscope to observe voltage drops, artists are certainly accustomed to using them. It should come as no surprise, then, that former or current "new media artists" are by no means the only ones who make their way into the scientific laboratory. Rather, they are being joined by installation artists, video artists, painters, and others, all arriving with the same interest in scientific inquiry and its relevance to their particular practice.

However, as we have seen above, knowing how to operate the instruments found in a laboratory, from simple ones such as pipettes to more complicated ones such as PCR machines, doesn't get you all that far in your ambitions to understand scientific pro­cesses—let alone conduct your own science/art experiments. In addition, getting access to a scientific lab for more than a one-time visit can be tricky, and any conduct of science quickly becomes very expensive.

Artists have found a number of responses in order to attack these problems, and many of these are still in the process of being developed. One example is the Symbiotic A research lab at the University of Western Australia.

Rather than using the facility just for their own research, Zurr and Catts have opened the doors to other interested artists, ready to invest the necessary time and training in order to conduct projects in this arena. Interested individuals call apply for extended residencies in order to achieve their goals.

In addition, Zurr, Catts, and their scientific collaborators have developed cheap do-it-yourself techniques to build usually very expensive lab equipment (such as a laminar flow hood) out of readily available home construction materials, and are conducting workshops around the world in order to spread their knowledge. These types of workshops are con­tributing to a larger model developed and experimented with by a number of artists in the field.