Immanence and Its Distortions: Metaphysics of an Art/Science Collaboration Dr Ashley M Holmes CQUniversity Australia a.holmes@cqu.edu.au Paper presented Oct 13 2016 at the symposium, Art and Future: Energy, Climate, Culture, Dunedin School of Art, Otago, New Zealand Abstract: Continental philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote about a cosmic kind of creativity that exists in all things, the recognition of which demands of us a special kind of responsibility and action. Deleuze describes a pure existence founded in this truth as the plane or plan of immanence, and he thinks that immanence can be distorted in different, but related ways, by both religion and by science. He was influenced in part by Henri Bergson who proposed the term Élan Vital, which is often translated as “vital force.” Bergson thought that this force was behind biological and inorganic evolution. However, this line of thinking is criticised by some philosophers and scientific positivists as naive “panvitalism” or “hylozoism.” The meaning of these terms is: in the case of the former, that all things are part of a living universe; and, in the case of the latter, that material things may possess life, and life is inseparable from matter. In the face of the quandary caused by the discoveries of quantum physics, Alfred North Whitehead, an English metaphysician from early C20th is gaining renewed interest with his process theory that places emphasis on events, modes of becoming, and types of occurrences. Interestingly he is also claimed to have coined the term “creativity” with respect to cosmology, and, not necessarily attributed to human endeavour. Presented by an artist who is also a research academic specialising in creative practice, this is a reflective account of the thinking behind an art‐science collaborative digital media artwork about coral spawning on the Great Barrier Reef. Referring to the aforementioned authors, it is speculated how axiology in art can counter the positivism of science and address the relativism of postmodern attitudes, without didacticism. Rather, through allusion, pathos and sublimity.