Long-awaited paper now out

The Integration of the Humanities and Artswith Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine inHigher Education: Branches from the Same Tree (read online, or order a hard copy).

The National Academy of Sciences commissioned this report on the value of STEMM integration in higher education. From a highlights document:

"This study examined an important trend in higher education: integration of the humanities and arts with sciences, engineering, and medicine at the undergraduate and graduate level—which proponents argue will better prepare students for work, life, and citizenship...This movement in higher education raises an important question: what impact do these curricular approaches have on students? 

To address this question, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine formed a 22-member committee to examine 'the evidence behind the assertion that educational programs that mutually integrate learning experiences in the humanities and arts with science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) lead to improved educational and career outcomes for undergraduate and graduate students.' The committee conducted an in-depth review and analysis of the state of knowledge on the impact of integrative approaches on students."

 The results are encouraging:

"Aggregate evidence indicates that some approaches that integrate the humanities and arts with STEMM are associated with positive learning outcomes. Among the outcomes reported are increased critical thinking abilities, higher-order thinking and deeper learning, content mastery, problem solving, teamwork and communication skills, improved visuospatial reasoning, and general engagement and enjoyment of learning. 

An important observation was that the kinds of outcomes associated with certain integrative approaches in higher education are the educational outcomes that many employers presently seek. Employer surveys consistently show that employers want well-rounded individuals with a holistic education who can take on complex problems and understand the needs, desires, and motivations of others. Importantly, these learning goals and competences are similarly valued by institutions of higher education. The committee considered multiple forms of evidence as it developed the following recommendations for institutions, faculty, administrators, scholars of higher education, and federal and private funders. The recommendations fall under four main areas:"

1. Support for Integrative Approaches
2. Evaluating Integrative Courses and Programs
3. Enhancing Inclusivity Through Integrative Courses and Programs
4. Removing the Barriers to Integrative Approaches 

The paper concludes that:

"Higher education should strive to offer all students—regardless of degree or area of concentration—an education that exposes them to diverse forms of human knowledge and inquiry and that impresses upon them the fact that all disciplines are 'branches of the same tree.' Such an education should empower students to understand the fundamental connections among the diverse branches of human inquiry—the arts, humanities, sciences, social sciences, mathematics, engineering, technology, and medicine."

Ohio River water quality/art project

As an artist I entered the project with the hopes of being inspired by something that would lead to a visual expression. I wanted my "research" to be creative and I allowed it to unfold as a series of related but diverse information gathering excursions.

Electrofishing with Chris [Lorentz, Professor of Biology, Thomas More College] gave me an understanding of the amazing ecosystem of the river itself. Next I met with the Ohio River foundation and talked about the main causes of pollution in the river. In 2015 there was a 500 mile long algae bloom on the river, and this phenomena captured my creative imagination as a subject to focus my goals. I did research about the documented history of industrial pollution on the river, and at the public library found an especially amazing photograph of the Cincinnati river bank from the 19th century.

In the photo you can clearly see the sewage run off exiting buildings at the rivers edge. In this small section of the photo you can see the open sewer ditch. The photo was taken in 1848 and the next year a cholera epidemic swept the city.

In my design courses, I try to get students to become more sensitive to color and shape as tools to shape an environment. For the algal bloom project, I met with a select group of talented students and we talked about the algal bloom as an experience, something immersive and expressive, so that we might find a way to personify it visually.

First we decided on a shape quality and the beginning of a color system. These decisions were based on principles of good design married to the specific attributes of the algal bloom. Here is a first small hand painted design. In this painting, we stuck to the literal blue green color scheme and used a botanical motif. The rectangle itself is a golden rectangle and the shapes are interacting with further golden ratio divisions within the larger rectangle.

Although this initial design is very interesting to look at, it does not embody the voracious life cycle and disruptive quality of the bloom. We took the initial painting and spent a long time working with it on the computer, mirroring and multiplying the design across a larger expanse. We changed the color to be more perceptually intense, and further intensified the relationship between the botanical shapes and the internal geometry of the design. The final design is here:

We hosted the NCBDS conference on the beginning design student here at UC a couple weeks ago, and I presented the project and printed the poster at a large scale.

I would love to display it more, either virtually or physically, Do you know of any opportunities? I have a file that can be printed at various scales, and it is a really exciting/immersive visual experience.

Cheers!

Emil Robinson
emil.robinson@gmail.com

ps I can send better quality files if needed

The Art of Ecology: Interlochen Center for the Arts

"In the fall of 2017, Interlochen Arts Academy launched an initiative that explores the nexus of art and ecology, as a collaboration between the Visual Arts and R.B. Annis Math and Science Divisions."

More info here.

Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity & Symposium

1. Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity

- and -

2. Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations Student Fellows Symposium

National Academy of Sciences; Washington, DC
March 12-14, 2018

This unique interdisciplinary experience is two distinct but related events that include the Student Symposium on March 12 and the Colloquium on March 13-14.

* * *

1. Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations Student Fellows Symposium 

March 12, 2018, Washington D.C.

Supported by the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation for the Arts, Sciences and Humanities and Google, Inc.
Organized by Liese Liann Zahabi and Molly Morin

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - DUE NOVEMBER 15

North American graduate students enrolled in masters and doctoral programs across all disciplines are invited to apply to participate in the Monday, March 12 Student Fellows Symposium and attend the Sackler Colloquium which follows on March 13-14, (please note that the selected students are expected to attend all three days of events). Approximately 50 graduate students will be selected to participate in a series of 15-minute and 6-minute talks and a creative exhibition/poster session that will take place during the Student Fellows Symposium.

Overview:
Scientists thinking like artists—artists thinking like scientists. When these traditionally defined roles mix together, how is the process of making work or conducting research altered? Does the play between disciplines benefit a designer’s practice, an engineer’s output, or a scientist’s data? What are the hazards and opportunities?

There is power in looking past the sometimes narrow confines of one discipline: possibilities emerge, allowing artists/designers/engineers/scientists to ask different questions and create innovations. However, this is difficult work. Navigating uncharted territory compounds the uncertainty and potential for missteps that are already a part of the creative, scientific, and engineering process. Emerging areas of research require academics and practitioners to occupy varied and hybrid roles, and to begin investigations within unmapped spaces of inquiry. How can we build stronger bridges that connect innovations in art and design to those in science and engineering?

This symposium will bring creative and scientific realms together, creating opportunities for thinkers to play within different spaces of inquiry to ask questions about the ways we embark upon this kind of research, to relay techniques and guidelines that have worked in the past, and to explore how we can better support each other in our endeavors. This one-day gathering will give attendees the chance to connect with each other, to create a network of like-minded thinkers, and to share stories of struggle and success. The understandings developed during the Student Fellows Symposium can contribute to the discussions during the March 13-14 Sackler Colloquium.

PLACES FOR EXPLORATION MIGHT INCLUDE:
big-data ... wearables ... ubiquitous computing ... navigation ... education ... medical practice ... health ... serious games ... information design ... ontologies ... cyborgs … actor network theory ... new materialism ... neuroscience ... ethnography ... artificial intelligence ... textiles ... robotics ... product design ... interface design ... biological systems ... sustainability ... tactical media ... cognition … mapping ... genetics ... bio art ... sci-art ... visualization ... molecular modeling ... quantified self ... smart homes ... surveillance ... public policy ... human-centered design ... privacy … generative art/design … cybernetics ... information visualization ... data journalism ... interaction ... immersive experiences ... integration ... social media ... citizen science

Student Fellow Symposium Agenda

Awards:
Awards will include registration for all three days for all awardees (includes some meals during the conference). West coast students will receive $800 in travel subsidy, students traveling from the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast will receive $600 in travel subsidy. Local students in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia will receive registration for all three days, but no travel support.

Submission Instructions: Applications are accepted via email to roleplaysymposium@gmail.com by November 15th at 12 midnight Eastern Time. PDF document must include your name, phone number, email address, the University where you are an enrolled graduate student, and the name and email address of your faculty adviser who supports your application.

A 150-word abstract should indicate one or more of the following types of presentations for which you would like to be considered. The selection committee will then decide which format would work best for the schedule.

1. 15-minute talks: should be accompanied by a visual presentation of some kind, and present a specific project or collaboration. 
2. 6-minute talks: should be accompanied by a visual presentation, and will be an abbreviated format for sharing work; should present a specific project or collaboration. 
3. Creative exhibition/poster session: posters should present a specific project or collaboration and be 24 inches by 36 inches; posters will be exhibited on an easel and the student will be present during the poster session to give quick talks about the work. Pieces for the creative exhibition must either be standalone artifacts, or must be able to be shown in an easel; any artworks that require technology such as a laptop or iPad should be provided by the student for the session; the student will be present during the creative exhibition session to give quick talks about the work.

Selections will be finalized by December 1, 2017 and all applicants notified by email.

* * *

2. Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium Creativity and Collaboration: Revisiting Cybernetic Serendipity

March 13-14, 2018; Washington, D.C.
Organized by Ben Shneiderman, Maneesh Agrawala, Donna Cox, Alyssa Goodman, Youngmoo Kim, and Roger Malina

Colloquium Agenda

Registration - will open in December 2017

Article from Conservation Biology, and book from Oxford Press

Here's an interesting 2007 article by Jacobson, McDuff and Monroe from the journal Conservation Biology, titled Promoting Conservation through the Arts: Outreach for Hearts and Minds:

Emotions play a central role in the decisions we make. For example, we often make poor investment choices because we are driven by our emotions rather than rational judgment (Tversky & Kahneman 1991). On the positive side, when emotional input is added to learning experiences, it makes them more memorable and exciting. The brain deems the information more important and enhances memory of the event. Presenting facts alone is less likely to result in long-term changes in feelings and behaviors (Sylwester 1994; Weiss 2000; Cable & Ernst 2003). 

The arts offer a way to make an emotional connection to people, and the visual and performing arts can help conservation practitioners reach new audiences. Art can provoke reactions that typical education and outreach methods do not. Art has the potential to inform audiences or participants in a new way about conservation topics, and it can stimulate new dialogues and actions...

---

The essay was based in part on the planning, implementation, and evaluation guidelines for using the arts in conservation, published as a meaty and thought-provoking chapter in Conservation Education and Outreach Techniques, Susan K. Jacobson, Mallory D. McDuff, and Martha C. Monroe.

The Orchestra as Ecosystem: Symphony Symbiosis

From Carol Lafayette...

==================

2017-2018 Learning in Concert

The Orchestra as Ecosystem: Symphony Symbiosis 

© 2017 Terry Wolkowicz, All rights reserved 

So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

Balance is defined as a condition in which various elements are in proper proportion or arrangement. Within an ecosystem, balance is key in maintaining a harmonious interaction among a biological community of interacting organisms and their environment. Balance is also a vital component in music. A composer’s concern for balance can be heard through the manipulation of many musical elements including form, melody, harmony, rhythm and texture.

The 2017-2018 Learning in Concert program will explore the concept of balance in music and ecology. The children will explore various ecosystems to analyze whether it demonstrates elements of stability or imbalance. By focusing on ecological instability threatening salt marshes, rain forests and wetlands, the children will identify specific actions or ideas that could help restore ecological balance to these areas. In music, the children will explore balance in classical music—hear how composers achieve balance through the orchestration of musical parts among musical instruments. They will develop a strong understanding of the various instruments of the orchestra and hear how individual instruments, sections and families interact to achieve balance within a piece of music. Children will analyze balance cross-disciplines by determining niche (the musical part’s role in creating balance within a piece of music and the organism’s role in creating balance within an ecosystem), population (number of the same species within an ecosystem or number of same instruments playing within a piece of music), and biodiversity (how many different musical parts transpire and interact throughout a piece of music or how many different species exist within an ecosystem).

In the classrooms, the children will analyze various ecosystems that are in some state of ecological imbalance. Using a large magnetic “Ecostration” board, animal and plant life magnets and sound recordings of various orchestral instruments as their tools, they will orchestrate a section of music that demonstrates the instability found in their selected environment. The children will first determine what level of stability exists in the base with microbes and represent that stability through the selection and scoring of a bass line for their music. They will then analyze the balance of the plant life in the ecosystem and select supporting harmonic material to represent the plant life’s stability. Lastly, the students will add melodic lines to represent the population and diversity of species within the ecosystem. Through classroom discussions and research, the children will identify potential actions or interventions that might begin to restore balance to this environment. With these actions in mind, the children will adapt and change their orchestration to demonstrate the ecosystem moving from a state of imbalance towards a state of balance.

Students will have also have an opportunity to interact with the NBSO Salt Marsh Model. They will work through several scenarios to explore a salt marsh food web and how development, pollution and tidal restriction effects the balance within a New England salt marsh...

Contact Terry Wolkowicz to bring the “Learning in Concert” program to your school!
email: twolkowicz@nbsymphony.org
phone: 508-493-4288

More...

Research support for art/sci intersections

The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) is dedicated to
fostering and supporting integrative scholarship addressing ultimate
questions at the intersection of the arts, engineering, the
humanities, law, and the formal, natural, and social sciences,
especially those that transcend disciplinary boundaries.
http://ndias.nd.edu/fellowships/residential/

Research Support
The NDIAS offers residential fellowships for periods ranging from
three weeks to a full academic year (fall and spring semesters, August
through May). Fellowships range up to a maximum of $60,000 (gross
amount) per academic year (up to a maximum of $30,000 [gross amount]
per semester) or pro-rated amounts for shorter periods. In addition,
fellows who do not reside in the greater Michiana area are provided
with subsidized visiting faculty housing located adjacent to the
University during their fellowship. Applicants who require additional
support beyond the fellowship stipend should seek supplementary
funding in the form of external grants or sabbatical and other
contributions from their home institutions. When preferable due to
reasons such as faculty retirement contributions, ongoing employment,
or the tracking of external funding, the NDIAS will pay a fellowship
stipend directly to a Fellow’s home institution.

Application Instructions
https://ndias.nd.edu/fellowships/residential/application-instructions/

Interlochen Arts Academy land art

Brief Summary of the Project:
This new collaborative project that uses “land” as a genre to bring visiting artists, scientists, and land use planners together with high school art and ecology students.

After conducting a Forestry Management Plan, Interlochen Center for the Arts identified about 70 acres of pine plantation on our campus that need to be selectively harvested and re-forested with native hardwood trees. Ten acres of this land have been identified as a study site for ecology and visual art students to document changes in biodiversity, soil and carbon capture as a result of the timbering process. We have the opportunity to create a permanent land art installation commemorating and responding to the process.

Two classes that run simultaneously in Math/Science and Visual Arts allow students to collaborate on the project. The design of a public trail system that runs through the land-art installation provides accessible recreation to our students and the community and raises awareness about the importance of protection, regeneration, conservation and the role art has in making the process meaningful.

The impact of this collaborative project reaches beyond our students and the land on our campus to the people in our community and will hopefully be a model of how to use art to invite the public into environmentally important projects nationwide.

Project Description: Due to the generosity of WilsonArt, funds are available to both study the pine plantation before, during and after timbering, and to involve students, faculty and visiting artists in a land art installation in the subject area. Our proposed plan has the following elements:

1. The subject area will be timbered in late 2017 / early 2018.
2. In the school year 2017 - 18, Johnny Hunt, visual arts instructor, will offer a landscape art course, based in the Visual Arts Division, open to students of all majors. Mary Ellen Newport, Director of Math and Science / Ecology instructor, will teach an ecology class that is offered at the same time as the art course. Ecologists and artists will study ecology and landscape art separately, and then have the occasion to work together in the studio and in the field on art and science.
3. A visiting artist will be brought in to work with instructors to plan, design, create, and ultimately install the land art project in a 10 acre area of the timbered pine off Riley Road. Elements of the plan will consider some or all of these themes:


• Regeneration
• Invitation / initiation / blessing of new forest
• The replacement of the plantation with the natural
• The way that forests and art are shaped by the passage of time
• The creation of a special place, a grove, a sanctuary, a nursery; a space that may or may not be able to acknowledge native American sensibilities
• The changing nature of a forest in the process of secondary succession
• The role of (bio)diversity in creating stability


4. Guest artists, native artists, scientists and land use planners will be brought in to deepen the experience between ecology and art. Plans for trails / paths, observation decks, planting regimes will be developed. The expectation is that some of the timbered wood from this plot could be used in building structures such as shelters for students doing data collection, bird observation decks over Bridge Lake.
5. Here is what we have put together as a description for the artist(s) we have involved: Interlochen Arts Academy seeks collaboration with a visual artist to guide science and arts students in the creation of land art for a 10 acre pine plantation forest that will be transformed (over the years) into a native forest. There are scientific objectives to the project (document changes in soil, biodiversity and carbon storage) as well. Ideally the artist would be available to consult with students for 2 week period in the early fall 2017 (in residence), a time in late fall 2017 (by remote, if necessary) for two weeks in January 2018 (IAA's Inter*Mester program), and for a time TBD in the spring semester 2018.

Images of the land and the areas we are focusing on for this project. The zoomed in area near the lake is where the art would be installed. The pine plantation between Riley Road and Bridge Lake is the location of the project. The project location contains scrubby Scotch pine to the north and west, an irregularly shaped patch of red pine more centrally located, and a wetlands area with a path leading SW to Bridge Lake. The irregular patch is the location of the project.

Melinda Zacher Ronayne
Director of Visual Arts
Interlochen Center for the Arts

E: melinda.ronayne@interlochen.org
P: 231.276.7844
W: interlochen.org

Interlochen Arts Camp | Arts Academy | College of Creative Arts | Presents | Public Radio

Leonardo Abstract Services (LABS) for art/sci theses

Dear Faculty:

This is a reminder that you recommend to your students who have successfully finalized an MA, MFA or PhD thesis that in some way explores the intersection of art, science and/or technology to submit an abstract of their thesis to Leonardo Abstract Services (LABS). This database, which has over 500 thesis abstracts, can be found at collections.pomona.edu/labs/.

LABS offers an international platform for graduate work so that artists and scholars can participate in a dialogue with peers from around the world. Your support of their work and this project helps to invigorate the next generation and faculty who guide them. Thanks for your help with this.

All the best,

Sheila Pinkel
LABS English Language Coordinator

Co-Evolution: Art and Biology in the Museum

Between 2010-2015, the University of New Mexico ran Advancing Integration of Museums into Undergraduate Programs (AIM-UP): a NSF Research Coordination Network program themed around natural history museum collections.

The goal of the RCN was to emphasize the critical current value of these collections by

"refining existing efforts and developing new integrated approaches to collections-based training in large-scale questions using the expertise of educators, curators, collection managers, database managers, and scientists whose work spans disciplines."

The program included field stations, as well.

As part of AIM-UP, in 2012 the museum ran a semester-long seminar called CO-EVOLUTION: Art + Biology in the Museum. The seminar connected art and science:

"Communication between fields is important within science but there also is a greater need for interdisciplinary exchange between biologists, artists, historians, and other researchers to share resources and methods for building collective knowledge. Such collaborations help identify the ties between cultural history and natural history, as we pose new questions and foster a more expansive approach to answering these questions by connecting their diverse histories. Collections can help foster the development of creativity, generative thinking, and rigorous inquiry that will be required of future leaders in research and practice. While scientific education and research offer rigorous methods for creating new knowledge, arts education and practice provide the tools to foster exploration."

The project created a blog that is a rich source of art/sci content and links. The blog was meant to be:

"A space for posting thoughts, ideas, references, resources, and works. The theme of our seminar and workshop series is 'Morphology and Geographic Variation.' We will use the natural history collection as our starting point and hear from scientists, artists, designers, programmers, musicians, and more on place-based study."

December 9 deadline to apply!

ArtScience Labs

"Le Laboratoire Cambridge is an interdisciplinary culture lab that invites visitors to explore the experiments and wonders of innovative artists, designers, chefs, and more discovering at the frontiers of science. 

Founded in Paris in 2007 by inventor, material scientist, and Harvard Professor David Edwards, Le Laboratoire now lives in Cambridge as the flagship of ArtScience Labs, a global organization dedicated to radical idea development."

* * *

Le Laboratoire is part of a larger effort at art/sci convergence for cultural change called, Artscience Labs.

"Culture labs conduct or invite experiments in art and design to explore contemporary questions that seem hard or even impossible to address in more conventional science and engineering labs."

"Many of the questions that we face today — questions of innovation, of change — are not really questions we can deal with in a classical science lab."

"Labs are places of experience. We enter to explore. Each minute in a functioning lab is like a page of a smart novel that loses meaning without reference to what came before and is about to follow. 

Art, like science, is such an experience, and, yet, we encounter art and science in our museums more frequently as outcome, as product – dug up, carved down, highly edited – that follows a mysterious process of creative thought and engagement... 

At The Laboratory, we look for novel ideas of art and design that cannot be properly formulated without a sustained encounter with a pioneering edge of science. We then help broker encounters between artists and scientists that permit concrete idea formulation. Once ideas are formulated, we invest in development of the experimental projects that result. In this way, artscience, the process of creative thought that synthesizes esthetic and analytical methods, becomes a catalyst for innovation and the basis for partnership."

ArtScience Labs includes an educational program called the ArtScience Prize, a global "catalyst for student learning through passionate pursuit of innovative art and design ideas at the cutting edge of science...the ArtScience Prize [is] an interdisciplinary education program that supports young people as they explore and develop groundbreaking ideas around an annual scientific theme, seek[ing] to prepare the next generation of innovators."

2013-14 Boston ArtScience Prize from ArtScience Prize on Vimeo.


The winners of all the ArtScience Prize programs are invited to the annual ArtScience Labs Annual Innovation Workshop, which is like a Silicon Valley development incubator.

2015 ArtScience Innovation Workshop from ArtScience Prize on Vimeo.

More videos from ArtScience Labs on Vimeo and Youtube 1 | 2.
Books on ArtScience by David Edwards:

• Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation
• The Lab

Stanford's Environmental Humanities Project

Here's a great project by Stanford grad students:

The Environmental Humanities Project provides a forum for an interdisciplinary approach to environmental issues. It foregrounds recent work of humanities scholars in disciplines such as cultural studies, history, literary studies, philosophy and anthropology that has engaged with environmental problems, and explores how this research contributes to current discussions about ecological crisis.

a2ru Programs, and Groundworks Conference Announcement, November 8-11, 2015

The Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) generates knowledge, advocacy, and resources that enable universities to integrate arts and design practices, fostering highly adaptive creators and thinkers.

"There is a problem with creativity. Companies and governments are very keen to promote it, but they’re not sure what it is or who has it."
"Art should be regarded as a specific kind of cognitive engineering".

The above quotes come from a2ru's extensive Knowledge Base that provides information that enables research universities to adapt effective strategies for integrating arts practice, and to support and inform further original inquiry. They also offer project grants, and request assistance in compiling relevant studies and examples of original research collaborations.

* * *

The 2015 a2ru National Conference takes place November 8-11, 2015 at Virginia Tech. From their webiste:

"GroundWorks: Improving and Supporting Practice in the Third Space" will convene partners and allies to address the next generation of opportunities and challenges facing arts transdisciplinary practice, peer review, infrastructures, and partnerships in research universities.

Registration is open to all.

GOALS & OUTCOMES

• Disseminate and leverage the Mellon Best Practices Guide to improve practice and infrastructure. Develop and test set of shared values and criteria for peer reviewing, critiquing, and understanding research and creative practice in the third space.
• Make progress towards a peer-reviewed aggregator/forum for arts transdisciplinary research and practice.
• Lay groundwork for shared practices guidelines for third space research and practice in S.E.A.D, Arts + Health, and Arts + Social Entrepreneurship endeavors.
• Explore emerging cultural policy platforms through high-impact regional partnerships.

Case study: Stroud Water Research Center

Stroud Water Research Center (red), and the Brandywine
River Museum (blue), which is renowned for its holdings
of the Wyeth family of artists.

Arts at the Stroud Water Research Center.

Notes by Fred Swanson 9/8/2015.

These comments are based on an encounter with Director Bern Sweeney at the 2015 LTER All-Scientists Meeting in Estes Park, CO, which he had been invited to attend as lead of an LTREB project. I first encountered Bern while visiting with Robin Vannote, then Director of Stroud, during the River Continuum Concept (RCC) project period of the late 1970s and later as I visited my parents who lived only 25 mi away in northern-most Delaware.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Stroud Water Research Center was established in 1967 in the Brandywine Creek valley, southeastern Pennsylvania. The Stroud family owns extensive rolling farm and forest land in the area where they have a long history of crop, dairy, and poultry production. The Stroud home (mansion) contains an impressive art collection (I viewed it during a dinner for a gathering of scientists working on a renewal proposal for the RCC), and the agreement to create the Stroud Center facilities and program stipulated that art be displayed in the facilities, even chemistry labs where the air quality can damage the art.

At the 2015 All-Scientists Meeting Bern told this story:

 Mr. Stroud called him up one morning and asked him to go over to the house. When Bern arrived, Mr. Stroud told him that one of the many art pieces in the house had been appraised in the range of $1.5 - 2 million, and if Bern could pick it out, the piece would be sold and the funds donated to the endowment for the Stroud Center.

Bern gave a couple tries and failed, so Mr. Stroud took him to the front entryway and identified a very large brown painting with a single, horizontal black stripe – a Rothko. Eventually the transaction was conducted.

Art has been a part of the Stroud Center programs in many forms, especially in education programs. One such class involves art students learning about aquatic science while canoeing down the Brandywine Creek. At one point in the program they collect and view aquatic invertebrates under microscopes streamside, and then are asked to take a sheet of paper and draw their favorite mayfly or caddisfly that they have collected.

 However, they are asked to draw the critter with one half of it showing the individual “as is” and then, let their creative juices flow, and draw the other half freeform to better represent their impressions from the field experience. Eventually the class makes its way downstream and pulls out on a grassy bank. The students go to the nearby house where artist Jamie Wyeth (of the many generations of famous Wyeth artists in the area) greets them and shows them around his studio.

What does art/science collaboration really mean?

Eric Magrane is a Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Geography at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Eric's work is, "particularly interested in the encounters that ensue when creative practices occur within environmental research or tourism sites and how contemporary artworks and poetries may reflect, complicate, or disrupt environmental narratives."

Magrane is Poet in Residence at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, leading the design for poetry installations at the museum. Eric is currently in a van with a group of students somewhere in the Great Basin, leading a class that is visiting many of the iconic land art sites, and several field research facilities in the American Southwest.

He also maintains a blog for the Institute of the Environment called, "Proximities". Here is a great post about what art/science collaboration means. The article includes this thought-provoking quote from Barbara Morehouse:

"This is not about making scientists out of artists or vice versa; it is perhaps more about rethinking the Renaissance ideal of intellectual versatility in the context of very complicated times. It’s about developing a fully developed understanding of the environments we enjoy and on which we must necessarily depend."

Art and Environment courses

Erica Osborne has posted an article about her recent Art and Environment offering at Colorado State University:

"Artists are creators of culture. They are sponges of the world around them, regurgitating what they see and experience into forms that act as communication tools for the larger public. For professional artists, contemporary issues like climate change, land use and ecology are prominent playing fields for creation...."

Artist Stephanie Lie at Kendall-Frost

Stephanie Lie was awarded a UCIRA Artist Residency at UC San Diego's Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve in summer of 2014. Isabelle Kay provided these photos from the project.

Read more about the artwork here.

UCIRA Artists-in-Residency program.

Diagram of paper folding sequence. Pablo Colapinto of
UC Santa Barbara visited the NRS’s Yosemite Field
Station to explore biological folding strategies.
Image credit: Pablo Colapinto

In association with the University of California Natural Reserve System (UCNRS), the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA) sponsored six student artists-in-residence at California field stations this summer.

Here's an article from the UCNRS describing the awards. I'll try to get more detailed project descriptions to post later.

=================

Update:

Detailed project descriptions and artist websites/contacts...

• UC Berkeley, Sagehen Creek Field Station: Matthew Jamieson and Seth Andrews, MFA digital art and new media, UC Santa Cruz 
• www.jamieson-cartography.com
• UC Berkeley, Blue Oak Ranch Reserve: Kevin O'Connor, Ph.D. performance studies, UC Davis 
• http://performancestudies.ucdavis.edu/kevin-oconnor/
• UC San Diego, Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve: Stephanie Lie, UC Berkeley drawing instructor, MFA from UC San Diego 
• http://www.stephanielie.com/
• UC Merced, Yosemite Field Station: KinoEar Collective (Maayan Tsadka–doctor of music arts; Danielle Williamson–MFA digital art and new media; Nathaniel Ober–MFA digital art and new media), UC Santa Cruz. 
• http://Soundcloud.com/majanka 
• http://DanielleWilliamson.com/work 
• http://nathanielober.com/
• UC Merced, Yosemite Field Station: Pablo Colapinto, MA and Ph.D. media art and technology, UC Santa Barbara 
• http://mat.ucsb.edu/show/2013/people/pablo-colapinto/

Ocean Science Animation Student Videos

Hey everyone!

So great to meet you all at the FSML meeting.  Faerthen, thanks so much for starting this.  I mentioned a collaboration that I had with the USC Animation department when I was the director of the COSEE program at USC.  Here's a link to those student videos.

http://www.usc.edu/org/cosee-west/ocean_tube.html

Judy