COLLABORATIONS OF ART AND SCIENCE

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious- it is the source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein

ART-SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT OPPORTUNITIES:

• Alliance of Artist Communities advocates for creative environments that support the work of today's artists. Among its offerings it provides a list of ecologically-oriented residency programs - either as the focus of their organization or as one program of many at their organization. Art+Ecology Residency Programs.
  
• University of Wisconsin Trout Lake Research Station ‘Artist in Residency’. The goal of the University of Wisconsin Trout Lake Station artist in residency program is to create collaborative art/humanities and science projects focusing on the long-term ecology of lakes and their surrounding landscapes in Vilas County, Wisconsin. The Trout Lake Station is a field site of the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) project which is part of a national network studying long term ecological change.  The residency is designed for visual artists, writers and musicians who have specific interests in exploring the relationship between people, northern lakes and landscapes, and the long-term scientific investigations of the LTER project.  One residency per year is offered. Here is a blog about Helen's residency.
  

EXAMPLES OF SCIENCE/ART COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS:

• Art and Science Collaborations Inc.  (ASCI) to raise public awareness about artists and scientists using science and technology to explore new forms of creative expression, and to increase communication and collaborations between these fields.
  
• Art/ Science Collaboration, Bodies, and Environments.  This is the website of an international, collaborative research project investigating the emergence of new artist-scientist collaborations.   Includes contemporary collaborative projects in the US, the UK, Europe, Australia and Asia involving diverse groups of scientists and artists.  Research Sites.
• The EcoArt Network.  A network of professionals dedicated to the practices of ecological art, working across disciplines and within communities.  Includes an extensive list of ecologically based art projects.
• Landfill:  An Artist Reclaimation Project  is an online archive and quarterly subscription service that studies socially engaged artworks by documenting and redistributing the material byproducts they produce. The Landfill Archive includes scanned images of leftover materials and short descriptions of the projects they publicized and enabled. Each issue of Landfill Quarterly will contain selected pieces of ephemera from the Archive and a printed journal that contextualizes the objects through essays, images, and interviews. "Landfill has three aims: to provide projects with a second venue for reception, to build a cumulative and nonlinear history of socially engaged practice, and to pull diverse practices into conversation by reframing them in writing."
• LEONARDO  The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) is a nonprofit organization that serves the global network of distinguished scholars, artists, scientists, researchers and thinkers through  programs focused on interdisciplinary work, creative output and innovation. ART, SCIENCE AND THE ENVIRONMENT RESOURCE LIST
• LTE Arts  Their goal is to create new ways to share research and information with the public through the arts. The project engages arts and humanities with Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) studies of future scenarios and landscape change. " We hope to increase public understanding of lake ecology, highlight research results from our LTER lake studies, and encourage people to take an active role in defining and influencing the future of our lakes."
• Paradise Lost?  Climate Change in the North Woods  This is a catalog documenting an art/science collaborative project in 2006  where 20 artists, seven scientists and six educators met in Northern Wisconsin to learn about climate change and consider ways that art could increase public understanding about human impact on the natural environment. The artists (musicians, writers and visual artists working in variety of media) subsequently created pieces reflecting their perceptions of climate change science, effects of human activity on northern ecosystems, and actions people can take to protect its unique flora and fauna. The goals of the resulting traveling exhibition was to share information about the impacts of climate change in the North Woods and to encourage each of us to make thoughtful decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  At each exhibition site art teachers and children from local schools worked with the science educators to create their own artistic contributions to the local exhibitions based on classroom discussions of climate change.
• WormFarm Institute in Reedsburg, Wisconsin is "An evolving laboratory of the arts and ecology and fertile ground for creative work.  Planting a seed, cultivating, reaping what you sow . . . both farmer and artist have these activities in common."  The Wormfarm Institute is a  non-profit working to build a sustainable future for agriculture and the arts by fostering vital links between people and the land. Generating, supporting and promoting these links between our creative selves, our work and our place on earth is essential for a thriving community.  They have a commitment to creating community and revitalizing rural life through the arts.  They are an NEA recipient.