Description
Organisers: Ulrike Kuchner, Soheb Mandhai; co organisers: Jenni French, John Paice, Jake Noel-Storr, Houda Haidar
Art and science both expand human knowledge by blending imaginative thinking with analytical decision-making to create original ideas. Despite their historical synergy, fully harnessing their potential in todayโs astronomy research is challenging. Ever-growing data, large-scale collaborations, and the rise of artificial intelligence often limit opportunities for creative engagement with complex ideas and data. Artistic methods like virtual reality, music, digital and performance art, offer inclusive ways for exploration, understanding and communication.
While art is widely used for information visualization in outreach and science communication, this session focuses on three less-explored aspects of ArtScience:
o Creativity: ArtScience to contribute to knowledge creation will provide an overview of research and practice into ArtScience for interdisciplinary goals (eg. Kuchner+2023; Birsel+2023).
o Inclusivity: ArtScience to improve research culture and accessibility will highlight artistic methods and tools promoting equality, inclusivity, and diversity (eg. Sensory science clubs for neurodiverse audiences).
o STEAM: ArtScience to support teaching and learning will share STEAM (STEM+Art) practice for education (eg. Aguilera+2024).
We will address key challenges, such as navigating differing disciplinary practices, finding funding, and contextualizing collaborative outcomes. Practical advice will include available UK funding schemes, joining communities, setting shared goals, and evaluating results.
Art and science share a common goal: to challenge our understanding of reality. Both are human pursuits aimed at making sense of the complex world we inhabit and our role within it. As a creative crossroads, the contemporary field of ArtScience โ whether through collaboration or individual practice โ has been gaining momentum in recent years. However, uniting these disciplines remains a bold...
This presentation paper will take as itโs starting point a three-way conversation about visualisations in cosmology that I had with Professor Mark Swinbank and the late Professor Richard Bower - both of the Institute of Computational Cosmology (ICC) at Durham University. The exchange was part of my Leverhulme Fellowship, 'Material Sight: Re-presenting the Spaces of Fundamental Science' 2016-18...
Bioart in Space: Ontological-Existential Dimensions of a Biocentered Experience of Space explores the ontological distinction between technologically mediated and biologically centered experiences of space. This presentation investigates how the nature of experience itself can become a foundational question for organizing both the conceptual and material frameworks of artistic practice in...
Louise will share her 2024 British Council funded project, โEarth, a Cosmic Spectacleโ which was developed in collaboration with astronomer Dr Ian Griffin and Tลซhura Otago Museum in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this project, the artist invited astronomers, biologists, and geologists to gaze into the dark skies of New Zealand and anonymously write a letter exploring how their knowledge of Earth's...
We are all blind to the Universe, yet traditionally astronomy communication relies on visual representations, which are not accessible to those who may need or prefer non-visual methods. Audio Universe is a collection of tools and resources to support data analysts, educators, and communicators to represent data and concepts with sound (data sonification). Working with educators, students,...
This talk will explore the transformative potential of integrating art and creativity into astronomical research to foster equity, diversity, and inclusion among professionals within the field. Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches that have successfully enhanced inclusive engagement in scientific endeavours (Wright et al., 2023), we examine how arts-connected research methodologies can...
Science communication enables researchers to share their researched and reach wider audiences through conferences, news articles, public engagement, and seminars. It is a vital part of our jobs, and should be considered important. Unfortunately, a lot of science communication is inaccessible. 10% of the population have some form of dyslexia and 8% of men experience colour-blindness, making...
Ever sat through a talk packed with interesting science but struggled to stay engaged? You're not alone. Good science can easily get lost behind complicated slides. This session we will explore how taking a creative and artistic approach in your scientific presentations can significantly make your talk more engaging and memorable. We'll discuss common slide pitfalls, and explore simple,...
Art is often seen as useful for science communication, visualising concepts for public engagement. This view underestimates significant epistemic contributions of art to scientific knowledge. Art challenges disciplinary assumptions, introduces alternative methodologies, and fosters novel ways of engaging with material phenomena.
This talk explores how art-science collaborations advance...
Sound waves cannot travel in the near perfect vacuum of space, but electromagnetic and gravitational waves can. Converting these waves to sound reveals a series of weird and wonderful noises, known as the โsounds of spaceโ, and it's a bit like entering the film set of a 1960โs sci-fi movie! In 2017 we set up an art-science collaboration to find novel ways of exploiting these fascinating...
Science fiction (SF) is a genre influenced by science which, in turn, influences science. Astronomers discovered the first exoplanets in the 1990s, but exoplanets featured in SF long before then. This talk presents two studies regarding exoplanets in SF. In the first study, a database of 212 SF exoplanets was analysed using a Bayesian network to find interconnected interactions between...
An Early Universe is an artwork made in collaboration with the Gravity Laboratory at the University of Nottingham. For the last year artist Alistair McClymont has been working alongside scientists taking an active part in the experimental process to investigate the early universe using analogue systems. The creation of the artwork and the experimental scientific process were intimately...
My practice-led research takes a detailed look at humansโ dominant environmental footprint in space which mirrors our technologically mediated exploration and transformation of environments on Earth. In an inter-disciplinary weaving of contemporary Fine Art practices, with methodologies employed by space, scientific and environmental domains, the work creatively explores the significance of...
For more than 15 years, I have had the joy of designing and delivering activities for the National Space Academy and other partners to engage young people and their families with space science. To date projects I have worked on have reached millions of people in the UK and beyond and I would relish the opportunity to discuss what, in my experience, makes combining STEM with the arts so...
Combining science and the arts is becoming commonplace in primary schools, with STEAM clubs appearing around the country. But how common is it for students to study a combination of STEM and arts subjects once theyโre given the choice?
After age 16, when students in England can take a range of A-level and other qualifications, neither STEM nor the arts are compulsory. In this session, weโll...
The International Astronomical Youth Camp (IAYC) is a unique 3 week research camp for 16 to 24 year olds which has brought astronomy and culture together for over 50 years. Each year, as part of our project offerings (alongside traditional observation, theory, and coding project groups), we create groups which intersect astronomy with the arts, humanities, and social sciences. These...
Astronomy and astrophysics present extremely abstract concepts that secondary school children can find overwhelming. By teaching these concepts using STEAM learning we can not only give a better understanding of space but also nurture transferrable skills such as creativity, curiosity and experimentation in new contexts.
The Art of Astrophysics is an ongoing project in collaboration with...
The Astronomy through the Herschels workshops foster social inclusion and raise aspirations, particularly among Wonder Communitiesโthose who may feel science isnโt for them or who have historically lacked equitable access to STEM opportunities. Part of the Explore Your Universe โ Valuing Inclusion project, supported by ASDC and STFC, the programme focused on three outcomes: developing a...
Blender is a powerful open-source 3D graphics suite for creating animations, visualizations, and interactive models. In this talk, I will demonstrate how Blender can be used to communicate astronomical data, from artistic interpretations to precise scientific visualizations. Leveraging its Python API, researchers can directly import and transform raw data into compelling 3D models and...
An artists insight into how Carlos Frenk and a kitchen sink informed my art and led me to presenting this talk at NAM 2025 โ and how I engagee with science through art.
During COVID, I watched space documentaries and felt inspired to represent my amazement at the universe through art. My work was particularly influenced by Professor Carlos Frenkโs research on dark matter and Andrea Ghezโs...
I present the FITS Realtime Explorer of Low Latency in Every Dimension. This is a FITS viewer designed to display 3D data cubes using the popular "Blender" art package. It allows users to display their data volumetrically, as isosurfaces (surfaces of a constant data value), or more traditional channel maps (including with displacement so that the data is shown as a height map). Though...
This year Kielder Observatory delivered the third phase of its From STEM to Stars project. Building on the success of previous phases, From STEM to Stars Phase 3 aimed to inspire and educate through the world of space engineering, emphasising the North Eastโs rich industrial heritage and its emerging role in the UKโs space sector.
We initially targeted 50 schools to establish after-school...
This talk will focus on a case study of an artist-in-residence project centered on astrophysics, astronomy, and art. Hosted by the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University and co-founded by art and science curator Iris Long, the project exemplifies interdisciplinary research.
Touch the Universe not only conveys cutting-edge astronomical knowledge but also delves into the everyday...
As astronomers, we observe a sky beyond what our eyes can see - but what if we could see what our telescopes can? The starry heavens - familiar to our species for millennia - would look so different to eyes that could see the radio flashes of neutron stars, or the microwave hum of the cosmic microwave background.
And that begs the question - if our ancestors were to look to the sky on a...
