This talk is part of Cambridge LASER Talks.
Co-Chairs
- Satinder P Gill
- Chrysi Nanou
This Cambridge LASER highlights and reflects on artist-in-residence programmes within scientific institutions and academic departments, including Cambridge, bringing together different processes of translation and collaboration.
In the early days of artists residing in science institutions and academic departments, their purpose and artwork tended to be seen as an adjunct or parallel process to science rather than part of the process of doing and shaping science. Meanwhile, across the globe, there have been groups of artists and scientists creating within the 'entanglements' or 'synergies' of doing art and science, discovering new forms of art and making scientific discoveries. Such collaborations, interpretations, translations and transformations of imagination and knowledge are still a challenge to achieve in our scientific and academic institutions. We invite artists and scientists who have been involved in residencies, including the University of Cambridge, to discuss their experiences and aspirations and the transfer and translation processes of data between arts and sciences.
Speakers
- Natasha Freedman (Creative Producer of Cavendish Art Science Programme)
Natasha is a freelance producer and director working across the arts with experience of developing imaginative programmes that use artistic practice to explore the human condition and support human health, social justice and environmental wellbeing. She founded the pioneering performing arts programme at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, reimagined the learning programmes for English National Opera and Complicite theatre company, and co-led the culture climate organisation Cape Farewell. She is also Creative Director at studio2909.
- David Blandy (Artist)
David was artist in residence with the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, where he created the interactive game Lost Eons. This creates an alternative future world for Cambridgeshire, thinking about the way the environment could have changed after recovery from our climate crisis and the societies that might emerge if evolution was accelerated. His residency took place online, during Covid.
- Miriam Akkermann (Junior Professor in Empirical Musicology at the TU Dresden)
Miriam performs the transverse flute and live electronics, creates sound art, and works as a musicologist and sound engineer. Her recent works include The Aesthetics of Biodiversity (CD 2022), curated by Sergey Kostyrko for the Global Young Academy, and The Tartini, released on Creative Source. Miriam edits Array, the journal of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA). Together with Mary Simoni (Dean of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at RPI) and Charles Nichols, she has produced commissioned music based on Covid data.
- Charles Nichols (Associate Professor of Composition and Creative Technologies at Virginia Tech, USA)
Charles is a composer, violinist, and computer music researcher who explores the expressive potential of instrumental ensembles, computer music systems, and combinations of the two, for the concert stage and in collaborations with dance, video, and installation art. His research includes spatial audio, data sonification, motion capture for musical performance, telematic performance, and haptic musical instrument design.
- Stefanie Reichelt (Scientist, researcher, artist and photographer)
Stefanie is the HCA UK/EU Science Strategy Manager for the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) initiative. From 2005 to 2021 she was head of the light microscopy laboratory at the CRUK Cambridge Institute, where her research included the development of new imaging techniques to enable the visualisation of molecules in cells for cancer diagnostics. She describes herself as a scientist and a photographer — combining both her capacity to observe and to imagine. She has curated and developed Art and Science workshops and exhibitions in the UK and during residencies in India, Japan, and the USA. Stefanie was founder and curator of ArtCell Gallery on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Joanna Page (Professor of Latin American Studies, Director of CRASSH)
Joanna's research focuses on the relationship between science and culture in Latin America. She has worked on literature, film, graphic fiction, and visual arts, particularly from Argentina, Chile, and Brazil. She is author of Creativity and Science in Contemporary Argentine Literature (University of Calgary Press, 2014), Science Fiction in Argentina (University of Michigan Press, 2016), and Decolonising Science in Latin American Art (UCL Press, 2021).