CREATING DISTINCTIVE COLLABORATIONS. FOSTERING EMERGING POSSIBILITIES.

DIALOGUE | RESEARCH | EXPERIMENTATION

The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative explores the intersection between artistic production and scientific inquiry, amplifying the University’s belief in the transformative power of ideas. By creating distinctive and meaningful trans-disciplinary collaborations and fostering emerging dialogue, the Initiative envisions ways to help shape the cultural landscape and the convergence of new paradigms for seeing and knowing in the 21st century. We build environments for conversation and experimentation within our institutional setting, where the University community and others can explore a distinctive approach to research, inquiry, and teaching through direct dialogue and interaction. The Initiative’s impact emerges from selective programs that inspire the next generation of scholars, arts practitioners, and citizens.

The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative embodies UChicago’s tradition of “integrated and borderless inquiry” by offering grants, programming, and other opportunities for students, faculty, and practitioners in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences to work, think, and experiment in proximity to one another within the University of Chicago, throughout the city, and beyond.

VISION FOUR CORNERSTONES OF THE INITIATIVE

COLLABORATIONexplore new territory between the arts, sciences, and social sciences by cultivating conversation and joint projects that support new systems of thought and research.

COMMUNICATIONencourage and support new partnerships from a wide range of disciplines for faculty and students while championing the advancement of new knowledge.

EXCHANGEstimulate new insights and pathways to address the complexities of our world by tapping into multiple methodological insights, tools, questions, and curiosities offered by different disciplines.

EXPERIMENTATIONfoster curiosity and experimentation to seed visionary outcomes.

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PHOTO: NANCY WONG ELIZABETH “JORDIE” DAVIES AND AYESHA SINGH

The core of the Arts, Science + Culture Initiative’s programming provides funding and institutional support for graduate students in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences to engage with students and practitioners outside their field of study. ASCI has two premier programs that foster trans-disciplinary collaboration, promote unexpected experimentation, and sustain dialogue among graduate students: the Graduate Collaboration Grants and the Graduate Fellows.

GRADUATE STUDENT PROGRAMMING

ENRICHING ACADEMIC STUDIES AT UCHICAGO

GRADUATE COLLABORATION GRANTSAwarded yearly since 2010, the Arts, Science + Culture Graduate Collaboration Grants fund teams of two or more graduate students—one or more from the arts or humanities and one or more from the sciences or social sciences—who work together over the course of the academic year to investigate a collaborative project that weaves together the unique perspectives offered by their disciplines. In 2015 the grants expanded to allow inter-institutional collaboration with MFA candidates at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). In addition to the financial support awarded to graduate grantees, the Initiative provides staff support, monthly dinner forums, and exhibition, publication, and presentation opportunities for the graduates’ collaborative project.

GRADUATE FELLOWSThe Arts, Science + Culture Graduate Fellows program is a monthly forum for discussion and exchange among a cohort of graduate students from across the university. The graduate fellows are researchers and artists whose work is firmly anchored in the arts, humanities, social sciences, or sciences, and for whom crossing disciplinary boundaries is integral to the particularities of their work. Now entering its fifth year, previous grants have been awarded to students from the Departments of Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry, Music Composition, English, Neuroscience, Evolutionary Biology, Physics, Visual Arts, and Molecular Engineering.

GRADUATE CONSORTIUMThis pilot program, which ran for three years beginning in 2015, was a trans-disciplinary consortium of Fellows from the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Northwestern University. Through self-guided group field trips, each cohort built an interdisciplinary community while engaging Chicago’s vibrant urban environment. The three Field Guides are the culminating presentations of the Fellows’ research over the course of their year together, highlighting and examining their distinctive approaches to research and practice while on site and working “in the field.” All three volumes are now available as PDFs on the Arts, Science + Culture Initiative website.

PHOTOS: JEAN LACHAT

COLLABORATIONS MOVING FORWARD

Many former Arts, Science + Culture collaboration grantees have gone on to expand their original projects. The following is a selection of teams who have continued to pursue their research:

Shane DuBay (PhD, Evolutionary Biology, UChicago) and Carl Fuldner (PhD candidate, Art History, UChicago) first collaborated in 2014–15 on The Phoenix Index. In September 2017 they published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, “Birds track 135 years of atmospheric black carbon and environmental policy,” which went on to garner widespread attention in numerous international media outlets.

Benedikt Diemer (PhD, Astronomy & Astrophysics, UChicago) and Isaac Facio (MFA, Fiber & Material Studies, SAIC) collaborated in 2014–15 on The Fabric of the Universe, a project that explored ways to use 3-dimensional textiles to visualize the structure of the universe. They continued working together and exhibited a 3-D woven textile at the Adler Planetarium in 2018. Facio is the 2019 artist-in-residence at Fermilab.

Meredith Leich (MFA, Film, Video, New Media, and Animation, SAIC) collaborated with Andrew Malone (PhD, Glaciology and Climatology, UChicago) in 2015–16 on Scaling Quelccaya, a film that used experimental visual strategies to convey the retreat of the Quelccaya Ice Cap. Leich moved forward with their film and won second prize at the Deutsche Bank 2017 Macht Kunst competition.

Kieran Murphy (PhD, Physics, UChicago) and Xinyi Zhu (MFA, Film, Video, New Media and Animation, SAIC) collaborated in 2016–17 on Randomness and Mindgames. They continued to work together on VR games and in 2018 attended “Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations” as part of a Sackler Symposium on art and science in Washington, D.C., and presented their work at the National Academy of Sciences.

THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE, INSTALLATION AT THE ADLER PLANETARIUM, BY BENEDIKT DIEMER AND ISAAC FACIO.

SHANE DUBAY AND CARL FULDNER AT THE FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

“For me, active collaboration is like turbulence: not fully understood at the onset and in the process. However, swirling, in time, interesting patterns emerge. Don’t give up, follow those patterns.

TO DATE, THE INITIATIVE HAS SUPPORTED 124 GRADUATE STUDENTS FROM 32 DISCIPLINES. Anthropology Joshua Babcock

Damien Bright

Hannah Burnett*

Emma Gilheany

Cameron Hu*

Mallory James

Hilary M. Leathem

Agnes Mondragón*

Anne-Sophie Reichert

Yukun Zeng

Art HistoryCarl Fuldner

Hanne Graversen

Astronomy & Astrophysics Benedikt Diemer

Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Josiah Zayner

Biological SciencesJared Clemens

Mirae Lee

Maggie Zhang

BiophysicsWill McFadden

Chemistry Ken Ellis-Guardiola

Clara del Junco

Jeff Montgomery

Nicole James*

Sukanya Randhawa

Cinema & Media Studies

Tien-Tien Jong

Mikki Kressbach

Nicole Erin Morse

Tyler Schroeder

Artemis Willis

Computational Neuroscience Kyler Brown

Computation ScienceJohn Santerre

EconomicsTy Turley

English Hannah Brooks-Motl

Oscar Chavez

Arianna Gass

Bill Hutchison*

Lauren M. Jackson

Carmen Merport

Jonathan Schroeder

Allison Turner*

Evolutionary Biology Erick Bayala

Nicole Bitler Kuehnle

Shane DuBay

Natalia Piland

K. Supriya

Lu Yao

Geophysical SciencesGrant Macdonald

Predrag Popovic

Germanic StudiesAmy Stebbins

Glaciology & Climatology Andrew Malone

HistoryMarco Aurelio Torres

LinguisticsRebekah Baglini

Mathematics Daniel Johnstone

Markus Kliegl

ROSEMARY HALL MFA, Printmedia, SAIC

Medicine Marie Adachi

Nicole Balthrushes

Celine Goetz

Xuan Han

Laura Hodges

Erica MacKenzie

Bailey Miles

Alex Ruby

Neha Sathe

Phillippe Tapon

Middle Eastern StudiesNiko Shahbazian

Molecular Engineering Ashley Guo

Paul Jerger

Daniel Reid

Erzsebet Vincent

Ruben Waldman

Rachel Wallace

Music Iddo Aharony

Alican Çamcı

Jonathan DeSouza

Patrick Fitzgibbons

Ted Gordon

Pierce Gradone

Elizabeth Hopkins

Jack Hughes

Mariusz Kozak

Andrew McManus

Will Myers

Marcelle Pierson

Francisco Castillo Trigueros

Neurobiology Tahra Elissa

Dana Simmons*

Organismal Biology and Anatomy Rossy Natale

Performance StudiesNigel O’Hearn

PhysicsEvan Angelico

Jelani Hannah

Samuel Meehan

Marc Miskin

Kieran Murphy

Ivo Peters

Martin Scheeler

Scott Waitukaitis

Qin Xu

Political Science

Elizabeth “Jordie” Davies*

Psychiatry & Behavioral NeuroscienceAnya Bershad

PsychologyGeoff Brookshire

Heather Harden

Shannon Heald

Stephen Hedger

Yu Ji

Elizabeth Necka

Tiara Starks

StatisticsKushal K. Dey

Lei Sun

Visual ArtsAnthony Adcock

Andrew Bearnot*

Jan Brugger*

Chris Eastman

Marco G. Ferrari

Jacqueline Hendrickson

Elisabeth Hogeman

Stacee Kalmanovsky

Francis Mendes Levitin

Devin Mays

Adrienne Elyse Meyers

Sophia Ree

Clare Rosean

Jen Smoose

Richard Williamson

Terence Wong

Shanna Zentner

*denotes multiple programs

Throughout the year, the Arts, Science + Culture

Initiative produces a variety of programs that bring

together UChicago faculty and students with other

cultural thinkers and professionals from the Chicago

area and beyond. ASCI partners with numerous

organizations across campus and throughout the

city to host conferences and seminars, invite visiting

artists and lecturers to the UChicago campus, and to

develop experimental forms of research, presentation,

and production. On topics as wide-ranging as digital

culture, urbanism, medical imaging, and the cosmos,

ASCI’s public programs critically challenge scientists

and artists to collide disciplinary methodologies,

sparking new bodies of research and lines of inquiry.

The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative actively pursues

and builds partnerships in the arts and sciences

throughout Chicago and beyond.

ACTIVATING RESEARCH AND PRACTICE AT UCHICAGO AND BEYOND

SLOP CHEST, PHOTO: TUCKER RAE-GRANT

PUBLIC PROGRAMMING

PHYSICS PROFESSOR HEINRICH JAEGER AND ARTIST DAN PETERMAN.

DISCIPLINES OF EXPERIMENTCo-presented in October 2018 by ASCI, the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies, this two-day symposium with panel discussions and experiments featured poets, writers, artists, game designers, performers, musicians, and scientists as they explored the concept of “experiment” as a framework, objective, method, and provocation. Participants included Natalia Cecire from the University of Sussex, D’Lane Compton from the University of New Orleans, and Carla Nappi from the University of Pittsburgh. And from the University of Chicago: Heidi Coleman, Rachel Galvin, Edgar Garcia, Travis Jackson, Heinrich Jaeger, Patrick Jagoda, Adrian Johns, Our Literal Speed, Sam Pluta, Dieter Roelstraete, C. Riley Snorton, Ashlyn Sparrow, Jennifer Wild, and John Wilkinson.

SLOP CHESTHannah Burnett (PhD Candidate, Anthropology) and Tucker Rae-Grant (Artist, MFA ‘14) spent two weeks on a container vessel carrying 4,400 shipping containers, twenty-three crew members, and four passengers. Turning their gaze away from the monumental, they studied the everyday items that came along for the ride. Burnett and Rae-Grant were joined by Shannon Lee Dawdy (Professor, Anthropology) and Matthew Jesse Jackson (Associate Professor, Art History; Chair, Department of Visual Arts) to present “Slop Chest: Notes on Trade,” a talk and screening of their film. They drew on ethnographic and visual methods to respond to their questions: As millions of tons of commodities are transported across the world, what material residue remains? What human traces does global trade leave in its wake?

EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC SERIES This series features music on the edge by artists whose works fall between the cracks of historically defined categories of composition, improvisation, jazz, and electronic music. These performances highlight two specific musical approaches—composer-led bands that create experimental new music by fusing elements of composition and improvisation and music that focuses on electronics and technology to expand what is musically possible. The music series is presented in partnership with the Logan Center for the Arts, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Compositions, and the UChicago Department of Music. 2018–19 events included:

The TYSHAWN SOREY TRIO, November 2018 in the Logan Center Performance Penthouse, co-presented by ASCI, the Logan Center for the Arts, the UChicago Department of Music, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, and the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition. The concert featured 2017 MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey, a multi-instrumentalist and composer, along with bassist Christopher Tordini and pianist Cory Smythe. They played selected work, including pieces from the trio’s most recent record, Verisimilitude (Pi Recordings, 2017), which combines Sorey’s intricate compositions with improvisation.

CHIMEFEST 2019, a collaboration between the CHIME Studio, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, and ASCI, was a two-day event in May 2019 featuring concerts by electronic music performers and improvisers from around the globe and talks with leading artists and researchers from the United States, the UK, and Europe.

RECENT PUBLIC PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

TYSHAWN SOREY TRIO, PHOTO: MIKE GRITTANI

THE WATER PROJECT: RESEARCH AND CULTURAL PRODUCTIONAlong with access to energy, access to potable water is quickly emerging as one of the most pressing and complex issues we face on our globe. At UChicago, scientists and engineers are focused on developing new filtration technologies, novel methods to monitor underground water movement, and innovative smart grids for urban water management, while social scientists and economists are researching policy interventions for water governance. This research across the disciplines, however, proceeds in isolation—and, perhaps, without much consideration for the emergent and powerful role of arts and culture production around water-related issues.

The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative has launched The WATER Project: Research and Cultural Production, a University-wide program to amplify the discourse around the pressing concerns of water—locally and globally—by bringing together scientists, humanists, social scientists, curators, students, community members, and professional arts practitioners. Such a program that brings these voices together currently does not exist on our campus. The WATER Project will cross disciplinary boundaries to establish an “ecology of perspectives” focused on water.

Expanding on a series of successful faculty roundtables (“Water Tables”) in 2018–19, the WATER Project will combine coursework, performances, exhibitions, commissioned artworks, and film screenings that address issues of water as they relate to scientific research, public policy, artistic practice, and humanistic inquiry. The program will invigorate and deepen research and teaching on the topic of water and also provide a forum to address the impact on the local and global health and well-being of humanity and our ecosystems. The ASCI website will offer regular updates on WATER Project-related public programming.

ONGOING RESEARCH

PHOTO: NANCY WONG

Launched in 2010 under the leadership of Director & Curator Julie Marie Lemon, the Arts, Science + Culture Initiative operates out of the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago.

CONTACTJulie Marie LemonDirector & Curatorjmlemon@uchicago.edu

Logan Center for the Arts915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL 60637

TheArtsScienceInitiative ArtsSciCulture

AFFILIATE

Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry

FACULTY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Orianna Cacchione, PhD, Curator of Global Contemporary Art, Smart Museum of Art

Ian Foster, Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in Computer Science; Associate Director, Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory

Matthew Jesse Jackson, Professor, Art History, Chair, Department of Visual Arts

Patrick Jagoda, Associate Professor, Department of English, Department of Cinema + Media Studies, Executive Editor of Critical Inquiry

Joseph Masco, Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences, Department Chair

W.J.T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Department of Art History, Department of Visual Arts; Editor, Critical Inquiry

KEY PARTNERS

The Office of the ProvostThe Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Divisions of the Biological and Physical Sciences The Division of the Humanities UChicago GRAD Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts

Ka Yee Lee, Professor in Chemistry, the James Franck Institute, Institute for Biophysical Dynamics and the College, Vice Provost for Research; Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong

Laura Letinsky, Artist, Professor, Department of Visual Arts

Sam Pluta, Composer, Assistant Professor, Department of Music, Director Computer Music Studio (on leave 2019–20 academic year)

Sabina Shaikh, Director, Program on Global Environment; Senior Lecturer, Environmental and Urban Studies in the College; Faculty, Committee on Geographical Sciences; Faculty Director, Chicago Studies

James Skinner, Crown Family Professor of Molecular Engineering, Director of the Water Research Initiative and Deputy Director for Faculty Affairs, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering/Argonne

uchicago.edu/artsscience

Cover Image: The Politics of Solar Rhythms: Cosmic Levitation, film still, 2018, by Tomás Saraceno. Single channel video, Full HD, black and white, sound, 2’48”. Courtesy the artist; Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires; Esther Schipper, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles; Andersen’s Copenhagen; Pinksummer Contemporary, Genoa. © Studio Tomás Saraceno