Art/Science Collaborations: New Explorations of Ecological Systems, Values, and their Feedbacks

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Aaron M. Ellison, et. al.
First published: 20 April 2018
https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1384
Volume 99, Issue 2. Pages 180-191

Collaborations between artists and scientists have a long history. In recent years, artists have joined with ecologists to showcase biodiversity, links between biodiversity and ecosystem function, and the effects of human activities on the broader environment. In many cases, artists also have provided “broader impacts” for ecological research activities, communicating scientific findings in creative and novel ways to audiences much broader than the readership of our technical journals.

At the 2017 ESA Meeting in Portland, Oregon, two back-to-back Ignite sessions highlighted new directions in collaborations between artists and ecologists. Although proposed and developed independently, the two sessions were strongly complementary. In the first session, organized by Kim Landsbergen, Emily Bosanquet, and Elizabeth Demaray, six presentations focused on how contemporary artists working with ecologists and environmental scientists are creating new works that would not have been possible without the interdisciplinary collaborations. In the second session, organized by Aaron Ellison and Carri LeRoy, ten presentations emphasized not only how art can communicate ecological concepts to broader audiences, but also how ecologists have been influenced by art. In both sessions, presentations and the subsequent intense discussions illustrated how artists and ecologists working together can lead to new ways of seeing, hearing, experiencing, and knowing. These two Ignite sessions, attended by more than 100 people, also demonstrated the momentum for art/science collaborations that continues to build from previous art/science sessions and workshops at ESA meetings over the last several years.

Here, we describe contributions from many of the presenters. We asked each presenter to provide 1–2 key images from their presentation and a short description of it; these have been edited only lightly for clarity and consistency of voice, and they are presented in the same order as at the 2017 meeting. We hope that these vignettes not only encourage deeper exploration of all of the work by the presenters, their collaborators, and their colleagues, but also spark new ideas for art/science collaborations.

The Waterviz: a real-time confluence of science, art, and music (Lindsey Rustad)

At the USDA Forest Service’s Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, Lindsey Rustad, a Research Ecologist, is collaborating with artist Xavier Cortada, musician and composer Marty Quinn, information manager Mary Martin, Science Communicator Sarah Garlick, and others to create the Waterviz. The Waterviz (https://waterviz.org) is a new water cycle visualization and sonification tool (Fig. 10). Briefly, hydrologic data are captured digitally from a small, first-order catchment at Hubbard Brook using an array of environmental sensors. These data are transmitted to the Internet and are used to drive a real-time computer model that calculates all components of the catchment’s water cycle. The complete set of measured and modeled data then drive a flash visualization and sonification of the water cycle at Hubbard Brook. The Waterviz is a novel approach that allows Internet users to intuitively experience the dynamic inputs, outputs, and storage of water in this small, upland forested watershed as they are occurring in near real-time.

LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bes2.1384