Sci-Art Symposium Sessions

Friday Special Sessions:

• Welcome and Introductions:
  Join representatives from the Art Museum and President Laurie Nichols as we welcome you to the first science and art related symposium at the University of Wyoming.
• Speed Dating with the Arts and Sciences:
  A fun, fast paced opportunity to meet your colleagues! Bring yourself and an open mind.
• Brandon Ballengée Keynote Address and Lunch:
  Featured presenter Brandon Ballengée will address his 20-year career working with interdisciplinary approach to art and biology, including some of his challenges and successes. Lunch is provided for registered participants. This session is open to the public.
• Fall Opening Reception at University of Wyoming Art Museum:
  The University of Wyoming Art Museum will celebrate fall exhibitions with a FREE public opening reception Friday, September 9, from 6-8 p.m. at the Centennial Complex. The reception will include refreshments, cash bar and live music by 10¢ Stranger.

Fall exhibitions now on view are Audubon & Van Hoesen: Illustrating Animals; WASTE LAND: A Survey of Works by Brandon Ballengée, 1996 – 2016; Pat Guthrie Special Exhibitions Teaching Gallery; and Rural Images: The Cartoon Art of J.R. Williams, Ace Reid, and Jerry Palen.

Saturday Special Sessions:

• Adrienne Outlaw Hands On Maker Session:
  Collaborate with Department of Art and Art History’s visiting artist Adrienne Outlaw as she creates a sculptural installation in the Visual Arts Gallery. Free and open to all ages.
• Family Saturday Workshop at the Art Museum:
  Come to the Art Museum and make hands-on art inspired by Audubon and Van Hoesen: Illustrating Animals exhibition. Families will learn about local ecosystems and use a variety of natural and man-made materials to create their own three dimensional habitats. Free for families and individuals of all ages.
• Think Tank and Lunch:
  Participants will be guided through real time collaboration on potential future projects and idea generation. Mentors and facilitators will be on hand for discussion and brainstorming. We hope this will spark unlikely collaborations across campus, community and beyond. Come ready to contribute!
• Momentum Building Session:
  Rather than concluding the symposium, we hope this session will launch forward with new projects and ideas for working together across community, disciplinary, and topical boundaries. This time will include reports from the Think Tank session, creating peer groups to move the work forward and announcing upcoming Sci-Art events throughout the fall semester.  
• Session 1: Between Data and Metaphor - Mark Lee Koven, Utah State University
  This session will examine the past and current methods and processes Mark Lee Koven has utilized throughout his integrated art and science practice. It will provide the audience with a historical account of integrated practices, as well as methods and projects currently being realized through art and science collaborations.
• Session 2: Linking Marbled Paper in Art to Swirl Painting an Electric Guitar in Chemistry
  Kim Burkhart, Albany County School District No. 1
  Shelley Miller, Albany County School District No. 1
  Is an electric guitar science or art? This session will explore the history of marbling paper and how a similar process can be used in science class for discussions about density. Electric guitars and marbled paper individualize learning and increase student engagement. Participants will take home a product and lesson.
• Session 3: Integrating art and science to enable students, engage communities, and understand biodiversity
  Nancy Huntly, Ecology Center and Department of Biology, Utah State University
  This session will provide overviews of some opportunities and challenges of Science-Art collaborations, using examples from several projects that integrate science and art. These include a recent NEA-funded project, directed by an artist and an ecologist, that included a visiting artist-scientist residency with collaborative project, a visiting speaker series, a co-taught course on Biodiversity, several installations, and a topical art-science symposium.
• Session 4: 3D Visualization and Virtual Reality—a panel presentation
  Emma-Jane Alexander, University of Wyoming
  Simon Alexander, University of Wyoming
  This panel will consist of two 20 minute presentations followed by a Q&A.
  First, an overview of three projects in the UW SHELL 3D Visualization Center (School of Energy Resources): one, a virtual reality tool allowing the user to be immersed in a 3D CAVE whilst designing an art gallery exhibition. Two, visualization for complex organizational structures. Three, how virtual reality is allowing energy researchers to take a scientific peek beneath Wyoming. And second, Are Facebook and Google re-envisioning the lab, or do we need to take a 'Magic Leap'? The benefits of Visualization  / Virtual Reality technology within education have been discussed for 25 years, and with the release of Facebook's Oculus Rift and Google's Cardboard we are potentially finally seeing mainstream consumption of these 'promises'. But is this technological / educational relationship built on solid or virtual ground?
• Session 5: The Art of Learning: Measuring the impact of art-centered environmental education - Katharine A. Owens, University of Hartford 
  Educators, scientists, and non-profit groups grapple with how to help the public understand environmental issues. In particular, they seek to illuminate the connections between complex global environmental problems and human behavior. This presentation provides examples of how to measure the impact of a range of teaching approaches through art and science. Dr. Owens will share the results of a study on a service-learning undergraduate marine debris course, then share how she is currently applying many of the same tools to measure the impact of art-based assignments in her courses. She will also briefly share examples of art-based assignments she uses in policy and environment courses including printmaking, storytelling, and mixed-media visual art.
• Session 6: When Scientists Talk to Artists, Dynamic Education Happens - Melissa Hemken, AT Lander Arts and Sciences (ATLAS)
  The ATLAS model showcases how scientific agencies and university/NGO researchers can partner with arts educators to create dynamic exhibitions for community benefit and partner with schools to deliver state standards curriculum at the exhibit and in-school.
• Session 7: BEE Aware: The Effects of Chemicals on Bees - Cecelia Aragon, University of Wyoming | Michael Dillon, University of Wyoming
  Collaboration between the arts and sciences has the potential to produce new knowledge, ideas, and methods. The session highlights the k-12 outreach efforts between artists and scientist in disseminating knowledge about bees. We discuss the development of "Bee Aware" devised production, the interactive workshops, improvisational activities, and science education learning packet.
• Session 8: Experiencing Art and Environment through the Interpretive Cycle - Kara Duggan, University of Wyoming, panel facilitator
  Art and Environment, an UW class, introduced students from a variety of disciplines to the interpretive cycle and the complex relationships between observation, interpretation, representation, and understanding. In this panel discussion, students will share their experiences with environmental representation and their independent projects they completed for the class.
• Session 9: Funding Opportunities
  Join representatives from local, state and national organizations to hear about creative ways to fund projects in the arts and sciences. Panelists include Janine Jordan, City of Laramie; Michael Lange, Executive Director, Wyoming Arts Council; Jason Burge, Grants Manager, Wyoming Humanities Council; Alphonso DeSena, National Science Foundation who will join us via Skype.
• Session 10: Printmaking in environmental and policy courses: extinction woodblocks and marine debris collagraphs
  Katharine A. Owens, University of Hartford
  This session will include short demonstrations of both woodblock and collagraph printmaking, with examples and information about how these methods are incorporated into environmental policy and environmental studies assignments for college courses.
• Session 11: Challenges and Solutions in Art and Science Collaboration - Ashley Hope Carlisle, University of Wyoming, Facilitator
  Panelists: Naomi Ward, Michael Dillon, Anne Guzzo, Jeff Lockwood
  This panel offers three years of experience from the Cross Pollination Experiment Group. As artists and scientists, we are able to demonstrate how an intensive and sustained collaboration has the potential to yield results that are mutually powerful. Art can serve as a means for communicating and making scientific discoveries to the public. In return, science can serve as the inspiration for and challenge to the making of art.  Synergy from these alliances often times facilitates emergent works that capture insights and elements of the natural world that would otherwise be overlooked by both scientists and artists.  Through our experience, we would like to share the problems that our collaborations have encountered, and solutions that we have found to make for meaningful endeavors.
• Session 12: Art, Science and Community Engagement: A New Collaborative model for Wyoming
  Mary Katherine Scott, University of Wyoming
  Maggie Bourque, University of Wyoming
  Meg Thompson, Independent Artist, Wyoming Art Party
  What happens when scientific research, artistic inquiry, and community outreach happen as a co-evolving and co-creative process? An interdisciplinary group of UW faculty, staff and administrators, Laramie community members, and an international team of artists are working together to answer this question.

POSTER SESSION:

• Science Under the Lens: The Art of Microscopy – Laura Vietti and Robert Baker, University of Wyoming
  Here we present examples from our research that demonstrate that images taken at high magnification provide a unique bridge from science to art.
• The Art, Science and Environmental Impacts of Flames – Jian Cai, University of Wyoming
  In this talk we will explain the scientific origin of flames’ visible colors. Different colors can also be related to their burning conditions. We use various optical techniques to investigate flame dynamics so that we may reduce pollutant emission from flames.
• Artificial Trees – Evan Townsend, Wyoming Conservation Corps
  People care less about what they cannot name or identify. Each one of these drawn trees, or trees drawn and painted by other artists agreeing to the mission, could be eventually sold as a pseudo adopt-a-tree program in Laramie’s city parks. Purchasers could take pride in knowing that a significant portion of their payment would go to a plaque with the common name, genus and species, and native range to be installed in front of the tree as well as the Shawver Fund, Laramie’s citizen tree fund supporting the city’s canopy health and future. Do any of the trees look different to you? In the age of increasing carbon emissions, trees are being championed as carbon sequestration tools to offset impacts. Yet, living trees may not be efficient enough in sequestering carbon so scientists have invented "artificial trees." What do these look like and what does this mean for future aesthetics?
• Creative & Scientific Visualization in the SHELL 3D Viz Center - Sabrina Kaufman, University of Wyoming
  (University of Wyoming, School of Energy Resources)
• Changing Angles: A new perspective on plant life - Matthew Lehmitz, University of Wyoming
  Technology is creating novel opportunities to see the world from all angles. Come learn of one such fantastic way of visualizing plant life.