Groundbreaking art and science collaborations are reimagining how we understand—and survive in—a warming world.
Nestled in a redwood forest atop a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, UC Santa Cruz stands out not just for its remarkable setting, but for its unconventional approach to research and higher education. Since its inception 60 years ago, the university consistently strives to support socially-engaged collaborations between traditionally distinct disciplines.
“I think it’s the Santa Cruz spirit,” said Jennifer Parker, professor of art and founding director of OpenLab, a collaborative research center supporting interdisciplinary innovation in the arts, sciences, and technology. “This campus has always celebrated its difference,” she said. “There’s a freedom in shaping something new, rather than fitting in.”
Where some institutions might have shirked that reputation, UCSC leaned in, rewarding professors for creative, interdisciplinary research and education and encouraging student activism. The result can be seen in UCSC’s rich ecosystem of art and science collaborations that are addressing some of the biggest challenges facing society today. That includes climate change, the effects of which Santa Cruz is already feeling, with forests on fire, streets flooding, and roads washing away into the sea.
Facing a challenge as big as the climate crisis requires new ways of thinking and seeing. Though their disciplines are conventionally seen as distinct, artists and scientists alike ask questions, make observations, and interpret findings. Where science systematically and empirically investigates to draw conclusions, art engages and moves people through felt expression. Art can transform raw data or an abstract idea into a tangible, viscerally understandable experience. Together, art and science can drive collective action and reshape our understanding of how we interact with the world around us, and each other.
From a 15-foot augmented reality sculpture of a global ocean current to imaginative visual interpretations of marine mammal vocalizations, here are some of the visionary art and science collaborations flourishing at UCSC.
Jennifer Parker and Karolina Karlic
When UCSC’s Genomics Institute building opened in 2019, Parker and Karolina Karlic, associate professor of art, merged their passions for socially engaged art to create Intersecting Data Fields, an installation and gallery space in the new building. Using photography — an important tool for both science and art that transforms the way we see the world — the two envisioned a site-specific installation together where Karlic made portraits of the Institute’s scientists and photographed objects that had personal significance to them. Together, Parker and Karlic collaborated on the conceptual framework for the project where Parker’s sculptural pieces and Karlic’s photography converged, hanging throughout the halls of the building. The works explore the impacts of the Institute’s research and the diversity of the people doing it.
Parker launched OpenLab to dissolve barriers between disciplines, giving artists opportunities to tell stories that spark curiosity and build empathy for ideas like environmental change. With a practice rooted in sculpture and new media, she ran the experimental Mechatronics research group from 2009-2016, integrating mechanical, electronic, and information technologies to create multimedia art. One of Parker’s current projects is The Algae Society, a bioart and design lab composed of an international group of artists, scientists, and designers creating work — like a stop motion animation inspired by two scientists’ desert ecology and algal research in Joshua Tree National Park, or blown glass sculptures of intricate seaweed forms reimagined by AI — to expand people’s understanding of the interdependence of all life on this rapidly changing planet.