Art-Science Projects

communicating science through art

We are an inter-disciplinary group focused on communicating science through art. We bring together artists and scientists, students and faculty, and integrate all forms of art and scientific information.

Contributing voice and audio experience collaborator for Awful Bigness, an exhibition at the Clyfford Still Museum, February 17–September 10, 2023

A new collaboration with the Clyfford Still Museum will be unveiled in February 2023. This show is organized by the Museum’s associate curator, Bailey Placzek, in collaboration with Clyfford Still Museum’s director, Joyce Tsai. This show will highlight Clyfford Still's work, where he focused on enormous scale and confronted the awful bigness of the vast expanse of a blank canvas. Dr. Ignace provides a voice in the exhibition interpretation and audio experience that centers Indigenous perspectives, climate change, and the importance of communicating science through art. A recording will be available at the show and through the museum’s free digital app beyond the run of the exhibition. Click here to learn more about the museum and the exhibit.

the understory: moss growth

In the spring of 2019, two students, Zoe Merrell, ’19, and Melissa Temple, ’20, collaborated on a conjoint special studies in order to link the sciences with the arts at Smith College. The initial goal was to communicate scientific information in an unusual and engaging way, to trigger more creative and communication-oriented thinking across departments at Smith, and to forge a pathway that future faculty and students interested in interdisciplinary coursework can follow. After conducting research on various ecological theories, environmental policies and artists’ work for inspiration, the project ultimately became focused on investigating the ecological importance of moss and the fact that the less charismatic plants of the understory are often overlooked in scientific inquiry, despite forming the foundation of forest ecosystems. Since 2019 has been dubbed the “Year on Climate Change”, the goal of the resulting artwork is to communicate the climate sensitivity of such plants and highlight the importance of continued research and conservation. This vision was brought to life by creating a 3D topographic map of the local Mt. Holyoke. Spatial data were imported from MassGIS into an AutoCAD file, formatted and cut on a lasercutter. We decided to collaborate with the Smith College Botanic Garden, as these spaces are important centers of botanical investigation and conservation. The project is ongoing, as it is a living sculpture that encourages viewers to revisit it as the moss continues to grow and respond to its new environment.

The Process

• Elevation contour data of Mt. Holyoke was collected from the MassGIS online dataset, opened in ArcGIS, and then transferred into an AutoCAD file.

• In AutoCAD, each of the 19 contour layers were separated individually and then organized to fit into 32 in. x 20 in. rectangles so they would fit the proper dimensions of the laser cutter.

• The layers were cut from ¼ in. birch plywood using the laser cutter belonging to the Smith Center for Design and Fabrication (CDF).

• The layers were assembled using “liquid nails” glue and weighted down until dry.

• The assembled topographic map of Mt. Holyoke was then covered (with an emphasis on the bottom of the sculpture) by moss.

  • The moss was harvested from an unused windowsill in the Lyman Plant House in the hope that the species present will already be adapted to the greenhouse environment.

  • The moss adhered to the sculpture via the use of a flour and water mixture acting as a non-toxic “glue” without damaging the integrity of the sculpture or moss.

• After the moss was attached, the sculpture was placed beneath a bench in the greenhouse with its appropriate signage in order to display the moss and its growth as well as visually symbolize the importance of the understory and climate change research.

Relative Abundance of invasive Erodium cicutarium (ERCI) versus native annuals in the Chihuahuan Desert over time

In the Spring of 2019, Hannah Rappaport, completed an artistic interpretation of a long-term data set. This illustration depicts the changes in community structure of native annuals and dominant rodent in the Chihuahuan Desert over time. There is a snapshot of three time points: 1988, 1998, and 2008. 1988 was pre-irruption of ERCI, so all of the plants shown are native annuals, with the kangaroo rat below. Shortly after the 1997 irruption of ERCI, the relative abundance of the annual plant community shifted because ERCI started to become more abundant than the native annuals. As time went on, in 2008, ERCI is shown to be much more abundant than the native annuals and there has been a change in the dominant rodent to the pocket mouse. This shift in rodent abundance is highlighted because it may also have had an effect on the success of ERCI in the community, based on seed preference.

biodiversity of the chihuahuan desert

In the Spring of 2019, Sarah Hantz, completed this artistic interpretation of a long-term data set. This work shows the changes in community composition of native winter annuals in the Chihuahuan Desert over time pre- and post- irruption of the invasive species, Erodium citutarium.

transitions in hemlock forests due to invasive pests

Eastern US forests are losing a foundation tree species, the eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadenis), due to the exotic insect pests (Fig. 1) hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae, HWA) and elongate hemlock scale (Fiorinia externa, EHS). The widespread destruction of this species has large ramifications for ecosystem processes and other species that depend on it for survival. Destroyed evergreen hemlock forests are typically replaced by the deciduous black birch (Betula lenta) tree species, which can alter ecosystem carbon source/sink dynamics. This multi-year research effort has shown the following impacts as eastern hemlock forests transition to black birch forests: (1) growing season soil CO2 flux increases, (2) the soil organic layer mass is reduced, (3) C:N of leaf litter and soil is reduced, (4) there is a 6.8x decline in soil organic layer C storage with a net release of ~4.5 tons C per hectare, (5) macrofungal communities become homogenized, and (6) peak bacterial abundance shifts to the fall. These novel findings showed hemlock forests can become sources for atmospheric CO2 (Ignace et al. 2018 Ecosphere) and lead to biotic homogenization (Fassler et al. 2019 Northeastern Naturalist) and features a student co-author (Aliza Fassler ’17). This work was featured in “Down to Earth: Climate consequences of Hemlock’s decline”, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, December 12, 2018. These results suggest a complex interaction of soil moisture and soil temperature, and potentially substrate quality and quantity, as determinants of temperature sensitivities. (Ignace 2019 PLoS ONE).

Graphic is a collaboration with designer and illustrator Bryant Paul Johnson