Art & Science

This research explores how artistic languages can help people better understand the scientific and societal challenges we face, especially those related to climate and environmental change. Scientific information can be overwhelming, emotionally heavy, or difficult to process, which often causes audiences to disengage. By integrating artistic approaches such as metaphor, narrative, sensory experience, and emotional resonance, this work creates forms of communication that people can absorb rather than shut down from. The goal is to translate complex scientific realities into experiences that feel accessible, human, and meaningful. Through this blending of art and science, the research seeks to open new pathways for public engagement, encouraging curiosity, empathy, and deeper connection to the issues shaping our shared future.

The Journey of Water ~ an exhibit underdevelopment that connects UT-based polar science with Texas-focused impacts through an art-science collaboration that leverages AI to move between physical and digital worlds. We seek to develop a proof of concept for immersive, embodied climate communication and pursue two linked research questions: (1) How does a multi-modal art-science encounter — combining haptic engagement with scientific artifacts, full-scale data visualization, and AI-mediated dialogue — shift participants’ factual understanding of sea-level change, emotional engagement with coastal climate risk, and intended adaptive behavior, relative to conventional communication formats? (2) What features of cross-disciplinary art-science-AI collaboration enable or constrain replicable methodologies for public climate communication.

Funded by Planet Texas, 2015

Bedrock is an exhibit, bridging a scientific exploration of earth’s past with an immersive multimedia content providing an entry point into the curiosities and complexities of our changing planet.

Between Melt and Memory is a collaborative work between Francesca Samsel and Benjamin Keisling, an artistic perspective on research into the history of Greenland’s ice sheet. Tracing the Greenland Ice Sheet’s ice divide from the melting margins to its two‑mile‑thick summit 700 kilometers inland, Between Melt and Memory invites viewers to the in-between where geologic memory meets scientific foresight. The immersive, multi-sensory exhibition featuring glass and clay sculpture and projected visuals invites viewers to encounter the complexities of climate change through tactile forms, connection to the research sites and images from below the ice sheet. Based in scientific observations, here data are transformed via an artistic voice providing the opportunity for viewers to explore through science and metaphor while reflecting the changes within this fragile landscape.

Interviewing Greenland’s Ice Sheet ~ presents five specific events in the history of the Greenland’s ice sheet. “Interviews” is a multimodal art installation that seeks to provide viewers with an embodied understanding of glacial change. Although artists and scientists often work together for a visual rendering of scientific concepts and information, rarely do the two come together in a such a close-knit, equal collaboration, in which the germination of the idea and the weaving together of art and science result in an oeuvre in which the scientist explains the science to the artist and the artist gives the artistic view of the science itself, allowing the public to enter the art in order to see the science. The data remains the same, with two different media providing different interpretive perspectives.

Ice Archives: Amplifying Greenland’s Geologic Memory ~ The immersive, multi-sensory exhibition featuring glass and clay sculpture and projected visuals invites viewers to encounter the complexities of climate change through tactile forms, connection to the research sites, and images from below the ice sheet. Based on scientific observations, the data are transformed via an artistic voice, providing the opportunity for viewers to explore through science and metaphor while reflecting on the changes within this fragile landscape.

Work exploring an artistic perspective on the means we use to investigate Greenland’s ice sheet and the memories it holds.  Our work relies on the interplay of art, technology, and science, and the dance of these disciplines as they augment one another to create an emotional connection between the audience and the data. Prior work focused on building out artistic vocabulary for clear, engaging science exploration and communication. Within this portfolio, we move through the steps of science inquiry and data representation, toward creating new layers of meaning and connection through affective visualizations.

Climate Prisms: The Arctic is an interactive museum exhibit about three Arctic researchers exploring and documenting the rapidly changing Arctic tundra. The work focuses on these scientists’ primary specialties: geomorphology, hydrology and biogeochemistry.

The work provides entry into their laboratories, field sites and daily research activities, pulling away the veil that obscures the scientific process and grounding abstractions in human experience.

Francesca Samsel, artist; Cathy Wilson, Geomorphologist; Linda Deck, Museum Director.

This work is the result of a collaboration between domain scientists, visualization scientists and a fine-artist.The visualization tool was developed using Processing and uses geographical spatiotemporal views to explore the model dataset. The tool is interactive and easy to use. Close attention was given to visualization design aesthetics to create visualizations that can be easily understood by the general public.

Bodily-Interaction-Based Interfaces ~ As technologies improve, developers are increasingly turning toward interactive interfaces in gaming, the arts, museum studies, and data visualization. Interactivity has been shown to improve connection, understanding, and above all, engagement with complex topics or materials.As simulation data grows more complex and dense, interactivity outside of the traditional screen and mouse set-up may have the potential to drastically improve both data exploration through visualization and science communication to a lay public or an audience of stakeholders.

Our vislab is interested in developing both, and toward this end, are working to more closely  couple bodily movement, physical artifacts, and screen-based content to provide semi-immersive experiences for researchers using big data simulations.

Sub-projects under this project include large-scale, sensor-based bodily interaction and V-Mail, a framework of cross-platform applications, interactive techniques, and communication protocols for improved multi-person correspondence about spatial 3D datasets. 

Prints to Pixels balances on the fulcrum between art and science.  Activity immersed in collaborations with scientists and computer visualization specialists, we have been on a quest to meld scientific factual understanding with artistic distillation and metaphor as a means of reaching a broader audience and providing a more accessible understanding of environmental issues. Scientists speak a language of mathematical equations, detailed data sets, and factual dissection that is not accessible to those beyond their field. My role is to bring the metaphor and poetry of my imagery to broaden the audience and accelerate the understanding of the environmental changes and the social challenges ahead 

PUBLICATIONS

Climate Prisms: The Arctic Connecting Climate Research and Climate Modeling via the Language of Art

Gulf of Mexico Biogeochemistry, Supercomputing 2022

Art- Science- Collaborations: Examine the Spectrum

Pursuing Value in Art-Science Collaborations

Art and Cultural Heritage

Climate Prisms: The Arctic Connecting Climate Research and Climate Modeling via the Language of Art