Now in its fourth year, the Nature Lab program pairs EPSCoR researchers with grad students working in the fine arts.
Research Scientists Use Art to Express Complex Ideas at Vis-a-thon 2025 in RISD’s Nature Lab
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How can art help scientists explain the mechanisms that allow bats to change course mid-flight? Would an interactive sculptural installation encourage kids to take an interest in the “drumming signals” local woodpeckers use to communicate? Is it possible to make art explaining the concept of undersea quasi-permanence and the impact of ocean movement on coral reefs?
Researchers from Brown University, the University of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University and Rhode Island College are seeking answers to such questions as participants in Vis-a-thon 2025, a unique collaborative program hosted by RISD’s Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab and led by visionary bio-educators Georgia Rhodes and Stewart Skylar Copeland MFA 19 DM. Now in its fifth year, Vis-a-thon allows scientists to view their sometimes arcane areas of expertise through fresh eyes and to communicate complex findings with non-scientists.
The program is supported by the National Science Foundation, which awarded RISD and partner institutions $8 million in funding over the next four years as part of the Rhode Island Network for Excellence in Science and Technology (RI-NEST), including $709,000 earmarked for the Vis-a-thon and related programs. As Jennifer Bissonnette, the Houghton P. Metcalf, Jr. (HD 96) Director of the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab, explains, “The award will expand opportunities for scientists, artists and designers to receive cross-disciplinary training to enhance science communication and the creation of compelling, inclusive narratives around such pressing issues as climate change.”
The grant is one of three new NSF awards secured by RISD Research. In addition to the RI-NEST grant, RISD was awarded a $515,000 ENACTS grant for a collaborative, four-year stormwater management project, and Director of Research Soul Brown will lead a $505,000 GRANTED project next summer in partnership with Roger Williams University, Providence College, Rhode Island College and Salve Regina University.
“We designed the Vis-a-thon program to promote visualization as an integral facet of research methodology and to provide opportunities for participants to experiment with new and innovative forms of visual imagery and language,” Rhodes says. “Participants are immersed in hands-on art making, group critique and an iterative approach to art and design, skills that can be invaluable to researchers,” Copeland adds.
The researchers selected to participate began their journey by seeking inspiration in the RISD Museum. Brown PhD candidate Thomas Williams, who studies volcanic gas samples collected on the moon, was taken with a piece by Native American glass artist Preston Singletary he spotted in the Art and Design from 1900 to Now exhibition. “I’m working with a huge range of data at many different scales and trying to present the information in a readable way,” he explains. “I wonder if it would be possible to arrange the data around a glass sphere with information etched into the surface.”
As the day continued, the group gathered with RISD faculty members Rafael Attias 91 GD, Leah Beeferman and Emma Hogarth MFA 09 DM for a speed dating-style brainstorming session focused on drumming up ideas for visualizing each researcher’s work. Copeland reminded the group to focus on process rather than outcomes and to “embrace the weird and imperfect.”
Attias was intrigued with Brown University researcher Nico Moody’s ideas for creating an interactive piece highlighting the different tapping patterns of woodpeckers and encouraged them to take it a step further. “The patterns could be represented using any sound—barking dogs or notes played on a piano,” he said. “You could create a player piano card that would play the different drumming patterns and might even communicate with live woodpeckers.”
Hogarth discussed videography techniques and novel ways to annotate behavioral data with bat expert Brooke Quinn. She referenced rudimentary 3D drawing tools that might help viewers visualize specific wing movements and encouraged Quinn to check out a 2009 project called Synchronous Objects that mapped the movements of dancers choreographed by dancer/choreographer/educator William Forsythe.
“We designed the Vis-a-thon program to promote visualization as an integral facet of research methodology.”
Meanwhile, Beeferman and URI oceanographer Philip F. Yang tossed around ideas for bringing to life scientific data gathered from mesophotic reef ecosystems (situated between shallow, brightly lit waters and the deep ocean) in the Gulf of Mexico’s Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. “Light could be a very useful tool for you,” Beeferman noted.
After the project proposals are completed, Rhodes and Copeland will pair each scientist with a RISD grad student to flesh out the ideas and create works of art that bring the data to life in new and unexpected ways.
Thanks to the generous NSF grant awarded last August, Rhodes is also running a second cohort of scientist-artist partners focused specifically on research conducted in the Antarctic aboard the ice-breaking research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer. Rhodes participated in the stormy, six-week adventure last fall and says, “I led four workshops on the ship concerning meaning, change, instrumentation and the importance of play, and the scientists began working on project proposals once we were back on land.”
Artwork created by both Vis-a-thon 2025 cohorts will be on view later this year at the Fall River [MA] Museum of Contemporary Art.
Simone Solondz
March 10, 2025
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