Art-Science Undisciplined: A Playbook for Transformative Collaboration - Hardcover

by Janani Balasubramanian (Author), Natalie Gosnell (Author)

A guide to mutually transformative collaboration between artists and scientists.

Art-Science Undisciplined invites us into a collaborative journey grounded in mutual exploration and transformation. Moving beyond transactional exchanges of expertise, artist Janani Balasubramanian and astrophysicist Natalie Gosnell draw on their own experiences, as well as stories from other art-science collaborators, to offer an imaginative guide for developing a values-based and joyful undisciplined practice.

This playbook offers practical and conceptual tools for co-creation that foster new, powerful alliances among artists, scientists, and their supporters. While attentive to the everyday reality of busy schedules and institutional demands, Balasubramanian and Gosnell illuminate strategies to change our current ways of working and dare us to imagine a more expansive future. The projects, potentials, and possibilities resulting from undisciplined creation will reshape not only the practitioners but their worlds altogether.

Back Jacket

"I wish I had this book at the outset of my career, but I am thrilled to start using it now! The authors weave a thorough and practical guide with inspiring stories of real teams and their projects, illuminating possibilities for meaningful and productive art-science collaborations."--Emily Rice, Associate Professor of Astrophysics, Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York

"Science, like art, is a profound expression of human creativity. This book imagines the possibilities when the two meet and articulates a compelling vision for artist-scientist collaborations, inspiring readers to play and explore--to create--beyond disciplinary confines."--Keivan G. Stassun, MacArthur Fellow and Professor of Astrophysics, Vanderbilt University

"Janani Balasubramanian and Natalie Gosnell are your thoughtful, inviting, and--above all--necessary guides to the terra incognita of arts-science collaboration. The world they map in Art-Science Undisciplined is ambitious and practical and it has the potential to transform not just this field but the nature of collaborative inquiry."--Jake Pinholster, Dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

"A wondrous playbook that invites us to imagine a future unbound by silos, where artists and scientists dream together--conjuring and cultivating worlds that weave the poetic with the empirical. This daring, playful collection is an inspirational journey into 'undisciplined' ways of being, knowing, and becoming. A true dreambook, it offers a brilliant blend of creative strategy and alchemy, calling us to bring our whole selves--and the full expression of our curiosities--into shared spaces of practice and possibility."--Eleanor Savage, President and CEO, Jerome Foundation

"Explores new networks born from myriad shifts in the academy and the fields of arts and sciences writ large. This book invites deliberate encounters with the unknown while offering inspiring and practical approaches. Together the authors platform expansive collaboration as key to the cultivation, repair, and bold vision so profoundly needed in this time."--Daniel Alexander Jones, artist and educator

Author Biography

Janani Balasubramanian is an artist, director, and founder based at Stanford University.

Natalie Gosnell is an astrophysicist, artist, and Associate Professor of Physics at Colorado College.