The first round of the initiative supported arts-centric research, incubated interdisciplinary projects and advanced faculty-student mentorship
2021-22 Projects
Blackness in Green: Afro-Indigenous Mappings of the Natural Environment
Darius Scott, Associate Professor, Geography Department
Outdoor recreation is central to the Dartmouth community, yet its approach to activities such as hiking and camping reinforces the dichotomy of "wild" Indigenous landscapes and "developed" economically productive ones. This project from Assistant Professor of Geography Darius Scott aims to unsettle the cultural dominance of European understandings of the environment through artistic and academic analyses of Black Ecologies and Afro-Indigenous environmental studies.
Flesh, Fiber and Information
Jacque Wernimont, Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies Department | Theodora Dryer | Molly Morin | Romi Morrison | Sydney Skybetter
What kind of information is encoded, transmitted and understood through fibers? How can movement and embodied practices activate this information? And how does this information compare to that articulated in strings of data? A team of experts in media, data, information theory, dance/choreography, fine arts and emerging media arts explore these questions with the purpose of understanding historically marginalized knowledge and communication practices and propose new transdisciplinary and pathbreaking creative works.
Resonant Healing
Sage Palmedo, Geisel School of Medicine Student, Health and Humanities Scholar
With soaring rates of mental health issues since the pandemic, medical student and musician Sage Palmedo banks on the power of music to nurture our collective health. Her project is an immersive, healing sound installation that aims to connect Dartmouth's medical and arts communities through experiential research in collaboration with faculty, students and visiting artists.
Data as a Found Object
Carson Grace Levine '21, MS '22
Studio art meets computer science in this research project exploring computational methods as a means of artistic practice. Carson Grace Levine, who is studying computer science with a digital arts concentration, looks into using data as a found object in digitally-created sculptures, and integrating digital work into physical reality.
Black COVID Care
Allie Martin, Mellon Faculty Fellow, Music Department | Armond Dorsey '20, Digital Musics MA '23
How have Black people cared for one another during the pandemic? This project shifts the focus from the disproportionately negative narratives about Black life during COVID to display stories of care and community. With music and sound studies at its core, the website is set with a backdrop of stars in the galaxy, and users are able to build interactive, sonic "constellations," seeing and hearing both individual stories as well as interconnected lineages of care. View the project here >
PortrAIts: Digital Portraiture and Social Identity
Mary Flanagan, Chair, Film & Media Studies Department | Egemen Sahin '23 | Clara Pakman '23
Biases run surprisingly rampant in technological tools. In this project, Professor Mary Flanagan and her student team use feminist AI to explore gender bias in the context of art and science and to create new works from female artists based on specific training data and algorithms. GLITCHLAB will create technological artworks that aim to bridge art and technology in both the gallery setting as well as visibly on campus to spur discussions about the role of art in our technologically saturated times.
Merely Players
Emily Finn, Assistant Professor, Psychological & Brain Sciences Department | Peter Hackett, Professor, Theater Department | Kathryn O'Nell, PhD candidate, FINN Lab
How do people make sense of everyday ambiguous social cues with minimal information? The project's collaborators employ expertise from theater professionals and cognitive neuroscientists to better understand this process of social disambiguation. Using contemporary realist plays, Merely Players will study how actors prepare to perform ambiguous scripts and how audience interpretations converge on or diverge from the intended portrayals.
Hacking Grains: An Installation & Performance Project
Trevor Van de Velde '22
This project transforms the banal and relatively quiet process of cooking rice into a sonified collective experience. Digital Musics student Trevor Van de Velde combines his yearning for live music and social eating during the pandemic with his penchant for recycling and repurposing old appliances—in this case 18 semi-working rice cookers. As the cookers unleash their cacophony, Asian-identifying performers join them for a performance that bridges technology, ritual, community and Asian identity.
You Are Here?
Eammon Littler MS '22 | Carson Levine '21 MS '22 | Landon Armstrong '23
An art installation engaging viewers to contemplate transient presence, geography and community during the pandemic. This evolving interactive art display by three students will allow people to reflect on the many ways COVID continues to affect the Dartmouth community and the display will change with every interaction. The project combines the processing and graphical capabilities of modern computers with the vision of talented Dartmouth artists.