The Mahindra Humanities Center Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference, Unfiguring: Experiments in the practice of science and art, is currently accepting proposals through February 1st. Unfiguring is organized by CMP students Beatrice Steinert, Noah Toyonaga, Soumya Ghosh, with Daniel Faccini. The conference will be held from March 21-23, 2024.
In contemporary science, the scientific paper is a dominating force. Composed of a succession of “figures” scaled to the page, the paper is a scientific genre that imposes a linear, impersonal, and two-dimensional logic to how scientists conceptualize and communicate their research. Artists, on the other hand, have a vast range of tools at their disposal to observe, document, and craft stories about the natural world.
Building on the entwined histories of science and art, Unfiguring will be an experimental space for those curious about the expansive realm of possibilities where the boundaries between the arts and sciences blur. What would it look like for scientific research to take its form as a performance, sculpture, film, immersive projection experience, or literary manuscript? How can scientific communities recognize and attribute credit for such works? Through exchange of ideas, practices, and experiences, this conference will allow scientists to envision how they could approach their work more expansively and all participants to gain a broader sense of possible futures for science. We will approach this step towards a deeper integration of the sciences and arts playfully and with humility.
We welcome submission of work from any STEM field as well as from all disciplines that engage the sciences in form or content. Proposed projects can be at any stage of the research process: ideating, making, gathering, analyzing, and interpreting observations, among others. We encourage experimentation in media and format. Selected work will be grouped into multidisciplinary research reviews led by a panel of invited artists and scientists. For more information and to submit a proposal, visit www.unfiguring.org