CMP students Beatrice Steinert (Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and History of Science), Noah Toyonaga (Physics), and Soumya Ghosh (Physics) co-organized Unfiguring, a Mahindra Humanities Center Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference co-sponsored by CMP in March 2024, which brought together practitioners from the arts and sciences for three days of intensive discussion and play. The title and subject of the conference foregrounded the scientific “figure” – the name for any photograph, drawing, diagram, or plot of data in an academic paper – as a mode of thought and site for intervention.
Unfiguring was organized around a series of presentations and artworks on topics ranging from ant acoustics to fluid dynamics to visualizations of infinity. Following the presentations – which ranged from academic and artist talks to video works, photographs, and beyond – a curated panel of professional artists and scientists provided critical insight and seeded conversations which spilled into breaks.
These discussions revolved around tactics of production, aesthetics of interpretation, and forms of community – all of which articulated and simultaneously challenged the distinctions of discipline in science and art.
