The Research and Innovation Office (RIO) is excited to announce the funding of two projects through its Artist-in-Residence program. The projects will bring art and science together to illuminate important questions and big ideas.
Through “Elemental Explorations,” Sonja Kuftinec (CLA), Luverne Seifert (CLA), and Kara Baldwin (CBS) will dramatize the convergence of science and physical poetics at UMN’s Cedar Creek Ecosystem Reserve. Four projects each associated with one element (earth, fire, air, and water)— will be brought to theatrical life in a processional performance along the Cedar Bog Trail.
Melding the research of biomedical engineers David Odde (CSE) and Paolo Provenzano (Biomedical Engineering) and their lab communities with that of choreographer Carl Flink (CLA) and his dance company Black Label Movement, “The Rules of Life” will explore the multiple layers of potential meaning these topics can have in biology, human relationships, and aesthetic-socio-political movements. This collaboration will result in two events: The Battle, a large-scale, site specific performance of a model revealing the battle between killer t-cells vs. cancer cells within a tumor and The Rules of Life, a new evening length dancework created by Carl Fink and his dance.
RIO is providing approximately $50,000 to each of these projects, which are expected to be displayed or performed in fall 2025. Learn more about the projects.