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New media artist and educator Agnes Chavez named 2024 Fermilab guest artist

New Mexico-based artist Agnes Chavez will work with Fermilab scientists to explore new ways to use data visualization, light, sound and space to communicate the importance and relevance of science, in particular research on particles called neutrinos.

 

Accomplished composer and pianist Mischa Zupko from Chicago named 2024 Fermilab guest composer

Mischa Zupko, adjunct faculty member of the School of Music at DePaul University, will collaborate with Fermilab scientists and members of the Chicago-based Civitas Ensemble to create music based on scientific models in particle science.

 

 

About the guest artist and guest composer programs

Since the earliest days of the laboratory, under the guidance of our founding director Robert Wilson, the relationship between art and science has been a critical one, from the design and architecture of the lab, to the sculptures scattered across the campus, to the inclusion of Ramsey Auditorium and our art gallery, built in part with the intention of creating a gathering place for the lab and the Fox Valley community.  At Fermilab, the arts have been viewed as way to not only nurture creativity and welcome our neighbors, but also to explore and share scientific ideas and concepts.

Beginning in 2014, the Fermilab Art Gallery initiated an Artist-in-Residence program, inviting visual artists to delve deeply into Fermilab science, make connections with different scientists and experiments at the lab, and harness these explorations as inspiration for new work.  The result has provided a means of expressing the science of Fermilab through the unique lens of each of our artists.  It also inspires conversations about that common ground of creativity that is necessary in both science and art.  In 2020, a Guest Composer program was added to engage and express through music as well as the visual arts.

 

Frequently asked questions

 

 

 

 

Fermilab Arts and Lectures at Home

Sounds in the Sea: The Art and Science of Ocean Acoustics (Virtual) – Gallery Talk with Lindsay Olson

Ocean Acoustics uses sound to listen in to what’s happening and collect data that illuminates life in the ocean. This project makes visible the invisible world of sound in the sea. I created densely embroidered silk panels that help describe what researchers are discovering. The artwork illustrates the largest daily migration of zooplankton, the sound enhancing SOFAR channel, phytoplankton and the dramatic vocalizations of marine life gathered by hydrophones.

January 20, 2023

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Virtual World Premiere Three Pieces by Suzie Shrubb

Suzie Shrubb premieres three works, part of Cross Sections, a collection of pieces created from the research and collaborations gathered during their year-long residency as Fermilab’s guest composer. Each of these works will be presented with video imagery that shares the inspiration for the piece. 
The pieces are composed for two pianos and solo piano, performed by Suzie Shrubb and Mikaela Livadiotis.

January 15, 2023

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Moving from Data Visualization to Data-Driven Art by Mare Hirsch PhD artist-in-residence 2022

How can we embrace the objective experience of scientific inquiry and the subjective experience of art? In this talk, Mare Hirsch will discuss her approach to navigating the challenges and opportunities of creating data-driven art and highlight the way science and art share some complementary perspectives.

Thursday, June 30, 2022

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Seeking the Unseen – Gina Gibson

Gibson was the first Sanford Underground Research Facility Artist-in-Residence (SURF AiR) in 2020. SURF is the deepest underground research laboratory in the United States, reaching a depth of nearly one mile below the surface and housing experiments in dark matter, neutrino physics, biology, geology and engineering. Gibson will talk about how SURF’s unique location, history and science have influenced her artwork. Fermilab is working with SURF to construct Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) , which will feature detectors at both institutions to measure the behavior of neutrinos as they travel between the two labs.

May 10, 2022

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Guest Composer Chat with Suzie Shrubb with Elena Gramellini

Join us as Suzie Shrubb shares what she has been doing so far as part of her Guest Composer residency.  Special guest Elena Gramellini will check in as they discuss the process to create the soundtrack for Elena’s 2021 Physics Slam film.

April 12, 2022

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Guest Composer Chat with David Biedenbender with Special Guests Zofo Piano Duo

Guest composer David Biedenbender, along with the ZOFO Piano Duo, checks in to discuss the world premiere of his first Fermilab-inspired piece, to be performed on March 27 as part of the Chamber Music Society of Wichita.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

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Why are Art and Music at Fermilab?

Presented as part of Fermilab’s Family Open House, with Suzie Shrubb, Mare Hirsch, David Biedenbender, David Ibbett, Chris Klapper, Patrick Gallagher and host Janet Mackay-Galbraith

February 9, 2022

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Adam Makarenko – Exoplanets

Adam specializes in miniature-based photography and is from Toronto, Ontario Canada. Everything that he photographs is a physical model — whether it’s created by hand or 3D printed. His current series called Exoplanets is comprised of a thousand miniature exoplanets and includes all the planets, star backdrops, planetary accretion discs, and alien landscapes all captured in-camera. Afterwards, he assembles the images together in Photoshop and After Effects. This series was created both as an artistic challenge and a testament to the vast reality beyond us.

December 7, 2021

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Be a part of pARTicles

online exhibit in conjunction with Family Open House 2020

Gallery Talk – Echoing Forms: Experiments in Hybridity – Sujata Majumdar

Sujata Majumdar is a British visual artist based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She works with a range of media to investigate connections between (unrelated) phenomena, of art and science. The ease with which she considers different perspectives derives from her cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural background. Her artistic endeavor emerges from the need to unify. She seeks commonalities, and works them out through hybridisations.

October 3, 2021

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Gallery Talk – The Philosophy of Physics – Jody Rasch

Jody’s artistic work uses the concepts of science to explain our place in the universe. He uses the images of physics, from particle accelerators to the recent imaging of the hydrogen atom to explore what the subatomic world has to say about how we perceive the macro world around us. In this talk, he will discuss how his work relates not only to the work being done in physics, but also its relationship to artists of the past, from medieval painting to impressionism and abstract expressionism. 

June 1, 2021

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Gallery Talk – When Art and Science Collide – Lindsay Olson- Fermilab Artist-in-Residence 2014-15

Lindsay’s artistic practice grows out of an intense curiosity about the ways our society is supported by science and technology. She uses her training to create art about the hidden realities of our world. As Fermilab’s first artist-in-residence, she worked with scientists’, members of the operations crew, and numerous staff throughout the lab to learn the basics of high energy physics.

March 9, 2021

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Gallery Talk- The History of Art and Science at Fermilab

Valerie Higgins, Janet MacKay-Galbraith, Georgia Schwender, Chris Klapper & Patrick Gallagher, and David Ibbett

February 14, 2021

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Gallery Talk- Finding the Significant in the Insignificant: Jim Jenkins artist-in-residence 2017

Connecting the dots of three visions of time with a careful study of how science, technology, art and mathematics, utilize aspects of human creativity to advance a specific timeline in space.

February 11, 2021

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Gallery Talk – Imagining Reality – a photographic journey – Steve Geer

As a Fermilab scientist we are trained to imagine how the real world works and then create theories or experiments or new technologies. The arts work in a similar way: imagine and then create.  I will describe this process as applied to various photographic projects that I have been exhibited in galleries in the U.S. and Europe and published in books and magazines.

January 12, 2021

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Gallery Talk – Neutrino Music: A Composer’s Journey with Guest Composer David Ibbett Ph.D.

David Ibbett has been composing and performing works remotely to celebrate the ongoing research of Fermilab. Together with Bonnie Fleming of MicroBooNE, the composer will discuss his inspirations and techniques for translating neutrino science into sound through a variety of sonification methods. 

The evening will culminate with the world premiere of the latest installment of Neutrino Music from soprano soloist Beth Sterling, together with a selection of pieces from Octave of Light: their debut album of exoplanet music released this November.

December 8, 2020

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Gallery Talk – Perry Slade- Photography and My Conversion project

Perry Slade will discuss his use of photography as his vehicle to create images, with primary focus on his ongoing Conversion project.  He finds the intersection of what he refers to as “urban hieroglyphics” as produced by Highway Engineers and what could be seen as simplified mathematical equations, as part and parcel of his final photographic image.

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Gallery Talk – Artists as Translators: Expressing immense ideas on a human scale with Chris Klapper and Patrick Gallagher, 2020 artists-in-residence

Klapper and Gallagher will discuss their work and the creative process of translating complex subjects such as infinity, scale and time.

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Gallery Talk – The Hubble Palette

Dr. Eric Coles demonstrates how he maps colors of emission nebulae.

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About the Fermilab Art Gallery

This convergence of art and science occurs daily in the Fermilab Art Gallery. It is a space for art exhibitions and also a quiet space for contemplation and beauty.

View information on submitting proposals to the Fermilab Art Gallery.
Questions? Contact Georgia Schwender

“I have always felt that science, technology, and art are importantly connected, indeed science and technology seem to many scholars to have grown out of art.” —Robert Rathbun Wilson, Fermilab founding director