STEAMplant supports the creation of interdisciplinary projects; these projects range from art installations that showcase science research and technology, to research studies which use the tools of science to investigate the creation of art and architecture. Each project culminates in a public engagement event, installation, product, or publication. Below is a list of our currently funded and completed projects.
To learn more about what types of projects we fund, click here.
Time traveling through ancient art, materials and technology
Sirovich Family Residents – Gary Cullen & Katelin Fallon
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Eleonora Del Federico & Diana Gisolfi
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The Unforseen
Sirovich Family Resident – Pamela Breda
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Agnes Mocsy & Ira Livingston
Click here for more In particular, this project will explore the so-called “Simulation Theory,” i.e. the idea that the entire universe is a simulation, a software inside some gigantic computer operating machine, or a program generated by an external civilization, or A.I. system. Exploring this theory from an artistic perspective, “The Unforeseen” will present a parallel to experienced daily interactions with simulations and virtual realities. This project asks: What are the ethical and philosophical implications of Simulation Theory? How does it relate to our approach to reality, which is highly mediated by technology and simulation softwares? And ultimately, where are the boundaries between the real world and the mediated one? In order to answer these questions, a series of video works combining documentary footage and CGI animations will be produced and presented as large projections in a final exhibition, creating an immersive installation that will engage the viewers and prompt them question their own reality principles.
Contesting Space: Envisioning Urban Futures Through Data and Virtual Reality
Sirovich Family Residents – Ayodamola Okunseinde, Salome Asega, Mala Kumar & Mariama Jalloh
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Caitlin Cahill & Daniel Wright
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To The Core of Me: A Hike Play
Sirovich Family Resident – Jeremy Pickard
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Christopher X. J. Jensen & Jennifer Telesca
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The hike-play is made up of two scripts. The first script is a fictional narrative that follows a human confronting climate anxiety while traversing contemporary urban life. The second script, interwoven into the first, reveals the climatic events experienced by trees – and the cultural events they witnessed – over hundreds of years.
The hike-play is modular; it changes based on the history of the place where it is being performed. Rehearsals are conducted simultaneously with research: our creative team will partner with local scientists, historians, and indigenous leaders to understand and honor the history of the local forest.
Audiences will experience the performance moving with and around them: actors enter from a distance; narrative is passed from guide to guide; musicians accompany for a spell; there are stretches of silence where the drama of the woods is theater enough.
Breath Consciousness
Sirovich Family Residents – Jasmine Grace & Ayodamola Okunseinde
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Charles Rubenstein & Che-Wei Wang
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Click HERE to visit the full project page.
Light, Color, and Science: Licio Isolani Sculptures from the 1960s
Sirovich Family Resident – Renato Miracco
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Cindie Kehlet & Lisa A. Banner
STEAMplant Professional Collaborators – Sarah Nunberg
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Like Lucio Fontana, Burri, Scarpitta, and other European artists working on the international scene, Isolani realized that painting and sculpture alone were not enough to express a modern concept. The composition of his materials (fiberglass imbedded in resin), the use of familiar materials in new ways (sandpaper and window screens as mats), the creation of kinetic sculptures, and the creation of technology that could make art “happen” were among Isolani’s preoccupations as an artist. Isolani’s work further involved the use of light, space, and time through performance.
This project will culminate in the creation of a book about the science, art, and technology of Isolani’s artistic oeuvre.
Song Searching
Sirovich Family Student Fellow – Ami Cai
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Christopher X. J. Jensen, Basem Aly & Jennifer Telesca
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Higgins Hall Thermal Comfort Study
Sirovich Family Student Fellow – Nathan Bataille
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Gabrielle Brainard, Cristobal Correa, Jessie Braden & Daniel Wright
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Metric Units for the Solar System
Sirovich Family Resident – Sara Morawetz
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Mark Rosin & Joseph Morris
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Metric Units for the Solar System is an exploration of our relationship with the systems of ‘standardized units’ we have created to order society; examining the various tensions implicit in the function, perception and ultimately arbitrary construction of such formalisms. Extrapolating the original rationale for our own system of metric units, a new set of ‘natural measures’ will be constructed for each planetary body in our solar system.
Click HERE to visit the full project page.
Space Within Spaces
Sirovich Family Resident – Joseph Morris
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Agnes Mocsy & Che-Wei Wang
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Joseph Morris’s STEAMplant residency collaboration with theoretical nuclear physicist Professor Ágnes Mócsy and designer/architect/artist Che-Wei Wang is an outdoor, public art installation that will interact with incoming cosmic rays. Using muon particle detectors, which sense the effect of interstellar cosmic rays, the sensors will be mounted on the rooftop of Pratt Institute’s Juliana Curran Terian Design Center detecting stellar rays.
Click HERE to visit the full project page.
Licio Isolani Study Archive
Sirovich Family Graduate Fellow – Miriam Clayton
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Cindie Kehlet & Lisa A. Banner
STEAMplant Professional Collaborator – Sarah Nunberg
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Italian artist and former Pratt Professor Licio Isolani (1931-2015) donated a collection of his work to the Department of Mathematics and Science before he passed away in 2015. This bequest was celebrated with the exhibition “A Strange Road of Materials” showcasing Isolani’s early sculptures and paintings. The Licio Isolani Study Archive at Pratt Institute was founded by Chair of the Math and Science Department Dr. Carole Sirovich and faculty member Dr. Cindie Kehlet, along with Dr. Lisa A. Banner, of the History of Art & Design Department, and Pratt’s Stockman Fellow Conservator Sarah Nunberg.
Click HERE to visit the full project page.
Poetics of Our Universe
Sirovich Family Graduate Fellow – Adriana Green
STEAMplant Faculty Members – Ariel Goldberg, Daniel Wright & Christopher X. J. Jensen
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In 2015, Adriana Green began developing a poetic manuscript excavating her personal history alongside institutional archival information about America’s reliance on the Atlantic slave trade. Her work asked the questions: As Black Americans, how can we engage with our history when that history is obscured or lost? What are the elements of an hauntological pedagogy? Can silence act as a language? As a writer, Green is interested in how knowledge is translated into language. Specifically, how do we talk about the unknown? Through epistemological conversations with physicist, Dan Wright, she further explored what it means to put language around dense, astronomical concepts, such as black holes. By examining the parallels in how we wrestle dense concepts into language, Green explores how language holds complex and traumatic histories. Her project also interrogated he realm of photography and she worked with artist and scholar, Ariel Goldberg, in discussing the role of photography in archival representations of the Black community. Asking, How does photography works as both a static and dynamic record of the past? What would it mean to trouble the notions of objectivity and subjectivity in an image?
