Physics and art may appear to be topics unlikely to mesh together. But an exhibition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign says otherwise.
The Resident Artist in Physics Exhibition, open Nov. 4 through Nov. 29 at Krannert Art Museum’s Link Gallery, features the creative works of 11 students who explored an aspect of physics through an artistic medium. The gallery includes multiple displays of visual art, music and dance, illustrating concepts like electron spin, the laws of physics and planetary systems.
The students’ exhibits serve as their applications for the Spring 2025 resident artist. The residency will provide monetary support, a workspace in Loomis Lab and the creative freedom to explore any aspect of physics in any medium. This program was established through the joint efforts of the Illinois School of Art and Design and Illinois Physics, and is funded in part through a grant from the National Science Foundation, with additional sponsorship from the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe.
“We’re really just trying to strengthen those connections and develop another layer of this relationship between the arts and physics,” said Jessica Raley, the ICASU outreach coordinator and one of the program organizers. “We’re really hoping that through this student artist, the other students in these different departments, as well as hopefully faculty and staff, can start to see other ways of seeing the world. I think that there’s a real potential here for all of us to learn from each other.”
Raley, along with professors Patrick Earl Hammie and Nico Yunes, taught PHYS 495/ARTS 499 in fall 2023, a class that meshed art and science together. Raley said one part of teaching that class together was to start to develop their ideas around what exactly this residency would look like.
“A lot of times when people think about art and science, they often think of it as, like, ‘How can art help communicate science?’ That can happen and is important,” Raley said. “But we don’t want to create a situation where we’re always elevating one over the other. One of the things that’s been great for us is challenging each other to think outside of that, and to really think of these different disciplines within our institution as being on equal footing.”
The residency hosted a reception on Nov. 13, giving the public an opportunity to view and interact with the exhibits.
Samuel Cho, a U of I sophomore and biology major, drew a comic/manga that illustrated the laws of physics through a story featuring a character and his interactions with mutants.
“It’s just another way for people to learn about science, specifically physics, because I think the usual format of learning and school is in a textbook with just words, and that can be kind of boring,” Cho said. “You learn it in the classroom and it kind of stays in the classroom, but in a manga format, that’s able to be distributed to everyone and more people can learn about it — not just in school, the average person can learn about it.”
Avi Pellegrinetti, a dance major, worked with four other dancers to create an exhibit illustrating electron spin, titled “Eigenstate.” They said the highlight for them was getting to meet other interdisciplinary artists.
“It was really a joy, building community and getting new ideas,” Pellegrinetti said. “Beyond that, I am not necessarily a visual artist in the traditional sense, so getting to meet with all of these visual artists was really enjoyable, as well as some musicians [and] some people who work with different forms of technology. I got to take in so much information that I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and I met some really interesting people.”
Brandon Young-Eleazar, a U of I senior, created an exhibit titled, “musica universalis,” in which they explored how the music of the universe. They assigned different melodies to planets, as well as assigned rhythms based on planetary orbits. During the exhibition reception, Young-Eleazar gave a live performance, in which they sang original music and painted along to the expression of the music.
As a music education major, they said the highlight of their work was seeing children enjoy their exhibit.
“Something that has been really exciting for me to see kids actually interacting with the pieces, the way that I want them to,” Young-Eleazar said. “They’re playing buttons, they’re pulling on strings, they’re painting on the walls and I think that’s exactly what I envisioned. So I’m really happy about that.”
Hammie, another program organizer, said that for the majority of the participants, it was their first time doing an exhibition and having many people excited and curious about what they’re doing.
“It’s the first time for them to have to craft an artist statement, to hold space with other people on an occasion like this, to be able to build a collaborative environment that works together, to really create a special experience — but then also understanding and taking seriously the competition component and this opportunity to find different ways of advancing one’s own research, and one’s own practice,” Hammie said. “Because it’s extracurricular, all the students that participate in this are really here because they’re passionate about this program, and seeing that passion kind of come to fruition on their faces as they talked with each other, as they talked with the audience… that was a joy.”
The Best in Show winner and inaugural resident artist in physics, plus two additional award winners, will be announced prior to the exhibition’s closing, chosen by external juror Lindsay Olson and professors Matthias Grosse Perdekamp and Brooke White, respectively.
Hammie said RAPP is funded for one more year, and that all of the organizers — he, Raley and Yunes — will be teaching a course on art and physics again next fall. He also said there’s a long history of the value of art not always being understood within realms of science, and that he hopes this program will continue to bring people together.
“We hope that what’s already begun, in this kind of cross-unit collaboration between the department of physics and the school of art and design, builds amongst themselves,” he said, “but [that it] also becomes demonstrative for other units to see how transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary isn’t just a buzzword, but can be a real practice that enriches people’s experiences, their research, their publications, their exhibitions and their creative work.”