Events

“Coalesce: Science and Art Collaborations to Foster Environmental Engagement,”  with Sharon Gill and Jacklyn Brickman

In a challenging environmental landscape, unconventional approaches to engage people in conservation are urgently needed. Our panel of science and art students and professors will share perspectives on teaching and research practices to provide new insights into environmental issues and creative conservation solutions. As educators, we've created an interdisciplinary program that provides students with experiences that bridge science and art, fostering creative problem solving. Science students learn to communicate not only facts but also stories and data visualizations that engage audiences. Art majors learn about ecological processes and ideas that can be fertile ground for artistic exploration. As researchers, we use scientific and conservation evidence, artificial intelligence, and kinetic imaging to tell stories of bird extinctions. Together, we practice making our disciplines more relatable to each other and by extension, more relatable to the public.

Jacklyn Brickman and Sharon Gill have been collaborating since 2023 in both their research practices and in teaching a collaborative Art-Science Course. Gill is a sound ecologist and educator, whose research interests include bird communication, impacts of human-driven environmental change on bird song and collective soundscapes, and bird extinctions. Brickman is a visual artist and educator whose work entangles science fact with fiction to address social and environmental concerns by employing natural entities, processes, and technology which spans installation, video, and performance, cross-disciplinary collaboration and social engagement. Brickman is an assistant professor of Kinetic Imaging and Gill is a professor of Biological Sciences at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Program begins at 6:30pm; doors open at 6:00 for social time