ARTsySTEM: The Changing Climates of the Arts and Sciences.

     This semester ARTsySTEM is a newly offered class to Utah State University. It allows students to come together and learn how to form science into art, and art into science.
    Two professors teach this class. Professor Mark Koven teaches the art portion of the class and Doctor Nancy Huntly teaches the science portion.
    “We wanted to show that science needs to open up a little bit and not be so narrow,” Koven said. “Art can be more than just a painting on a wall so to speak, it actually has a purpose beyond visualization of information or communication.”
    According to Huntly, the split between artists and scientists in the class is even. The class currently has eight students enrolled.
    “We would like them to start recognizing the value of working with people outside your field, I mean way outside your field,” Huntly said. “There is everything from the conceptualization to the actual hard work of doing the experiment where an artist could be interval.”
    According to Koven, the class is only one brick of the foundation for the overall system - ARTsySTEM. It’s essentially looking to integrate art with the branches of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
    “The way I envision this happening is by having the multi-prong, just like I feel art does,” Koven said. “Art hits you on multiple levels and so the program hits you on multiple levels.”
    The different levels include the course, the lecture series, joint artist/scientist residency, the creation of a public art piece and an exhibition with art donated by visiting scholars throughout the semester.
    The list of visiting scholars for the class consists of artists, scientists and scholars that are both artists and scientists. A few of the visitors will be Allison Kudla on Feb. 19, Mark Dion on March 19, Brandon Ballengee on April 10, Andrea Lucky also on April 10, Rebecca Solnit April 16, Paul Vanouse on April 17, Bonnie Baxter also on April 17, Matthew Coolidge also on April 17 and Andrea Polli who appeared Jan. 22.
    Polli visited campus for the ARTsySTEM class and for the school’s annual Arts Week. That evening Polli gave a lecture to the public and displayed an art piece on the side of the USU Performance Hall. The piece was called “Particle Falls.” A waterfall was projected on the side of the building. The waterfall changed color depending on the air conditions as well as showed particle elements that were currently in the air.
    “Despite the invisibility of air, the modern sensors can detect tiny particulate pollution levels in real time,” Polli said. “Particle falls provides a real time visualization of particulate pollution.”
    The art piece will be re-shown on the evenings that the other visiting scholars give lectures to the class and the public.
    By the end of the semester the class will be broken into groups, including one scientist and one artist. They must come up with an art piece combining the two subjects. This semester the course will pay special attention to water ecology and therefor the final project/art piece will be centered on the Logan River.
    “I would like the students to understand the connections between the two disciplines,” Koven said. “Break down the fear of crossing outside your comfort zone, being in the arts and not wanting to work with a scientist, as well as the necessity to understand the process.”
    The next time this class will be available to students will be spring semester 2017, as it is only offered every other year.