Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVISInstitute News
The artist-in-residence program, running for the second time, from October 1st until November 14th, connects digital medicine to education and arts.
We are delighted to welcome Singaporean artists Jake Tan and Ernest Wu from Nanyang Technological University Singapore! The artist team, supervised by Assoc. Prof. Ina Conradi from the School of Art, Design, and Media, will have a unique opportunity to work closely together with the institute’s research staff at Fraunhofer MEVIS’ headquarters in Bremen. The artist-in-residence program adds interdisciplinary methods and new aesthetic approaches to STEM teaching by connecting digital medicine to education and arts to foster the engagement with and ownership of future technology. It includes encounters that bring together scientists, the artists, and pupils from Bremen and Linz, and students from NTU Singapore School of Art, Design, and Media in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Talent School. Following the residency, the resulting artwork will be featured at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz in September 2020.
The collaborators of the program aim to strengthen multidisciplinary talents, encourage students to engage with art, science, and technology to gain new skills to expand their work practices and thus explore dialog-oriented forms of science communication and educational models of the future. This program reaches pupils and students who are interested in transdisciplinary exploration. It raises awareness about the role of math, physics, and foremost information science and programming in the field of digital medicine. “We are thrilled to realize this residency for the second time, which now integrates a students workshop in Singapore,” says Fraunhofer MEVIS workshop leader Sabrina Haase from the biophysical modeling and simulation group. Enhancing the artist-in-residence program by involving pupils and students contributes to the development of new occupational fields for artists. Hands-on workshops are core elements of this inquiry of the two seemingly disparate disciplines of digital medicine and art. These include both fundamental knowledge and free creative exploration to understand a subject thoroughly. “Being able to move successfully between a variety of disciplines is a crucial competence in future education and innovation,” says project leader and artists mentor Bianka Hofmann. The participants research how STEM topics and the arts cross-pollinate within the socially relevant context of digital medicine. “This is an exclusive opportunity for young artists from NTU Singapore to work closely with scientists at Fraunhofer MEVIS and integrate areas of cutting-edge medical research with technology and art.” says Ina Conradi, project supervisor in Singapore.
In the first phase of the residency in October 2019, the selected artists will work for four weeks in close cooperation with researchers at Fraunhofer MEVIS and explore selected topics in digital medicine and relevant societal issues. They will learn to use a software platform for medical imaging and, most importantly, develop their artwork. The artists will bestow an artistic perspective on a workshop for pupils conducted alongside the scientific experts as part of the International Fraunhofer Talent School in Bremen in cooperation with a School Center in Bremen. The pupils and students will use medical image processing technology in an artistic fashion and discover underlying concepts from the fields of computer science, programming, mathematics, and physics.
For the second phase of the residency, the artists will stay at Ars Electronica in Austria for two weeks, digging deeper into the development of their artwork, linking scientific aspects with approaches used in digital art and holding a workshop with pupils from Linz and Upper Austria. Ars Electronica’s facilities allow artistic reflection on significant developments, its ongoing inquiry into alternative future scenarios as well as the ways and means to encourage people to get actively involved in configuring our shared future. Back in Singapore, the artists will host the STEAM-workshop for students with the support of Fraunhofer MEVIS experts.
STEAM Imaging II is an artist residency jointly hosted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS in Bremen, Germany, and Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria in collaboration with the International Fraunhofer Talent School Bremen.
At Fraunhofer MEVIS, experts from several fields will participate, including experienced scientific STEM workshop leaders from the biophysical modeling and simulation group, experts in technology-oriented science communication, scientists from the MRI physics group, experts for the exploration of new technology within the medical imaging development platform MeVisLab as well as medical visualization scientists. At Ars Electronica, the artists will be provided with state-of-the-art technical production possibilities in a transdisciplinary discourse and obtain access to experts from the Ars Electronica FutureLab. An external scientist specialized in the effects of arts-based initiatives will evaluate the STEAM workshops. The creative project and the outcome of the residency will be presented at the 2020 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. The STEAM Imaging project was originally developed during 2016 in collaboration with SPACE (London).