Science Topic

Art science collaboration

Art-Science Collaboration occurs when scientific research, data or ideas are incorporated into creative media. Some famous examples include Micheal Crichton’s Jurassic Park novel (1990), Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory painting (1931), or Gustav Holst’s Planets Suite (1918) which were all inspired by contemporary scientific discoveries.

Through provoking an emotional response, art can make science visceral, tangible and memorable. Art can also generate attention-grabbing headlines which can allow scientific discoveries and ideas to spread significantly further. Artists can also provide a valuable outsider perspective, asking unique questions, and exploring in new directions, or showcase the beauty of everyday science and data.

Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) has a long history of successful collaborations with local, national and international artists. These collaborations have let to the creation of a wide range of art, including paintings and murals, sculptures, costumes, music, poetry, pottery, video art, and more.

The Art & Science Committee is a dedicated group of PML staff whose role is build relationships with the art community, funders, and other charitable foundations in order to support joint multidisciplinary Art-Science projects. The committee is the point of contact at PML for artists who want to reach out to marine scientists for collaborations, but also for funding agencies and foundations who wish to support this work. You can reach us on forinfo@pml.ac.uk.

The Planet Ocean exhibition at The Box Museum in Plymouth, was drawn from the local natural history, art and social history collections and supported by a range of partners including PML. The year-long exhibition, which came to a close April 2025, included a number of displays featuring PML, notably the exhibitions title piece, Planet Ocean by Nathan Gale at Intercity Studios, which visualised 120 years of PML’s Western English Channel temperature timeseries into a swirling point cloud.

The Coccolithophore Dress was a collaboration with the Costumes department of the Arts University Plymouth under the guidance of BA (Hons) Costume Production Course Leader Marie Dunaway. Their students were inspired by PML’s work on Coccolithophores: a microscopic, single-celled type of marine plankton which play a vital role in the carbon cycle. The distinct unique shape of the coccolithophores calcite shell were shown on the dress using a unique sustainably sourced 3D printed plastic.

Selected Publications

de Mora, L., Sellar, A. A., Yool, A., Palmieri, J., Smith, R. S., Kuhlbrodt, T., Parker, R. J., Walton, J., Blackford, J. C., and Jones, C. G.: Earth system music: music generated from the United Kingdom Earth System Model (UKESM1), Geosci. Commun., 3, 263–278, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-3-263-2020, 2020.