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There’s more to the Marine Lab than the name suggests.

The 51���� Marine Laboratory is known for the caliber of scientist it attracts, its interdisciplinary classes, and its unique research opportunities. But this winter something different came out of the Marine Lab—art.

As part of the 2013 Undergraduate Winter Forum, Kristin Bedford, Caitlin M. Kelly, and Jennifer Stratton were invited to be Artists-in-Residence for the three-day “Blue Devils and the Deep Blue Sea: Can We Rescue the Oceans?” Bedford, Kelly, and Stratton are students from the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Art (MFAEDA) program.  Each shadowed a group of students focusing on a particular issue, and created original artwork based on the experience.

Kristin Bedford produced photographs inspired by both on and offshore issues.

“I created a series of images that were about taking time to look at the micro-elements of a scientific issue like sea turtle conservation. At the end of the day the work I created at the Marine Lab is a narrative about the human experience—how people are transformed by the issues they face, as individuals and as a community.”

Caitlin M. Kelly found herself considering the role of data in decision-making. “What came out of it for me, as this observer tagging along, was the data needed to make good decisions.  How do you ever know you have the right data, or if somebody else comes in and analyzes the same data that I have, what information and knowledge do they gain?” she said.

Kelly’s work for the Winter Forum exhibition was a set of triptych images she captured while at the Marine Lab and aerial images from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Kelly deliberately included certain kinds of data on her images and left off others.

“I was interested most in this idea that data needs to be processed to be meaningful, and how something becomes meaningful. And so the photographs themselves are visual data, but they also have written data in the margins, and that data may be meaningful to you, or it may be irrelevant, random, or redundant,” Kelly said.

Jennifer Stratton found inspiration in scientific research equipment, turning functional objects into artistic components.

“I started looking at the tools that were utilized in the lab for deep sea mineral research in different ways-- so in my pieces I have actually incorporated objects such as nautical maps, tidal charts and microscopic slides to create visual three-dimensional field notes. The time spent at the marine lab with the students and staff has manifested itself physically in these pieces, and it’s really interesting to create work in response to that experience,” said Jennifer Stratton, whose work included embroidered mixed-media sculptures and a short animated film playing on loop.

Beyond improving academic understanding of an organism or an ecosystem, art also has potential to aid in broader discussions of science and the environment. “Art excels at commenting and critiquing, and when it can get together with science and do that I think it’s really strong, because it can be commenting on not just scientific results but also on society and our view of our world,” Caitlin M. Kelly said.

"Many of us have very specific ideas of what science looks like. However, we can step back from those notions many times over and look at a broader scope, then I think there’s lots of organic ways in which art and science are one and the same,” Kristin Bedford said.

Jennifer Stratton is interested in how scientists and artists can come together on projects. “I’d like to see increased research-based artist residencies where artists and scientists work through a problem together.  Art and science practices are both deeply rooted in a spirit of investigation and experimentation. Combining the two has the powerful potential to not only reach broader publics, but also drive innovative research applications further,” Stratton said.

Bringing art to the Marine Lab is something that has interested director Cindy Van Dover for some time. Van Dover would like to see more long-term opportunities for artists to engage with the Marine Lab, and for scientists and students in science to use art in their work.

“ ‘Art’, in a practical sense for students in arts and sciences, is learning how to observe and interpret and go beyond observation to insight” Van Dover says. “That’s what our artists-in-residence brought to us in January—they taught us to see and value perspectives outside of our norm.”

Van Dover is excited about the potential for future collaboration. “It would be lovely if we could share our science with a faculty member in arts or humanities residence at the Marine Laboratory. Creativity in art and science together would set us apart from other marine science programs in the country; it would transform the way we inspire our students, the way we understand the marine environment, and the way we relate to our work,” Van Dover said.