Art-influenced

Science

By Donnelly Chris & Jacovetti Cécile  

Embracing creativity to tackle the unresolved complex problems facing human health is of huge importance and interest to A.R.BT. Alongside partners we are exploring new and innovative art-influenced approaches to drive progress in therapeutic areas of greatest need. Here, we outline some of A.R.BT.’s thinking on art-influenced science.

Central to A.R.BT.’s mission is the belief that “breaking through complex biological problems will benefit from looking at biological interactions with a fundamentally different framework than is currently used. Fusing science and technology with art holds great promise to rethink outside the boundaries of current analytical frameworks. To grasp the full complexity of biological interfaces and to imagine, identify and generate novel forms of interaction.”

It is with this in mind that A.R.BT began to explore the possibility of defining methodologies for purposefully extracting unseen biological information through artistic methods and harnessing this information to developing new analyses cellular biology which identify novel forms of communication and engineering targets. This art-influenced science aims to reframe how we read and think cellular processes.

Extracting unseen information

Following the successful production of ‘Islet Introspection’ in spring 2025 with Kimitoshi Sato, we envisioned a two-step methodology. This involves harnessing the musical notations and sounds first created by composition to revolutionize the analytical frameworks used to discover and identify cell behaviors. Updating the unique composition process crafted during creation of ‘Islet Introspection’, to include clear spatiotemporal annotation of the extracted information from sources (e.g., live cell imaging videos) enables all artistic outputs to be clearly and easily presented back to the researchers.

Thereafter, through a series of dialogues between artists and scientists the most pertinent unseen features identified by musical composition are translated into the targets of new analyses performed in the laboratory. After identifying the most suitable data sets and developing custom analysis codes and pipelines the newly identified features are incorporated in new data analyses generating new biological information.

The first new data from this A.R.BT-influenced science will be revealed early 2026.

Last updated: 01.09.2025