The Astronomical Imagination

Conceived by Dr. Gurtina Besla and Chief Artistic Officer Helen Yung, The Astronomical Imagination began as a project to examine what happens when we bring artistic methods into relation with the scientific method. It was thought that some applications of this playful twinning of art and astronomy might include:

Looking at where do creativity and imagination fit within the scientific method, and how does astronomy promote this in practice? How does higher education in astronomy build a creative mindset? How might we do art and astronomy next? What does emergent scientific research have to offer artists and their self-directed inquiries and inventions? How might the two disciplines couple and decouple in an interchanging song and dance of leading, listening, and being led?

The project started with a series of conversations and experiences to bring artists and scientists together to begin exploring scientific inquiry meets artistic inquiry. From 2021 to 2022, over several 6-week online programs, artists and astronomers shared artistic practice and astronomy practice with each other. Participants participated in the methods and preoccupations of the two fields, and engaged with the specificities of individual practices.

In the spring of 2023, a dozen artists and astronomers were invited to participate to a week-long, in-person residency at the University of Arizona. It was a complex and potent exploration that began in Indigenous ceremony led by Miguel Flores Jr. (Yaqui/Tohono O’odham). Afterwards, Miguel presented the Indigenous Medicine Wheel, explaining how it represents the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of the world and each person. When one dimension is weak, our wellbeing and capacity for flourishing is compromised.

The Medicine Wheel was also represented in the room. It’s an over-simplification, but one could say that the physical was represented by astronomy and physics, the emotional represented by the arts, the mental represented by the framing of the co-inquiry or premise for our gathering, and the spiritual represented by Indigenous medicine.

For Miguel, at the centre of the Medicine Wheel sits God, or Creator, or whatever Higher Power you may believe in. Artist Samita Sinha suggested that at the centre, for her, is the Unknowable. Taken all together, the Indigenous Medicine Wheel suggests that our capacity for flourishing lies in balancing across the four realms: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, and remaining in awe and in relation with the Unknowable.

The four days we spent together was filled with such unexpected, spontaneous connections and generous, collaborative insight, as well as shifts in our individual, disciplinary and personal thinking.

“It was transformative,” says Dr. Nitya Kallivayalil, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Virgina.

PhD candidate Katie Chamberlain reflecting on the sounding practice that Samita had shared: “At first it felt like the two notes she was asking us to sound were very similar, but as we sounded through them, I discovered the space between the two notes was vast…”

In an extended written reflection, artist Nithya Garg offered:

“There is a dichotomy that is often thrown around about the openness of the arts and the rigidity of science, but I would propose that this dichotomy itself is a fallacy. And in sharing each others study, although briefly, it asked me to consider that when we communicate about the narrow and specific phenomenons that we engage with, it allows others a window into those experiences. That window could be the space where change can happen, puncturing endless replication.”

Another artist commented, “It was really great to go to the observatory together, [for there to be] time to connect in smaller groups, and sound in different places. I recall with joy some astromicmicry moments, a lot of conversation about awe in astronomy and our time sounding in the dark at the garden.”

Everyone agreed, “I know what embodied means now.”

The Astronomical Imagination continues in partnership with Dr. Gurtina Besla at the Department of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Arizona and in collaboration with artist Samita Sinha, Miguel Flores Jr., and many others. The project is expanding too, as the proposition of other ways of knowing and being is meaningful for other sciences beyond astronomy. We intend to move through this work guided by the Medicine Wheel – maintaining balance across the four directions, engaged by the Unknowable – curious and inclusive of diverse people and knowledge systems.