LONDON, ENGLAND.-The results of a unique program that enables artists and scientists to work together on research projects have been published. They include: Capturing the acoustic fingerprints of a building with the longest echo in the world to create a virtual sound landscape, which allows composers to create new work specially tailored to a specific venue; Choreographer Wayne McGregor, working with neuroscientists and psychologists from Cambridge University to explore the relationship between a dancer’s mind and their body; Artist and scientists developing new “shape memory” materials for use in art.

The Arts and Science Research Fellowships supported by Arts Council England and Arts and Humanities Research Council allow artists to work closely with leading scientists over the course of a year. The fellowships support innovative research that must be of benefit to both science and arts communities.

Twenty-seven fellowships have been awarded so far and the findings from many of these are featured in a special section of Leonardo, the leading journal for readers interested in the application of contemporary science and technology to the arts.

Artist Damian Murphy acoustically surveyed the interior of a number of venues to create site specific virtual acoustic landscapes, that will help composers tailor their work to use the fixed acoustic qualities of a venue rather than let it limit the way their work is heard by an audience.

To achieve this Murphy captured a series of room impulse response profiles (the acoustic fingerprint of a particular environment for a sound source and listener located at a specific position within it).

At present recording room impulse response profiles – or sound mapping - is standardised. Murphy considered how composers might want an audience to experience a piece of work they were creating in a particular venue. He carried out much more thorough sound mapping, taking thousands of measurements at each location, to create detailed virtual acoustic landscapes of individual venues.

The venues Murphy surveyed were York Minster; Maes-Howe in Orkney, one of the finest chambered cairns in Europe, dating to 3000BC; The Hamilton Mausoleum, Scotland, which claims to have the longest echo of any building in the world at 15 seconds; and the 14th Century St Andrews Church in Lydington.

Using his virtual landscapes Murphy created two sound works The King of all the Winds for Maes-Howe in Orkney and A Sense of Place for York Minster.

Choreographer Wayne McGregor and Random Dance company joined with a team of neuroscientists and psychologists from Cambridge University in a exploration of the relationship between a dancer’s mind and their body.

This included researchers using highly accurate motion capture equipment to analyse the accuracy of dancer’s repetition of learned motions, and interviewing dancers to probe their levels of introspection and awareness during the creative process.

The work carried out was a central influence on AtaXia, choreographed by McGregor for Random Dance and premiered at Sadlers Wells. The scientists believe their findings can provide new perspectives on the treatment of patients with long-term serious neurological disorders, including the condition, Ataxia, which affects balance, limbs or eye movement and speech.

Artist Simon Biggs worked with researchers from Cambridge University on a project that focused on the development of new kinds of “shape-memory” materials. These materials have the capacity to move between physical states within the microstructure of the material itself.

They began creating interactive work using LCEs, a polymer-based material similar to LCDs, that changes when energy is applied. Where LCDs change visual appearance, LCE changes its physical form.

LCEs as yet have no commercial use and had not been used until now by artists.

Biggs and the scientists worked together with chemical wet labs, fume cupboards, centrifuges and ovens and created an LCE skin supported and controlled by a shape memory alloy (a nickel-titanium alloy called NiTinol).

Following this work Biggs created IDfone, an installation and networked artwork currently touring the UK. He is working on Metropolis, a large-scale interactive installation.

Other projects carried out through the Arts and Science Research Fellowships include:

Artist Alejandro Vinao and Ian Cross from the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge crated RALPH, a computer interface that enables live musicians and computers to play together without compromising the integrity of music or the performance.

Artist Sol Sneltvedt and neuroscientist Michael O’Shea attempted to visualise the workings of the brain in an audio-visual installation.

The project Metamorphosis and Design looked at similarities between biological “design” and accepted aesthetics in society and was carried out by artist Heather Barnett and scientists from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex.

Artist Jo Joelson collaborated with the 2006 Royal Astronomical Society gold medal winner Professor Stanley Cowley and the Radio and Space Plasma Physics Group at the University of Leicester. The resulting work, Little Earth: a solar-planetary investigation, looks at how developments in technology have affected the way scientists and artists perceive and represent natural phenomena.

Writer Alan Wall and physicist Gron Tudor Jones examined the use of metaphor in science.

The findings of the Arts Council England and Arts and Humanities Research Council Science Research Fellowships are published in Leonardo, Volume 39, Number 5. An event marking the publication, attended by participating artists and scientists, will take place at Jerwood Space, Bankside, SE1 on Thursday 11 January at 6.30pm. Media are invited.