With a kick-off meeting in March, the program of a new project dedicated to creation and innovation based on the blending of science, art and technology began. The LOOSE CELLS project has been designed by a consortium of four partners; besides the research institute InnoRenew CoE, it also includes the University of Primorska, University of Nova Gorica’s School of Arts and the Association for Culture and Education PiNA (with the support of the RUK network of research centers).

LOOSE CELLS will involve top researchers and experts from the institute, professors and experts of intermedia art as well as artists and students from artistic and scientific fields.

The main project program activity will be the co-creation of an art-science object, which will be designed and created by students on the basis of starting points like global sea level rise, wood properties/buoyancy, sustainability or human-nature-technology relationships. The art-science object will be realised in InnoRenew CoE and DIST labs under the mentorship of professors, researchers’ advice and support from producers and curators in the PiNA association or RUK network. Results of the creative process will be publicly presented – if the epidemiological situation allows – in the second half of this year at various locations.

The kick-off meeting, which focused on the introduction of the team and presentation of the program, ended with promising deliberations, from word games about the ambiguous title of the project (LOOSE CELLS – losing cells – losing cell phones), for instance, to the basic question of what science and art have in common. In addition to the original scientific and artistic object, maybe the project will also bring an original answer to this query.

Photo: Marica Mikuljan.
Synthetic resin in the lumen cell of resin-impregnated poplar wood, cut longitudinally.

The project was supported by Municipality of Izola.