Nomination for the 2015 Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize

The Ucross Project: Finding the Humanities in the Cross-pollination of Arts and Sciences

The Humanities Council proudly nominates the Ucross Project—a multi-year collaboration between the council and the —for the 2015 Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize for innovative programs and outstanding work in the public humanities. The Ucross Project is a multi-event/multi-product venture that has had far-reaching impacts on our state and demonstrates the power of the humanities to foster authentic dialogue between two of the major realms of inquiry—art and science—in order to explore what it means to be fully human within the natural world.

Founded in 1981 by Raymond Plank, the Ucross Foundation, a 20,000-acre working ranch, provides a rare gift in today's world–uninterrupted time–along with work space and living accommodations, to competitively selected visual artists, writers, and composers. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza, Ricky Ian

Gordon's opera The Grapes of Wrath – these are just a few of the acclaimed works

that have been created in part during Ucross residencies. www.ThinkWY.org/UcrossProject Page 1

Humanity & Nature: An Exceptional Experiment at Ucross

Project Summary: The humanities are ideally positioned to foster authentic dialogue between two of the major realms of inquiry: art and science. The "This will be a grand environmental problems of our day are the products of our being biophysical, experiment, the likes of technological, sociopolitical, economic, historical, rational, emotional, creative, which I don't think that moral, spiritual creatures—and in this light, the humanities are vital to the this university-or perhaps development of genuine solutions. In the summer of 2014, we gathered any university-has tried together artists and scientists for an experiment in cultivating mutual before in such a bold fashion. This venture is understanding of the land at the Ucross Ranch. The venture was mediated about finding out what we through a humanities scholar and yielded a set of products including: can be as a university, 1. A public forum professionally video-recorded and available for rather than as a 'diversity'- streaming via YouTube and other sites. or a place where we have 2. A documentary film publicly screened at multiple venues around the fragmented the arts and state and scheduled for showing on Wyoming Public Television sciences into separate 3. Many articles and interviews on radio and newspaper. realms." 4. Dozens of science-and-art-works and major grant awards based on - Dr. Jeffrey Lockwood, intensive collaborations. Professor of Natural 5. A website documenting the entire project and all related collaborative Sciences & Humanities products (www.ThinkWY.org/UcrossProject). 6. Ongoing life-long relationships among UW faculty who had no previous connections.

Through this project, we sought to make the humanities a catalyst for scholarly discourse involving the arts and sciences about what it means to be fully human within the natural world.

Project Proposal Background: The humanities are powerfully positioned in relationship to the arts and sciences. That is to say, the humanities have the capacity to bridge the two great realms of understanding: the empirical, objective venture of knowing the natural world and the creative, subjective project of expressing our thoughts and feelings. For example, if we want to richly comprehend and effectively address ecological problems— whether the local challenges of the Ucross ranch or the global challenges of population, energy, and climate—environmental science must be framed in terms of the human condition and environmental art must be informed by knowledge of the natural world. Substantive and lasting changes in environmental thought have occurred when the humanistic impulse has integrated art and science, as exemplified by works ranging from William Wordsworth’s poetic critique of soulless consumption in “The World Is Too Much with Us”, to Mary Shelly’s warnings of hubris in Frankenstein, to Annie Dillard’s gently provocative insights in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Images also possess the power to stimulate serious discussions of the human condition, as seen in works ranging from Rembrandt’s haunting portrayals of laborers and the poor, to the German Expressionist printmakers’ depictions of the carnage of war, to Picasso’s Guernica. And the ability of science and art to collaboratively evoke deep reflection on the nature and limitations of humanity is vividly evident the iconic photograph of the Earth taken from Apollo 17. The environmental problems that we face are the products of our being fully human—biophysical, technological, sociopolitical, economic, historical, rational, emotional, creative, moral, and spiritual creatures. We cannot blame one facet of humanity for what has been done, and we cannot reasonably expect to cultivate the profound changes that are needed without the collaboration of science and art as mediated through, or perhaps stimulated by, the humanities. Even a richly integrated pluralism may not be sufficient.

Page 2 There are no assurances that we’ll succeed, but as the Oregon State University program in Environmental Arts and Humanities sagely noted: “Together, we have a chance.”

Concept: The purpose of the originally proposed project is perhaps best understood as an experiment, as we had no idea what the outcome would be. The idea was to simultaneously serve the interests of both the Ucross Foundation in developing a greater understanding of the land and the University of Wyoming in fostering a humanistic dialogue between environmental arts and sciences. By pairing four artists with four scientists for two weeks of uninterrupted collaboration at the Ucross Foundation, we sought to explore what it means to be human—the project would become the labor of striving to be fully human, to be richly rational, empirical, emotive, intuitive and spiritual beings.

Concept originators, Dr. Jeffrey A. Lockwood and Dr. Harvey L. Hix, both of the University’s Department of Philosophy, explored bringing in participants from around the nation, but realized such ventures tend to be singular engagements. Their ideal was to foster authentic mutual respect, deep conversation, and humanistic reflection—and thereby cultivate lasting relationships that will unfold on a continuing basis to yield novel, exciting, and even radical conversations so they chose to select faculty from across the spectrum of disciplines at Wyoming’s sole university. Ucross provided the essential, literal common ground to generate outcomes of value to the host organization—as well as to the university and the state.

Project Description:

Participants Four UW faculty in the arts (dance, music, writing, visual) and four in the sciences (plant ecology, animal ecology, soils/geology, water/hydrology), representing a diversity of ages and sexes and possessing both deep, disciplinary knowledge and intense curiosity about forms of inquiry were selected for the project. These individuals were invited to engage in a 2-week experiment, mediated through the humanities (Jeff Lockwood functioning as the on-site coordinator and self-designated “camp counselor”) and documented through film (Ali Grossman, UW television documentarian). All participants were present for the entire experiment to assure a coherence of experience and depth of engagement within the group.

Setting Situated on a 20,000-acre working cattle ranch between Sheridan and Buffalo, the Ucross Foundation was established to foster innovation in the arts. The Foundation has recently expanded its mission to encompass opportunities for collaboration between the arts and sciences, particularly those relevant to understanding the land and developing sustainable practices.

Schedule: June 18 = Arrival and settling in; introductions and background/rules of Ucross. June 19 = Individuals travel to a single iconic site and experience the location through their own ‘lenses’. June 20 = Individuals prepare accounts of the shared site in whatever forms are most effective, comfortable and familiar to their way of expressing ideas, returning to the site as needed. June 21 = Individuals present what they know of the site from their perspectives (presentations in the morning and afternoon; the evening is spent in moderated whole-group discussion) June 22 = A day to debrief, relax, and recharge. June 23 = Scientists and artists are paired in the morning, with new pairings in afternoon, to wander the landscape together and learn how each understands the place. June 24 = A repeat of the previous day with new pairings in the morning and afternoon. June 25 = Artist-scientist pairs are formed to undertake a fully collaborative project of their own design to express their insights about nature in an authentically shared form. June 26 = Pairs continue to co- a single expression of the natural world. Page 3 June 27 = Creative collaborations continue. June 28 = Presentations of collaborative works at Saturday University (at Ucross), with each team sharing their joint project and discussing their work; humanities respondents from Sheridan College. June 29 = Open discussion of what has been learned and how to sustain the conversation. June 30 = Debrief in the morning and depart after lunch.

Products: The public humanities products and outcomes that have resulted so far from the experiment include:

1. A public forum professionally video-recorded and available for streaming via YouTube and other sites. The forum was part of Saturday University, an ongoing collaboration between the Wyoming Humanities Council and the University of Wyoming (information about the program can be found here: http://www.uwyo.edu/saturdayu/Previous%20Saturday%20U%20Events/2014/Summer2014Sheridan.html

The agenda for the event (and hotlinks to the individual YouTube Videos) provides a sense of the amazing collaborations that have resulted from this project:

Welcome and Introduction – Jeff Lockwood "Moving Science" - This work was an evocative integration of choreography and animal behavior. Working together, Michael Dillon (physiological ecologist in the Department of Zoology & Physiology and renowned expert on bees) and Rachael Shaw (dancer/choreographer in the Department of Theater & Dance) adapted the Laban Method of choreographic annotation to capture the complex and subtle movements of bees foraging in flowers. To date, biologists have lacked a 'language' to represent animal motions—and dancers have never been challenged to transform the symbols of choreography into human movement. On Saturday, this all changed in spectacular fashion.

"At the Root of Balance" - The pair of UW faculty presented a series of three- dimensional works made from materials found at the Ucross Ranch. The collaboration of Ann Hild (plant ecologist in the Department of Ecosystem Science & Management) and a sculptor (Ashley Carlisle, artist in the Department of Art) resulted in provocative expressions of the ecological relationships between native shrubs and invasive grasses in Wyoming. Captured in both delicate and ponderous forms, the dynamics of the above- and below-ground processes were elegantly presented. Page 4 "Transcriptorium" - This deeply collaborative poem was a gorgeous interweaving of the concepts of transcription and translation—terms coopted by cell biologists to describe the way in which DNA serves as a blueprint for proteins—with the ancient practice of monks working diligently in their cells to copy holy scripture. The poetic project reflected the synergistic capacity of art and science—and the creative power of constraints. The 'surprise' at the end of the presentation was that the poem had been crafted by Naomi Ward (microbial ecologist in the Department of Molecular Biology), not Harvey Hix (poet in the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing and a professor in the Department of Philosophy), who the audience had unanimously presumed to be the author.

"Between Opera and a Hard Place" - Clinker: Between Opera and a Hard Place: This presentation introduced a literal “Rock Opera” and consisted of a pair of arias representing the core of an opera based on the geology of the Powder River Basin. With water as the soprano and burning coal seems as the tenor, the story of the land came together in a spectacular fashion. The libretto was written in "Geologese"—the exotic and evocative language used by geologists in their technical descriptions of the world by Ron Frost (geologist in the Department of Geology & Geophysics). The music was composed by Anne Guzzo (composer in the Department of Music) whose work focuses on new classical music, stretching and exploring the boundaries of composition and theory.

2. In October, 2014, as part of the promotional strategy for the project this 10-minute short film describing the Ucross Pollination project was aired on Wyoming PBS and built state-wide interest for the subsequent feature-length documentary: https://youtu.be/kXFi_ecwwgE

Page 5 3. A professionally-produced and edited documentary, The Ucross Experiment, has been screened in three communities to nearly 400 attendees (160 in Laramie, 150 in Sheridan, and 80 in Jackson).

Link to the full (unreleased) documentary

The film is currently being edited for broadcast by Wyoming Public Television where it will be viewed by tens of thousands of Wyomingites.

It is also being shown to all incoming graduate students at the University of Wyoming.

In the fall of 2015, the film will be made available as a download or orderable in DVD/Blu-Ray format for public viewing by teachers worldwide. Information for ordering will be available at www.ThinkWY.org/UcrossProject.

4. The experiment has yielded both individual and pairwise "No one can master all the products, reflecting separate and collaborative knowledge of the information and forms of Ucross landscape and have served as the seeds for a breath-taking understanding available in our array of exciting cross-pollinated research projects, creative work, complex world, but this project is a and teaching modules relevant to the humanities. perfect example of the humanities  2015 National Science Foundation grant awarded to at work: I'm not an expert in that physiological ecologist Michael Dillon and sculptor Ashley form of understanding we call Hope Carlisle, related to research on how alpine bumblebees science, but this project puts me exist over large geographic regions. into active and ongoing dialogue who is an expert. The dialogue  National Science Foundation application in progress to be then feeds my art, adding a new submitted by poet Harvey Hix and microbial ecologist Naomi layer to my understanding of Ward, on the creation of a new “Bestiary” (“Microbestiary” humanity and the constantly- website www.microbestiary.org). surprising natural world that is  Scientific paper on movement studies and bumblebees to be humanity's context." submitted to the journal Animal Behavior by choreographer -Dr. Harvey Hix, poet, UW Rachael Shaw and Michael Dillon; to be revised for the Department of Philosophy, and biannual International Council of Kinetography MFA Program, Creative Writing Laban/Labannotation conference and publication in 2017.  Kenyon Review literary submission by Harvey Hix and Naomi Ward.  Portions of composer Anne Gusso’s and geologist Ron Frost’s geological opera, Clinker, performed by the Colorado Chamber Orchestra in Greeley, Colorado at the Aquila Summer Concert Series.  Interview by Harvey Hix of Naomi Ward in the online journal The Conversant.  “Moving Science” talk by Rachael Shaw and Michael Dillon presented at Family Weekend at University of Wyoming in September 2014.  A group exhibition and performance at Ucross Foundation Art Gallery in summer 2016.

Page 6  Composer Anne Guzzo and Geologist Ron Frost will submit to premiere their collaborative Clinker Opera at the 2017 Geological Society of America (GSA) National Conference in Seattle.  Composer Anne Guzzo has a research appointment at the NPS/AMK ranch in Grand Teton National Park August 15-30, 2015 to continue her work on the Clinker opera.  All incoming University of Wyoming graduate students will be shown the film during their orientation.

"The Ucross Experiment reveals the process, and potential, of 5. Inclusion of faculty from a single institution laid the collaboration. This example of pure foundation for a long-term network of mutually respectful collaboration between different and beneficial relationships. The group has continued their disciplines, where no discipline is relationships and have changed partners to collaborate on superior but each is treated equally, many additional projects, some of which have moved the demonstrates how trans-disciplinary humanities from the edge to the center of scholarly inquiry can be relevant and effective for discourse at the University of Wyoming. The group spent a a balanced understanding of other subsequent week the following summer, in June of 2015, perspectives but also for a greater together at Ucross to further develop collaborative projects. understanding of one’s own field.” These faculty members did not know each other prior to - Nicole Crawford, Curator of Collections this project and now have regular pot-lucks and all state at University of Wyoming Art Museum that the project has had a significant and dramatic impact on their careers and thinking about their disciplines.

Wyoming Humanities Council’s aims in undertaking this project

When pitching the Ucross project to potential funders, Drs. Lockwood “The Ucross pollination and Hix were rejected by organizations that “shook their heads, unable to experiment is like a joke, laugh at the confusion, grasp the constraints, or imagine the outcomes.” because when I tell people about it they either get it or Lockwood joked that the grounds for their rejections “were entirely they don’t. We sought justified” and fell into three central reasons why this project should not be support for this grand deemed worthy of funding” experiment from various 1. Methods of the project were vague and the results were uncertain. sources, and those who “Damn right!” declared Lockwood in his opening remarks at the grasped the wonderful first public forum. The entire point of the project was not knowing absurdity of not merely what would result from the collaborative pairings. ‘inter-disciplinary work’ but 2. Some struggled to fit the project into a clear niche, was this ‘trans-disciplinary performance art? “Fuzzy humanities?” Nobody mistook it for engagement,’ well they got science. While not unambiguously art, science, or humanities, it is it. They didn’t know what certainly closest to humanities if we understand them to be the the punchline was going to exploration of what it means to be human. be but they knew it was

going to be something 3. The project was “grandiose” and reviewers doubted the project remarkable. could revolutionize the fragmented, hyper-specialized structures of – Dr. Jeff Lockwood our university system and culture, or that revolutionizing was even necessary.

The Wyoming Humanities Council immediately grasped the potential of the project and early in the project committed $5,000.00 in cash funding and a long-term commitment of $15,000 in hard and soft costs to promote and support the products resulting from the project. Along with several university departments and generous in-kind donation from the Ucross Foundation the project was underway.

Page 7 Early conversations about the value of the project riffed on the flower metaphor advanced by John Lithgow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences video supporting The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation, (“The stem of the flower is in fact STEM– science, technology, engineering, and math. But the blossom of the flower is the humanities. Without the blossom, the stem is completely useless. It’s just a stem,” explains Lithgow.) In our conversations we felt that the better metaphor would be the stem is STEM, the blossom is ART, and the roots are the HUMANITIES. Without the roots, the rest of the flower cannot thrive and endure. The Wyoming Humanities Council was sure that this project would.

The Ucross Project’s Public Impact A great deal of press coverage has been generated about the project and interest in the documentary remains high. Some of the coverage includes:  The initial project and public forum was reported on in the Casper Tribune, the state’s largest paper: http://trib.com/lifestyles/home-and-garden/uw-artists-and-scientists-form-unlikely-partnerships-at- ucross/article_b5c1e534-64db-5a2d-b79b-2b7e82cb2852.html  The local radio station recorded an interview about the project: http://www.sheridanmedia.com/news/ucross-pollination-experiment72138  interview with Michael Dillon and Rachael Shaw about their bee movement research project: http://wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/new-possibilities-blossom-when-artists-and- scientists-collaborate  An in-depth article on WyoFile.com, the state’s sole in-depth online long-form journalism website: http://www.wyofile.com/column/choreographer-and-biologist-study-pollinators-bee-movement/  Lots of press accompanied the local showings and premiers of the documentary: o http://wyoarts.state.wy.us/the-ucross-experiment-premieres-may-29-in-sheridan/ o http://thesheridanpress.com/?ai1ec_event=the-ucross-experiment-cross-pollination-of-arts- and-sciences-film o http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/stepping_out/events/science-meets-art-at-ucross-and-in- documentary-film/article_9adc651c-bb83-5e3b-9dd3-fe13bf68efb2.html  More coverage came a year later when Ucross hosted the faculty for a follow-up collaboration in support of their “Grassland Symposium” event.  http://www.wyofile.com/column/ucross-foundation-celebrates-wyomings-grasslands-and- birds/  http://heyevent.com/event/2lvqyvidspqsaa/wyoming-grasslands-celebration-weekend-may- 29-30-sheridan-ucross

Project financial structure  This project represents over $165,000 in total investments and in-kind hours and donations.  In total, WHC contributed $8,000 in cash contributions to this project and to date has contributed over $15,000 in labor and in-kind support.  The Ucross Foundation donated over $40,000 in in-kind support of the project including room and board for 3 weeks of faculty stays and has another $15,000 worth of in-kind pledged for 2016.  9 faculty members contributed a combined 1080 hours during the residency with an estimated valuation of $36,720.  Many departments of the University of Wyoming were involved in this project with total University of Wyoming cash investments in the project totaling over $30,000 for the 2015

Page 8 Ucross residency, with UWTV and the outreach school adding an additional $20,000 in in- kind services toward the project. . The MFA Program in Creative Writing (a top 25 program nationally) . The Biodiversity Institute . Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research . The Philosophy Department . The Outreach School . University of Wyoming Television

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