Art Your Research!!

This year, we’ve added a new (and thrilling) element to Tufts’ annual Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium: a competition called Art Your Research, in which students submitted artistic interpretations of academic research projects. The results were incredible! Ranging from dance performances to children’s books to 80s hair-metal homages, students took up the challenge and left us with funny, though-provoking, and beautiful results.

But in the words of the immortal Levar Burton, “you don’t have to take my word for it…” Here are our amazing artademics, in no particular order.

I love this 80’s-augmented illustration of the benefits and myths around AVP supplements SO MUCH. Bonus points for that wig!

2. Most Meta-est
Mina Terzioglu, “Synethesia”

This one made me feel like I was having synesthesia just by looking at it! Points for meta!

3. Best Future Indie Rock Album Cover
Claire Ganiban, ” The Emergence of Freedom”

This beautiful photo collage was inspired by a philosophy paper titled “A Response to Who’s Still Afraid of Indeterminism: Refocusing the Tension Between Compatibilism and Incompatibilism.” It inspired me to make an amazing playlist on Spotify.

4. Best Quarantine Dance Party
“Tastes Like It Smells” by Kelila Weiner

In this dance piece (with original music!), Weiner expresses and plays with the physicality of quarantine. In her own words, “I was channeling and thinking about the nervous energy that comes from feeling like it is Groundhog Day every day. I wake up, I say the same good morning greeting to my housemates, we complain about the same things, go nowhere, and do it all again the next day.” You said it.

5. Best Kids’ Book Not About Nuns
Mikayla Barreiro, “Princess Matilda is Not a Nun: Tales from the English Investiture Controversy”

Poor Princess Matilda! Dress up like a nun one time, and all of a sudden everyone’s trying to keep you from marrying your hunky prince sweetheart! Also, no one takes you seriously because it’s 1130 and you have a uterus, despite your solid ideas about sanitation. Here’s the whole thing for your pleasure.

6. Best Neuroscience Zine
Ty Bilstein, “I’ve Got Poetry on the Brain”

In this collection of poems, Ty Bilstein channels Shel Silverstein with funny, engaging poems that illustrate a range of ideas from behavioral neuroscience, along with hand-drawn illustrations.

7. Saddest, but in a good way
Annika Tanner, “Prosopagnosia: Nice to Meet You…Again?”

Prosopagnosia, also known as “face blindness,” is a condition that leaves people unable to recognizes faces–this collage uses a range of media to disorient the viewer in order to help them understand the phenomenon more fully.

8. Most Delicious, Delicious Brains
Yena Lim, Vicki Tran, and Maya Ng-Yu, “Recipes of the Brain: A CBS Cookbook”

What better way to describe complicated neurological concepts than with candy? I can’t think of one. Check out the whole thing here.

9. Best Serendipitous Coincidence with the Timing of Elementary School Standardized Testing
Madeira Thayer, “The Gatekeeper”

My 9-year-old had to take the Massachusetts public school standardized tests this week, less than a month after returning to in-person school. It never occurred to me when I was a public school student to be enraged by these tests, but now, as a parent, I’m catching up. This beautiful painting captures everything that infuriates me about this exercise in pointless hoop-jumping.

10. Best Musical Mind-Blown
Daniella Rothstein and Lina Fang, “Dissonance and Dynamics in G”

This original composition comes from these students’ work in Cognitive Brain Sciences. I let it wash over me, making whatever connections rose to the surface. I recommend doing this 🙂

11. Best Mirror Image
Alvalyn Dixon-Gardner, “A Blank Canvas & The Caged Bird”

Created in conjunction with a Child Study and Human Development paper titled “The Impact of Identity and Inclusion on Mental Health,” this collage beautifully captures the sense of confinement and dissonance imposed by messages in the media about beauty and social value.