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© ISAST https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_00000 LEONARDO, Vol. 53, No. 3, p. 000, 2020 243 Since 1979, Djerassi Resident Artists Program has provided the gift of time and space to more than 2,500 artists and scientists in a wild and remote environment. Residents are encouraged to take risks, pursue their individual practices and explore new collaborations. There is no work project requirement. But in the hands of the passionate creator, idle time is anything but idle. Projects and partnerships are born “on the mountain”; many extend across countries and years. Literary and artistic works created in residency have been recognized with hundreds of nominations and awards including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur “genius” grants, NAACP Image Awards and Lambda Literary prizes. An art/science residency makes perfect sense for the Program given that the late Carl Djerassi—cofounder of the Program named for his daughter, Pamela—was an eminent scientist, art collector and playwright. Scientific Delirium Madness has also more deeply engaged the Program in art/ science initiatives including three Ocean Memory project grants supported by the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative. Selected from over 200 applicants and nominees, a dozen adventurous souls arrived as strangers in June and left as friends in July [1]. Among them were a poet, a composer, an anthropologist, two writers, a biomedical engineer, a physicist , a playwright, a filmmaker and two choreographers. They came from Orlando, the Bay Area, New York, Chicago and Boston. Tentative relationships turned to trusted partnerships . A choreographer and a composer contributed to the creation of a clay sculpture. Ideas and new forms of work were tested. People were, in one resident’s words, “relaxed and present.” I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the creative process experienced on our mountaintop retreat. Find the residents’ contemporaneous blogs [2] and share them. I particularly hope those of you who educate young scientists and artists can use the participants’ process and experiences to break down the either/or of scientific and artistic disciplines. Breaking the rules of the academy to reward rather than pigeonhole big thinkers s is more important than ever. It is always the brave souls at the edges who defy definitions that make progress. Margot H. Knight Executive Director, Djerassi Resident Artists Program Email: margot@djerassi.org Web: www.djerassi.org Acknowledgments Scientific Delirium Madness is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Hewlett Foundation, The Creative Work Fund, Larry Goldfarb , the Steve Wilson Fellowship made possible by generative systems artist Sonia Sheridan and anonymous donors. Its founders are many: We give gratitude to the board members of Leonardo and the Djerassi Program, Danielle Siembieda, Jeanne Finley, Gordon Knox, Piero Scaruffi , Pace Gallery/Palo Alto and Roger Malina for their steadfast support. References and Notes 1 The 2019 participating artists and scientists were: Vidhu Aggarwal, poet (Orlando, FL); Patricia Alessandrini, composer (Palo Alto, CA); Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, anthropologist/visual artist (Oakland, CA); Leah Dyjak, visual artist (New York, NY); Katharine Haake, writer (Los Angeles, CA); Kathy High, interdisciplinary artist (Averill Park, NY); Doris Monica Iarovici, psychiatrist/writer (Boston, MA); Alexandra Kleeman, writer (Staten Island, NY); Michael Koehle, visual artist/biomedical engineer (Oakland, CA); Daiane Lopes Da Silva, choreographer (San Francisco, CA); Derek Lee McPhatter, playwright (Chicago, IL); Weidong Yang, choreographer/ physicist (San Francisco, CA). 2 See www.leonardo.info/scientific-delirium-madness/2019 for the complete SDM blog postings along with other documentation of the residency. leonardo gallery Scientific Delirium Madness 5.0 Scientific Delirium Madness (SDM) is a collaborative initiative of Leonardo/ISAST and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. The 2019 session celebrated its 6th successful year with a 5-week residency for artists and scientists at the Djerassi Program’s 583-acre retreat in the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains in California. While living, eating, working and hiking alone and together, residents are urged to “just be,” to allow their passions and practices to explore new intellectual and artistic territories. With unstructured time, residents transform and transcend academic and traditional boundaries of art and science. This Leonardo Gallery features a selection of observations and work drawn from the 2019 SDM 6.0 residency, 19 June–24 July 2019. See www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/53...

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