Undisciplined: Radical Strategies for Growing Artist-Scientist Collaborations is a practical and imaginative guidebook for practitioners and supporters who seek to nurture long-term, intellectually rigorous, and values-based artist-scientist collaborations.
The book is co-written by myself and my long-time collaborator Janani Balasubramanian, and is forthcoming from University of California Press in early 2027, under the stewardship of Science Editor Chloe Layman.
When we began working together, our core question was one of potential. We were asking – when an artist and scientist commit to a true co-creative process, what becomes possible? We were not yet concerned with the outcomes, which would emerge over time, but we were mutually invested in the hunch, the inkling, the unknown. What has since become possible is what drove us to write this book, to incite other spaces of potential and the creation of new worlds altogether.
History
Ever since the beginning of our collaboration, Janani and I have been committed to helping other artists and scientists step into the world of art-science collaboration. Much of the original visioning and scoping of the book occurred during our Leonardo@Djerassi residency in summer 2023. After obtaining our book contract in fall 2023, we went through two intensive writing sessions in March and June-July 2024, while I was on sabbatical. We have spoken about the book at the Worlds in Play conference in January 2024, as guest speakers at Djerassi Open Studios in July 2024, and in the Encounters podcast produced by Stanford Arts, released August 2024.
Support
We received a 2024 Sloan Foundations Book Grant to support development of the book.