When art and science dance - interviewing an artist-in-residence at NYU Abu Dhabi’s genomics centre
- Dr. Fanie van Rooyen
- Feb 25
- 11 min read
What happens when the precise, data-driven world of a genomics laboratory collides with the emotive, boundary-pushing realm of sound and music? For Australian trumpet player, composer, and sound artist Sam Nester, it became an opportunity to give the natural world a new voice. As the former artist-in-residence at NYU Abu Dhabi’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (CGSB), Sam stepped out of the music studio and into the lab to explore the entangled relationship between humans and our shifting environment. We recently spoke to him and Dr Enas Qudeimat, who heads up the CGSB’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) programme, about the important, even crucial, relationship between science and art. The work proves that science and art don't just coexist - they dance.
Meet Dr Enas Qudeimat, the brains behind the AIR programme
1. What was the initial inspiration to establish an artist-in-residence programme?
My first real encounter with the power of art and science coming together came when we introduced a performance during our annual CGSB scientific conference at the NYUAD Arts Center in 2019, featuring Sir Wayne McGregor, CBE. He presented Autobiography, a work of choreography built from the sequencing of his own genome. Watching a room full of scientists engage with choreography shaped by genetic data was a turning point. It changed how we understood the relationship between research and creative expression. Science was no longer only explained; it was experienced.
That moment led me to expand these conversations through initiatives such as the Fikret Science Café, a public forum where we began hosting discussions on the intersections of art and science, and the distinct ways each approaches the same fundamental questions.
When we were preparing our grant renewal, we began looking seriously at interdisciplinary opportunities that could connect science with other fields. One of the ideas proposed at the time was the Artist-in-Residence programme (AIR). It was built on a simple observation I made from previous interactions: when artists and scientists work together, science reaches further and connects more deeply. During the proposal stage, some scientists genuinely wondered, “What would an artist do with us in the lab?” After our first year of residency, some of those same colleagues became the programme’s strongest advocates.
2. What is the philosophy behind the programme and how does it select artists?
Launched in 2022, the AIR programme was created to build deeper collaboration. Instead of short engagements, we embed artists within the research environment for a full year. The aim is to create space for shared exploration, new ideas, and unexpected outcomes. The programme is grounded in mutual learning. We do not bring artists in to illustrate science or follow a fixed brief. They attend lab meetings, join seminars, and spend time understanding the questions researchers are working on. Projects emerge from dialogue, curiosity, and trust.
Our selection process reflects this philosophy. The position is filled through an open international call. Since the programme began, we have held three rounds and received 275 applications from individuals living in more than 40 countries, with interest increasing each year. Applications are reviewed by a committee that includes both artists and scientists from NYU Abu Dhabi headed by the NYUAD’s CGSB Center Director; Stéphane Boissinot.
Shortlisted candidates complete two rounds of interviews. We look for strong artistic practice, independence, and experience working across disciplines. So far, our residents have included a sound artist, an economist, and an engineer, all with demonstrated experience at the intersection of art and science. Anyone can explore their work via story maps here.
I co-established the AIR programme alongside Stéphane and have been closely involved in shaping its structure, partnerships, and selection process. An important part of my role is making sure the artists have the time, access, and intellectual space to explore before moving into production. I also work to raise the visibility of the programme. This has included developing story maps and other formats with specialists in the field, such as Carmen Koessler, to help share the work with wider audiences.
3. What are you most proud of, after three years, and where do you hope the programme will go?
What I am most proud of is how the programme has shifted mindsets and built real ownership within the scientific community. This is the first residency programme in the UAE, and likely in the region, that fully embeds artists inside research labs. Our artists do not observe from the outside; they become part of the lab environment. They attend meetings, engage with data, and think alongside researchers. In many ways, they wear the researcher’s hat while bringing their own creative lens.
At the beginning, there was understandable skepticism. Today, that skepticism has turned into enthusiasm. Researchers are actively seeking to work with our artists, and international institutions have expressed interest in collaborating with projects that emerged from the programme. That cultural shift is something I deeply value.
The projects themselves have gone beyond expectations. Sam Nester transformed genomic data into sound (read on!) and conducted groundbreaking work on coral reef acoustics, even repurposing ocean plastic into playable records. Henry Tan collaborated with scientists on measuring electrical waves from living tissues, work that has led to a pending patent. These outcomes show that the programme produces not only compelling artistic work, but also meaningful scientific and technological contributions.
Looking ahead, I hope the AIR programme continues to grow both internationally and locally. I hope the programme keeps pushing boundaries. The most meaningful results often come from unexpected encounters; when an artist asks a question a scientist has never considered, or when research opens a new direction for creative work. I would like to see more of those moments.
Meet Sam Nester, former artist-in-residence at NYUAD’s genomics centre
1. Can you briefly describe your background as an artist?
I’m an Australian trumpet player, composer, and sound artist based in New York. My work investigates the entangled relationships between humans and the natural world, and I often use environmental data, field recordings, and generative systems to create immersive sound and light installations and musical compositions. For years now, I have worked with scientists and policymakers in Europe, the USA, and now the UAE on projects that sit at the intersection of art, science, and policy. Alongside my artistic practice, I teach at The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music.
2. What initially drew you to the CGSB artist-in-residence programme? Was there a specific piece of research or a scientific question at NYUAD that sparked your interest before you applied?
I was drawn to the CGSB because of the opportunity to be embedded inside a research culture that’s asking big questions about environmental change – adaptation, sustainability, and how living systems respond to pressure. I didn’t come in wanting to “decorate” science; I wanted to collaborate on new ways of sensing and communicating what research can’t always say in words or figures. I was especially interested in questions about how a shifting environment shows up in behavior, sound, time-series data - and, deeper down, in biological mechanisms that determine survival. The residency offered a structure where those questions could be explored alongside scientists, rather than at a distance.
3. Given your background, how did you find the transition into a genomics laboratory environment? Did you find the language of science difficult to navigate initially?
Yes and no. Yes - because walking into a genomics lab as a musician/sound artist is certainly a foreign experience. The first few weeks were a lot. Genomics has its own language, shorthand, and everyone was fluent in something I was not. There was certainly a lot to learn in a short time. But no - because the underlying culture wasn’t foreign. It’s still careful observation, repetition, testing, documenting, revising. That part felt like any serious creative practice, just with different tools and a much stricter relationship to evidence. I don’t think the goal of an artist-in-residence in a foreign discipline is to master that foreign discipline, I think it is to collaborate with those that have already done so. In this way, it is nice to be learning as you go and getting to ask really wild questions and be playful about the science and have scientists similarly playful about the artistic side. We both have craft and ask big questions. Together, we hopefully come up with something meaningful with potential contributions to both art and science.
4. What did your day-to-day typically look like during the residency?
A lot of listening - literal and social. Some days were meetings, reading, sitting in on discussions. Other days were more solitary: working on ideas, mapping out how a process could become an artwork without flattening the science. There were fieldwork days with marine biologists diving in the Arabian Gulf and days working with bioinformaticians designing a genome data to MIDI encoder. There were days in the recording studios on campus and a lot of coffee conversations at Mysk, the café on campus. It was a really enriching, dynamic year where no two days were the same.
5. The programme philosophy talks about "transcending traditional boundaries". Can you give an example of a moment during your residency where a scientist’s input significantly changed the direction of your artwork?
Honestly, the real answer is that it wasn’t one moment - it was the entire experience of the residency. Because the work was genuinely collaborative, every meaningful interaction with a scientist changed the work I was doing. Sometimes that change was obvious, like a new direction or a new constraint with the genome-music encoder, for example. Sometimes it was much more subtle, when passing conversations changed the way I was approaching something, like the conversations I had with Rebekka Pentti and Oliver Farrell, two incredible marine scientists I accompanied on field work in the Gulf, recording the sound of the marine environment. The point is: I wasn’t arriving with a finished artwork and asking science to “support” it. The artwork was formed inside the conversations.
6. Conversely, do you think your artistic approach has influenced how the scientists view their own data or methodologies, or how the public views it?
One thing art does well is make people spend time with something they might normally skim over. Scientists seem to live inside their data, but they don’t always sit with it sensorially. When you sonify a pattern, or build an immersive listening situation, you can make the familiar strange again - sometimes that can reveal structure, sometimes it reveals how we crave narrative in places it isn’t always immediately evident. For public audiences, sound is useful because it slips past the intellect’s defenses. Audiences often surrender to an artistic experience. Once someone has listened to, or spent time with, an art object that utilises science for its creation, they’re a little less able to pretend the science/issue/question being asked is “not their problem.” Or at least they feel more connected to science and research, and connection is the first step in wanting to protect or advocate for something.
7. How do you balance scientific accuracy with artistic licence - is there a tension there?
There’s always tension, but it’s the good kind - the kind that enables constraints. If something is direct from data, I try to be careful about what it represents and map it in a way that allows aesthetic artistic choices, but hopefully still follows accurate systems of understanding. I’m interested in making work that’s emotionally true and intellectually responsible - where wonder comes from science and is transposed into new artistic output – new kinds of wonder.
8. What has been your favourite art project during your residency, and why?
During my time at the CGSB I focused on two projects. I worked with biologist Stéphane Boissinot (Professor of Biology, GNP NYU, and Director of NYUAD CGSB), and bioinformatician Giuseppe-Antonio Saldi (Data Computational Scientist) to create a sonification encoder called Transposon, that turns transposable elements in genomic data into a unique piece of music with accompanying visualisation. The encoder reads the genomic data and assigns a unique MIDI sequence based on transposable elements found within the genome. Each musical element or visual that you see correlates to the DNA elements in the genomic data that is being read by the encoder. The encoder enables the viewer to both see and hear music tailored to each unique genome it is presented with. It provides us with another way to explore, store, and understand the information found in genomes.
I also had the pleasure of working with the lab of marine biologist John Burt (Associate Professor of Biology, NYUAD) to attempt the first interdisciplinary soundscape study of reefs in the Arabian Gulf. We deployed hydrophones at data stations in the Arabian Gulf, recording diurnal patterns, listening to the underwater world during a time of climate crisis. The goal was to produce both scientific and artistic outcomes. On the artistic side, I worked with scientists and engineers at the university to find ways of making discs out of upcycled plastic waste to play the soundscapes of these reefs on turntables. The goal for this artistic project was to capture the natural environment as it exists now and make a commentary on our contribution to it – the sound of the ocean through the plastic that is choking it.
Both projects grew additional lives beyond the residency. Transposon, the project turning genomes into sound and visuals, went on to become a large LED screen and surround sound installation for XPANSE in 2024. That same year, I was connected with a collective of artists and designers at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar), who are exploring ways of developing sustainable, biodegradable alternatives to vinyl records.
The project with John Burt became an original musical composition incorporating the reef sounds collected from the Gulf called Field Notes. That track was released on 'Ephemeral Sounds of the Gulf,' a collection of works curated by Erika Tsuchiya from VCUarts Qatar and pressed on eco-vinyl by Greenyl, an innovative vinyl record company producing PVC-free records.
An extract from the composition Field Notes, via Instagram.
9. Now that you have spent time embedded in a research centre, has your view on the role of the artist in society changed?
I believe science helps us understand the world, but understanding alone rarely changes society. Art is the missing circuitry between knowledge and action: it has the capacity to turn abstraction into experience or data into something we can sense. Artists have the ability to bring what often feels like distant crises into close personal encounters. Where policy and research often speak in data, artists work in the register where people typically make decisions - emotion, empathy, wonder, grief, feelings of responsibility. I believe artists are uniquely positioned to create conditions for reconnection: to self, to each other, and to the natural world. Art can disrupt routine, widen perception, and help restore a sense of ecological intimacy we’ve largely forgotten. Ultimately, artists can reach across disciplines and across audiences, helping move the hearts and minds that shape public life.
10. What advice would you give to other artists considering a residency in a scientific field?
DO it. If you are excited about the opportunity to collaborate with scientists, please do. I think that one of the best things we can do is spend time with specialists in other disciplines. Inspiration can be found anywhere, why not stretch your knowledge and experience and potential avenues for inspiration by working alongside scientists to create new work.
Even if you don’t end up collaborating, the conversations that take place could change the way you think about your work or lead you to new questions or ideas. I believe complex problems are solved by people with unique skills, views, and experiences coming together and celebrating these differences as they ask big questions. Interdisciplinary collaboration is the key to many great outcomes for ourselves and society.
To explore the stories and art from other artists-in-residence from the AI programme, visit: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/de3f856a4ace45f2b99cb8234e241031
Story map created by Carmen Koessler, a Canadian science communicator and community engagement strategist who specialises in translating complex research into compelling digital media. Through her consultancy, CK Communication Services, she works with scientists, governments, and non-profits worldwide to craft stories that inspire action.
For more from Sam, use the links below
Project Cistern (an example of Sam’s works as a composer, performer, and installation artist): https://youtu.be/x9NqK1JEuDo?si=nOxosZQpwV0AXepH
Sam’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1snester/
