Visualizing Cancer: A Transdisciplinary Art and Biology Collaborative

Abstract

It would be safe to say that nearly every student enrolled in college knows someone who has been impacted by cancer. After all, cancer killed nearly 8.2 million people worldwide in 2012 (World Cancer Report, 2014). Using this fact as the impetus for change we decided to make cancer the focus of a “transdisciplinary” (Marshall, 2014) collaborative effort to simulate a reciprocal-learning experience between undergraduate biology and visual art students attending a university in Southeastern Michigan. The goal of the 2015 project was to create an active and authentic collaboration utilizing the university visual art and biology curricula. By engaging and connecting scientific and artistic critical thinking processes, we wanted to know: Could we design a class structure that would enable collaborative teams of art and biology students to create a visual model that represents a hallmark of cancer designed so that the model could also stand alone on artistic merit? In other words, could cancer visualization be transformed into works worthy of gallery display while maintaining scientific accuracy? In this paper we discuss the planning, implementation, results, and impact this work has had upon the way we now envision transdisciplinary collaboration.