Leonardo@Djerassi 2024: A Decade of Innovation at the Intersection of Art and Science

In 2024, Leonardo@Djerassi celebrated its tenth anniversary, epitomizing the essence of collaborative practices between artists and scientists. This milestone year welcomed a truly special cohort of interdisciplinary pioneers, each pushing the boundaries of creative exploration through diverse media and emerging technologies. From artificial intelligence to music, performance, and new materials, the residency became a melting pot of experimentation. This cohort resulted in two site-specific installations in the Djerassi landscape, while our well-attended Open Studio event showcased the dynamic, often whimsical, joy of experimentation and collaboration between all the residents.A hallmark of this year’s cohort was the collective embrace of pottery and clay sourced from the river basin. Almost all artists explored this material, channeling a return to tactile, elemental artistry while engaging in cutting-edge digital and conceptual practices. This convergence of traditional craftsmanship with contemporary innovation highlighted the residency’s role as a dynamic laboratory for co-creativity and exploration.At the same time, Leonardo’s collaboration with Djerassi hinted at the future trajectory of artist residencies—moving toward an interdisciplinary, research-driven model that fosters deep creative inquiry. The 2024 cohort embodied this vision, leveraging the 583-acre retreat’s redwood forests, creek beds, and panoramic Pacific views as both inspiration and experimental ground. The work produced during this residency underscored the richness of collaborative artistic and scientific research, demonstrating the diversity of approaches within the cohort: Sue Huang unveiled Total Archive, a sci-fi performance and installation that imagines a time capsule from the future.Coral Pereda Serras explored artificial intelligence, embodiment, and the occult through a feminist media archaeology lens.Sanna Fogelvik worked across multiple media, including 3D animation, analog photography, drawing, VR, woodcut, text, and sound, crafting a multidimensional artistic practice.Zander Porter investigated identity and embodiment through gamification and phenomenological inquiry, dissecting the interplay between liveness and digital existence.Dan Paz, an interdisciplinary artist working with lens-based practices, examined the labor and lifecycle of images, questioning the distribution, intellectual property, and historical frameworks encoding visual metadata.Anthony Acciavatti delved into the intersections of landscape, science, and technology, charting new terrain in his research.Ranran Fan, a device-maker and artist, engaged with installation, new media, and performance, crafting immersive and thought-provoking experiences.Robert B. Jackson, a Guggenheim and American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow and one of the world’s most-cited climate scientists, brought a unique perspective on environmental storytelling.Julie Zhu, a composer, artist, and carillonist, revised and augmented some of her earlier film score work, presented the carillon at Stanford University to the cohort, and engaged in conceptual and transdisciplinary collaborations with other artists.This year’s Leonardo@Djerassi residency stood as a testament to the boundless potential of collaboration between artists and scientists. In addition, participants engaged with nonhuman agency, speculative futures, and artistic concerns with sustainability and planetary challenges. The residency reaffirmed that the essence of creativity flourishes in shared, open-ended experimentation—setting a visionary precedent for the future of artist residencies worldwide.