Making the invisible perceptible.
The ocean is warming. You can taste it if someone teaches you how. Researchers in medicine, ocean science, and agriculture are working on structurally identical problems without knowing the other exists. A strawberry carries the history of everything traded away to get it to your supermarket, but nobody taught you to read what's missing in the flavor, much less why. Rocks carry millions of years of environmental data in the way they look and feel. Most likely, nobody taught you to read those either. Sperm whales have something like language, but we can't yet hear what it means.
N+A Labs builds artworks, installations, and notation systems that make hidden information perceptible through designed sensory experience.
Current projects include the Problem Genome Project, an interactive data artwork mapping structural kinship across hundreds of unsolved problems in different domains, and the Sensation Alphabet, the first visual notation system for flavor perception. We also work with practitioner fellows on exploratory projects each year as we grow our exhibition practice translating research into experiences people can feel and connect with.
If you study systems people can't see, we can help make that work felt.
The Lab Fellowship recognizes practitioners whose work resonates with the lab's mission of making invisible systems perceptible through design, data, and sensory experience. Each fellow collaborates with us to develop an original installation or experiential piece that brings important ideas to life for public audiences.
John Caserta — Designer; Dean of Architecture + Design, RISD. The future of publishing when AI changes who's reading.
Tracy Chang — Chef and restaurateur, Pagu. Michelin Bib Gourmand; James Beard semifinalist.
Claire Cheney — Spice blender and sourcer, Curio Spice. Direct-trade sourcing across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Chang and Cheney collaborate with the lab on exploring new ways to teach and learn through flavor as a vehicle for environmental, cultural, historical, and scientific literacy.
Zoë Friend — Sculptor; Yale Peabody Museum Mineral Advisory Council.
Richard Herald — Product manager and technology entrepreneur.
Friend and Herald collaborate with the lab on exploring ways the Sensory Alphabet methodology could expand to reading the climate record inside geological specimens.
Geneva Smith — Agricultural anthropologist; Dartmouth Geography. NSF Postdoctoral Fellow; former Harvard STS Research Fellow. Making the politics of agricultural futures perceptible, with visiting scholar Andri Magnason (On Time and Water).
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beth[at]dartmouth.edu
location
Thayer School of Engineering
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH