All this week, we are presenting individual chapters from the Cellular Dynamics project, exploring cutting-edge scientific research imagery and video from the School of Biosciences, in dialogue with music.
Filmed during lockdown, the unfolding series brings together image and music in a meditative presentation of both the materials and the methods involved in research, uncovering the hidden beauty in the most mundane of objects in the research laboratory and transforming the process of investigation into an artistic experience, filtered through piano music by Philip Glass, Debussy, John Cage and Tarik O’Regan.
Colyer-Fergusson Hall becomes an immersive platform for highlighting processes operating in both science and music – viral infection and the process of mutation linked to compositional processes in music, together taking the viewer on an odyssey through sub-molecular events at the cellular level.
Chapter One: Abstract
Chapter Two: Materials and Methods:
The series can be viewed as a complete set on our YouTube channel here, including an introduction from Professor Dan Lloyd in the School of Biosciences; read more about the project here.
Representing two aspects of university life coming together, Eloise will be the focus of a feature in next month’s University magazine, and this morning’s photoshoot drew her away from the concert-hall and into the scientific enviroment. We’re looking forward to reading the feature next month.
My thanks to colleagues in the School of Biosciences, Professor Dan Lloyd and Ian Brown, for opening up various venues in the Stacey Building to help with this morning’s shoot.
Drawing on research media from the School of Biosciences, Anna’s piece explores the intangible boundary between science and art in a collaborative piece for choir, strings, percussion, soloists and film-projections by artist Skyla Bridges. Conducted by Deputy Director of Music, Dan Harding, the University Chamber Choir and String Sinfonia, together with Anna herself on violin, pianist Jacob Downs, second-year postrgraduate Leon on percussion, and oboist Dan Lloyd (also Deputy Head of the School of Biosciences) unfurled Anna’s evocative piece against a tapestry of ambient electronic soundtracks and beneath Skyla Bridges’ wonderfully beautiful projections taken from research imagery by Dr Chris Toseland.
Afterwards, performers, audience and guests mingled for a post-concert reception to celebrate the fruition of a project that has been in rehearsal since January. Read the programme from the event yourself 
Bringing together a combination of disciplines, the mixture of live music, projections and performers forms a new, highly creative approach to engaging audiences with cutting-edge scientific research data; the project presents images and film generated by exploratory research at the sub-molecular level. Field recordings from the laboratories at the University are also incorporated into a mesmerising soundscape clothing the live musicians, forming an evocative sonic backdrop to stunning research imagery.
The research, led by Dr Chris Toseland, explores Gene Expression, and is used to combat diseases. Funded by Cancer Research UK, Chris’ research is the inspiration behind the 38-minute work for choir, solo violin, string ensemble, synthesiser and percussion. Chris received a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Wales – Aberystwyth in 2006 then commenced a PhD at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research – London. He received his PhD in 2010 from the University of London. His thesis focused upon the biochemical and biophysical characterisation of DNA helicases. At the end of his PhD, Chris was awarded an EMBO Long Term Fellowship to move to the Ludwig Maximilians Universität – Munich to work on single molecule studies with myosin motors. After 3 years he relocated to the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry with a research focus on genome organisation. Chris joined the School of Biosciences in 2015 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. In the same year he was awarded a highly prestigious MRC Career Development Award to establish his research group.
The premiere of Between Worlds in its entirety, complete with live projections and electronic soundscapes, will be given on Friday 7th June 2019, in the spectacular surrounding of the University’s Colyer-Fergusson concert-hall, conducted by Dan Harding, as part of the Music department’s annual Summer Music Week festival.
For tickets and event details, 
The exhibition, featuring hi-resolution spectroscopy, goes behind the scenes of capturing scientific data in research from the University’s School of Biosciences, and is on display over the next two weeks. As part of the exhibition, there will be a unique, interactive performance of Cellular Dynamics on Saturday 23 June at 7pm, where the performers (Dans Lloyd and Harding) will make the audience a part of the unfolding performance, taking them into the collaborative nature of the project and the combination of live music for piano and live projection.
Pictured above, Rob Turner, one of the centre’s creative directors, hangs one of the images. The exhibition at Beach Creative is open until Saturday 30 June; find out more 
