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PRAGYA JAIN

As a transdisciplinary researcher, Pragya Jain’s work centres around the convergence of scientific inquiry and artistic exploration. Situated at this intersection, her research takes form in embodied data exploration models and interactive installations, achieved by employing and superimposing scientific insights, cultural knowledges, and artistic methodologies, seeking to explore their potential points of intersection that often remain invisible. One of her collaborations with ESA involves an experiential interactive audio-visual installation, enabling multisensorial exploration with Gaia mission data. In 2024, she was invited to contribute as an artist-in-residence at the Het Nieuwe Instituut, the national museum of architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Where she expanded on her research of astronomy, data sonification, and human-data interaction for gravitational wave data analysis and the paradigm of cultural astronomy. Currently, she is contributing towards the AI and Embodiment project as a research assistant at Leiden University, an initiative exploring the gap between embodied cognition and generative AI. She is also participating in International Space University's Space Studies Program 2025.

Advanced Optics

Advanced Optics’ (ADO) is an experimental physics program in Leiden Institute of Physics, in which the primary emphasis is on phenomena and experiment design. Jain developed a coherent understanding of both existing optics as well as emerging optical techniques, driven by an interest in learning about optics, imaging systems, near- and far-field optics, as well as the optical instrumentation that is implemented in satellites and how the data is derived and processed.

Art, Science & Technology: Transdisciplinary Connections

How can the intersection of disciplines facilitate an approach to knowledge production?

When one leaves the zones of specialised research and taps into exploring the boundaries and oddities of their intersection points, it reveals/acknowledges the underexplored corners of the sphere of knowledge and fosters a space for potential discoveries. Facilitating a platform for warm, critical and engaging discussions and enabling a sense of discovery of one’s own autonomy towards research. This experience enabled me to evolve my own interpretation and relationship with research.
The image shows a lab visit at LUMC, in which we had the opportunity to cultivate our own tissue cultures; the image shows happy cells grown by me.

Weird Optics Workshop at Artificial Creatures 2024

Held the workshop titled Weird Optics in response to an opportunity to contribute to the Artificial Creatures course in 2024. Envisioning this workshop as an experiential and experimental laboratory, students were invited to conduct material research by exploring the affordances of optical instruments such as monochromatic light (lasers), lenses (convex), phosphoresce plate, glass, water, optic fibre cables and ferrofluid, through practice-based learning and studying the phenomena of light. As a case study of recontextualising scientific instruments through a creative and unconventional approach.

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