In this paper, we argue for the integration of collaborative art practice in transdisciplinary (TD) research to generate ideas and engage researchers and non-academic stakeholders. We draw on the virtual and in-person (hybrid) participation of members of the TD collective Space Ecologies Art and Design (SEADS) during Biomodd, an art installation that addresses global challenges in ecology, humanity, technology, and technological waste. Using survey responses, diaries, and meeting minutes, we reflect on the process, methods and ideation during Biomodd and map them to the concept of the “idea journey” discussed by Jill E. Perry-Smith and Pier Vittorio Mannucci. We find that while in-person ideation was driven by utility, materiality, and emergence, the hybrid mode provided favorable conditions for a feedback loop of expansive, individual experimentation and online sharing.

The interaction between art and science has contributed significantly to humanity throughout the centuries, leading to discoveries that have shaped our current cultural and scientific landscape. It shows diverse human abilities to express and blend technical proficiency, delicacy, emotional power, and conceptual and analytical ideas. Today, we have potent technological aids for making discoveries, such as supercomputers, particle accelerators, and space telescopes, but imagination and creativity remain our most potent attributes in problem-solving. In some cases today, humans cannot perfectly observe things in the microcosm and macrocosm, which leads to the question of how to communicate observations made with advanced technologies more intricately and excitingly. We believe that hand illustrations are still as potent as they were in the times of Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, and Charles Darwin. This study focuses on human perception to reimagine the life and evolution of rotifers on Earth and on board the International Space Station (ISS) using a series of hand drawings. The molecular and genetic scale of a series of space biology experiments with rotifers inspires the drawings. The drawings are preparatory studies for sculptures in the Ēngines of Ēternity project of SEADS. Ēngines of Ēternity uses the biological phenomena of cloning and DNA repair as metaphorical departure points for a series of evolving art installations about humanity's fascination with cultural immortality. The project is a collaboration between the SEADS collective and the scientific laboratory of Karine Van Doninck (ULB/UNamur). In a series of space biology experiments with rotifers, thumb-printed glyphs were added by SEADS as abstract codes, which were first sent to the ISS in 2019. Upon return, these visual codes were evolved using the genetic response of the rotifer's exposure to the space environment. This method subsequently became the starting point for a larger three-dimensional parametric artwork. To confront the project's visual and aesthetic challenges, hand illustrations were fundamental in opening up the possibility of thinking outside the limitations of digital aids such as design software. The hand illustrations encompass an abstract and highly subjective artistic reimagination building on understanding complex biological activities and dynamics within the rotifer's DNA. This work aims to explore a new visual spectrum in a comprehensive and exciting approach to artistic engagements with experimental space science.