The £15,000 DARE Art Prize 2022-23 has opened for applications, challenging artists and scientists to collaborate on new approaches to the creative process.
DARE is a unique collaboration between Opera North and the University of Leeds, the first partnership of its kind in the UK. Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, DARE is a world leader in building collaborations between the arts and higher education.
The prize – part of the pioneering partnership between the University and the Leeds-based opera company – will be awarded to an innovative, ambitious artist with an original proposal for creative works in partnership with leading scientists at the university.
The three previous winners have each interacted with the work of the university and the opera company in unexpected ways, bridging the gulf between two fields often thought mutually exclusive.
Composer and winner of the inaugural prize, Samuel Hertz , worked with low-frequency infrasound; delving into climatology, the environment and the paranormal, with results that included a musical transcription of a melting glacier.
Artist and researcher Anna Ridler (2018-19) spent her tenure investigating the points at which artificial and human intelligence coincide. With staff at the university’S school of psychology, she taught a machine to draw and employed an algorithm to process musical scores.
Poet and artist Redell Olsen overcame pandemic restrictions in 2020-21 with a web of multimedia works produced with each of the institutions – working remotely with scientists at the university’s BioDAR insect radar unit, singers and music staff at Opera North, and with objects at the National Science and Media Museum, she produced poems, collages and a Handel opera restaged for moths, among other unusual works “somewhere between artistic, poetic and scientific research”.
Individuals, artists or collectives in any discipline can apply for the DARE Art Prize by submitting a CV and 500-word proposal or a video (max five minutes) summarising their area of scientific interest and expressing a wish to engage with academics at the university.