New Cohort of Triangle Program Awardees Will Explore Symmetry Through Art

The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce five new trios of researchers, artists and arts organizations for its Triangle Program. The awardees will develop new artworks in performance, sound, sculpture, participatory and multisensory formats, all inspired by the expansive theme of “symmetry.” This year’s program is part of the foundation’s Infinite Sums initiative, which celebrates math’s beauty and place in culture.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration takes time, structure, and institutional support. The Science, Society & Culture division of the Simons Foundation has made a sustained commitment to creating spaces where artists and scientists can work together. This cohort of Triangle awardees was selected from 15 trios who previously participated in the foundation’s Open Interval program, which supports unbound collaboration between an artist, a researcher and an arts organization. Trios were awarded time and resources to explore, find a shared creative language and engage in experimental practice together.

At the conclusion of Open Interval, trios were invited to submit proposals to bring an artwork to life. After an internal and committee review, five awardees were selected who represent a dynamic range of artistic and scientific disciplines from across the United States.

Projects were selected for how they interpret symmetry, for formats that invite collective audience experiences, and for their intentional use of Open Interval as a collaborative platform. The trios will bring their works to life over the next two years, driving deep, sustained conversations at the intersection of art, science and public engagement.

The next call for Open Interval, a prerequisite for the Triangle Program, will take place in Fall 2026, with the program’s theme announced in late spring. Sign up to receive updates.

Read more about the five new Triangle Program awardee projects below.

Marcos Lutyens
Multidisciplinary Artist

Rana X Adhikari
Professor of Experimental Physics, Caltech

Robert Takahashi Novak
Executive and Artistic Director, Fulcrum Arts

GHoST: Gravitational Hamiltonian or Sympathetic Teleportation is a sculptural device that communicates using quantum-entangled particles riding on electromagnetic and gravitational waves. The device will be presented in a series of performances in which a group of costumed participants — carrying the object and wearing sensors — achieve synchronized and harmonious thoughts. These thoughts are the data to be entangled and projected through photons and gravitons into space. Performances in various locations will invite audiences to participate in cohesive group-actions of unity, harmony and wonderment. The project draws on entanglement as a fundamental expression of symmetry and a building block of reality itself, allowing science and consciousness to meet. Performances will be followed by a three-month exhibition at Fulcrum Arts.

 
Jiabao Li
Artist; Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin

Fumiko Futamura
Professor and John H. Duncan Chair of Mathematics, Southwestern University

Ron Berry
Founder and Co-Artistic Director, Fusebox

Math Playground is an outdoor installation and accompanying exhibition that turns abstract mathematical ideas into playful, embodied, large-scale sculptures. Visitors can climb, slide, swing and spin on custom sculptures whose forms embody complex math concepts. A Klein bottle slide creates a continuous looping path. A shape called a Boy’s surface becomes a twisting climbing net that flips orientation. The Lissajous swing set draws patterns in the sand through harmonic motion. A merry-go-round zoetrope animates models through rotation and repetition. Math Playground makes math fun and intuitive, inviting people to experience symmetry physically, in their bodies, by moving through shapes usually understood only in theory.

 
Ain Gordon
Writer, Director and Actor

Amy Secunda
Research Fellow, Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute

Kyle Maude
Producing Director, New York Live Arts

Condolence is a new multidisciplinary theater work created by American playwright, Ain Gordon with astrophysicist Amy Secunda that intertwines personal loss with the life cycles of stars. Through text, movement, live music and astrophysical imagery, this piece explores the symmetry between human and galactic birth, companionship, death and afterlife. Drawing on the removal of mourning rituals in American culture and the cosmic metaphors many people use to understand loss, Condolence invites audiences into a collective, contemplative space. This work aims to reveal the unexpected poetry and relationship between scientific thinking and grief as part of a vast, shared continuum of transformation.

 
Meech Boakye
Artist and Researcher

Kyle Ormsby
Chair of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Reed College

Kristan Kennedy
Artistic Director and Curator of Visual Art, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art

Untitled is a participatory installation by artist Meech Boakye in collaboration with mathematician Kyle Ormsby that translates structures from topology and combinatorics into embodied experience. The exhibition centers on a monumental hanging mobile informed by the associahedron, a geometric model of associativity composed of translucent, light-responsive elements that shift with movement, performance and changing illumination. Throughout the space, audiences engage in collaborative, stamp-based drawing systems derived from braid diagrams and meander combinatorics, assembling complex forms through repeated local actions. Symmetry functions throughout the project as both a mathematical principle and a social proposition. Community engagement includes outdoor walking tours framing the city as a drawing system, light and movement performances activating the mobile, food-based gatherings and workshops.

 
Marina Zurkow
Multimedia Artist

Becca Franks
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, WATR-lab director and Wild Animal Welfare Program co-director, New York University

Galen Joseph-Hunter
Executive Director Emeritus, Wave Farm

Lateral Lines is an algorithmic radio work that enters the sensory world of carp fish through their lateral line, the sensory organ through which they experience vibration, current and pressure and functions as a sense akin to both human hearing and proprioception. How can we honor and appreciate their perceptual capacities without reducing them to metaphor or generic fish behavior? Built from a database of modular text and sound, each broadcast recombines into a new, tidal iteration. The work treats carp as sensing subjects living within the planet’s thin freshwater film and uses generative audio to explore symmetry, vulnerability and interspecies attention. Lateral Lines will air through Wave Farm’s WGXC, online platforms and the Radia art-radio network.

With gratitude to our advisory committee:

Vic Brooks, Independent Curator
Vivian Chui, Director of Exhibitions & Special Projects, Pioneer Works
Max Isi, Associate Research Scientist, Gravitational Wave Astronomy, CCA, Flatiron Institute
Zach Kaplan, Public Programs, Getty Foundation
Phillip Edward Spradley, Deputy Director & Chief Advancement Officer, Corita Art Center
Lumi Tan, Independent Curator