Flow: turning river science into music
SciArt delivery #21 | Ricardo Fumagalli on how scientists, musicians and a curator created an innovative SciArt project
Welcome to The SciArt Curator, your bi-weekly window into the vibrant intersection of science, art, and society.
Part treasure hunt, part investigation, it also grows with your discoveries. If you’ve created or come across a project, call, or event that bridges science and art, drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you and join forces to spread the word.
Curator’s thread
We wanted to test our hypothesis: can we autonomously create a music-and-science project that demonstrates that the relationship between art and research can be equal in terms of exchange? - Riccardo Fumagalli, Curator & Flowcast host.
Flow is a multidisciplinary initiative that combines science, music, and satellite imagery to explore the Lech River through artistic interpretation. Curated by Riccardo Fumagalli, the project brings together researchers in fluvial geomorphology and 50 musicians from around the world, inviting them to transform scientific data into original musical compositions.
Until now, many of the projects featured in this newsletter have been rooted in the visual arts. Flow is the first to place music at the centre of the collaboration, expanding my own understanding of what SciArt can look like beyond exhibitions and installations.
As I learned more about Flow, another aspect stood out: it offers a different model for how SciArt collaborations can begin. Previous issues showed how artists approached scientists, or scientists brought art into their research. In Flow, the collaboration was made possible by someone working between those worlds.
Several practitioners featured in this newsletter have highlighted how essential the role of facilitators is. Yet they often remain invisible or are simply absent from collaborations. By bringing together an international community of researchers and musicians, designing the creative process, coordinating dozens of collaborators across time zones, and extending the project through the Flowcast podcast, Riccardo demonstrates the vital role of the SciArt curators, producers, and facilitators.
Flow shows that meaningful and successful SciArt collaborations depend on artists, scientists, and also on people who can bridge disciplines, build communities, and create spaces where different forms of knowledge can meet.
In this interview, Riccardo shares how Flow came to life, how scientific data became music, and their aims to continue developing projects connecting art, science, and policymaking.
As always, you’ll also find a curated selection of upcoming SciArt events at the end of this article.
Enjoying this content? Subscribe for free to get new posts straight to your inbox and support the project.
Exploring the river Lech through science, sound, and imagery: into Flow with Riccardo Fumagalli and Dr. Martina Cecchetto
Flow brings together geomorphologists, musicians, satellite imagery, field recordings, and storytelling to explore the Lech River, from its source in the Austrian Alps to its confluence with the Danube.
Rather than asking artists to illustrate research, the project invited fifty musicians from around the world to interpret scientific material and create original compositions inspired by different stretches of the river. Below, Riccardo and Martina tell us more about the project.
Could you briefly introduce yourself and the team behind Flow? What disciplines, skills, or backgrounds came together to make this project possible?
Riccardo: We are a diverse team from three countries. The scientific part was developed by Dr Martina Cecchetto (Geosciences Dept., University of Padova, now Leibniz IGB-Berlin) and Dr Florian Betz from the Earth Observation Research Cluster at the University of Würzburg. They both do research in fluvial geomorphology exploiting satellite imagery. I managed the project and curated its artistic side, leveraging my experience in project management, cultural events, and music. The project kick-off was supported by Stuart Fowkes of Cities and Memory (UK), who shared the project with his network of artists.
How did Flow begin? Was there a specific scientific question, dataset, or artistic curiosity that sparked the project?
Riccardo: The idea started with Martina. She works with satellite images and saw the artistic potential of satellite-based images of the fluvial landscape and, at the same time, the limitations of having a very detached view of rivers. She wanted to make satellite imagery and rivers come closer and thought of involving artists to explore this possibility. It then developed into a more ethical dilemma (what is a river, how far can we go in giving it back its freedom?) as Florian picked up the Lech River.
Flow translates river data into sound and imagery. How do you move from scientific measurements to sensory, artistic forms? What does this translation process look like in practice?
Riccardo: We wanted to give the artists full creative freedom on this. We gave them the context they needed to understand the characteristics and the challenges of the segment of the river they were assigned. That includes time-lapse videos made with satellite images, field recordings, photos, geomorphological and historical descriptions. We left them to ponder the ethical questions that are intrinsically tied to any project that interferes with nature, even when the interference comes from the best of intentions.
What were the biggest challenges (and surprises!) in the collaboration between scientists and artists?
Riccardo: The main challenge was definitely the organisational one. Who would have thought that dealing with 50 artists across 18 time zones could have been so intense? The main surprise was to find such support and enthusiasm from the artists’ community. Months after the compositions have been delivered, we’re still in touch with most of them, which is incredibly motivating to do more and better.
What story about the river emerges through Flow that would be difficult to communicate through scientific papers or graphs alone?
Martina: As geomorphologists, we tend to forget that the river is a corridor for people, myths, and beliefs. Some artists were able to discover and reveal such a connection that links distant parts of the world, but all have in common the flowing water of rivers. We had one episode tracking the legend of the Bavarian Swan Knight to Turkey, Mesopotamia, and all the way to China. Three artists talked about mythological water spirits, naiadic entities that, despite having different names across the Alpine arc (Anguane in Veneto, Nixe in Austria), share the same characteristics. Others talked about legendary creatures and rivers as more-than-human entities, bridging across ancient Chinese or Celtic philosophy and modern sensitivity. You can literally follow the movement of people in history by observing the traces they left in the form of stories.
Another important aspect was the concept of river morphological and ecological connectivity. Some artists shared fragments of their field recording and composition, so that other artists could listen, feel inspired, and incorporate those sounds into their work. This interaction was particularly intense between neighbouring segments of the river, or towards the end of it, where some artists interpreted the sound fragments as echoes from different points in space and time, being dragged with the current. They fully embraced the spatial and temporal continuum of river flowing that no graph could do alone.
Flow was presented recently at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly (EGU). What was the audience like, and how did it respond to the project?
Martina: The audience was mainly scientists working in Geosciences disciplines, so we weren’t expecting many people to attend an Art and Science session in the very busy schedule of the largest Geosciences conference in Europe. The truth? The room was packed to the point that people had to sit on the floor or stand outside the door. This surely shows that the scientific community is interested in connecting science and art.
How do you see Flow fitting into the broader art–science landscape?
Riccardo: Flow started as an experiment; we wanted to test our hypothesis: can we autonomously create a music and science project that demonstrates that the relationship between art and research can be equal in terms of exchange? The result was very successful, and we’d like to replicate the experience on other projects, with different formats, but always with a strong focus on connecting art, science, and policymaking.
What is next for Flow? And for your own journey at the intersection of science and the arts?
Riccardo: A project that involves a diverse community of 50 artists surely has enormous potential. We are currently halfway through publishing the podcast interviews, and the themes emerging from the artists’ conversations are richer than we anticipated: connecting ecology, mythology, memory, and policy in ways that feel genuinely new. We plan to bring these themes together into a public-facing document that could help scientists and policymakers communicate river restoration projects to wider audiences.
As for what comes next, we would like to replicate the Flow methodology on other rivers and ecosystems, always with the same principle at its core: art and science as equal partners in research, not decoration for it. The Lech was our first experiment; we hope it will be the first of many more.
If you're curious to hear how scientific data became music, then don’t miss Flowcast, the podcast about Flow hosted by Riccardo. Each episode features one artist and contains a short interview and their interpretation of a section of the Lech River.
Read more on Substack or listen to Flowcast on Podcast platforms. Below, one of the episodes Riccardo highly recommends:
Upcoming SciArt events and calls
— From Distraction to Action: A Creative Climate Festival. 8-10 July 2026 | Online. Open studios, participatory workshops, and public dialogues with researchers, educators, and artists. Hosted by Science Gallery Melbourne & studio Five, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne.
— ART-SCI+ NODES. 16 July | Berlin. A series of gatherings for artists, scientists, researchers, technologists, and curious minds. Hosted by XD Network & THE ART+SCIENCE SALON in collaboration with EDGE Neuroscience & Art, A Hidden Variable, and Cyberdelic Society Berlin.
— SPARK residency. Southern Sweden. Open to architects, professional artists, and others working in spatial exploration and research. Selected residents receive a stipend of 15,000 SEK. Travel and production costs covered up to 10,000 SEK. Deadline to apply: 19 July
— Master Immersive Arts and Digital Narratives. This programme at Mozarteum University explores the development of new artistic and narrative forms in the digital age: immersive installations, interactive formats, audiovisual and performative works, transmedia projects, and critical artistic research on technology, society, AI, and the future. Deadline to apply: 27 July.
— Support a SciArt exhibition inspired by Antarctica. Postcards from Antarctica is a collaborative artwork created by 124 women and non-binary STEMM leaders during the final Homeward Bound voyage to Antarctica. This crowdfunding campaign is raising funds to transform them into a touring exhibition.
Let’s keep on co-creating this newsletter together
Have you created, seen, or heard of a project that bridges science and art? Send it my way! I’d love to feature it and help spread the word.
Are you a writer? Let’s explore how your work might fit in.
If this post resonated with you, please consider forwarding it to a friend. Thank you for reading, commenting, suggesting, and ultimately for being part of this growing SciArt community 💛
See you in one week! (Yes, there will be a special issue next week)
 | A guest post by
|
Philip Glass' Aguas de Amazonia. There are at least three recordings.
Probably completely different but since there's at least a superficial connection and I've been listening a lot recently: https://open.spotify.com/album/3AeEX9wxHqQPJ4tt1AHEKs?si=DyleiSaAQXyD_s2mMos2Tw