Hannah Park’s research investigates the effect of stress on the development of tectal circuits in Xenopus tadpoles, which can be assessed through schooling behavior. Part of her research involves comparing how well stressed tadpoles school compared to regular tadpoles. “Stress on Schooling” invites the viewer to step into Hannah’s shoes by presenting an illuminated, sculptural visualization of data from her research. Eleven laser cut and painted pieces of acrylic are stacked in sequential order, each layer corresponds to an image taken during one experiment trial on a stressed group of tadpoles from 6/30/21.

“When in the lab, my experiment setup involves placing tadpoles in a dish on a platform that vibrates every three minutes. The tadpoles scatter, and if they are exhibiting normal behavior, they eventually come back together and school. An image of the tadpoles is captured a minute and a half after the vibration, giving a total of eleven images per trial.

We use these eleven images from each experimental group to assess how well the tadpoles are schooling. From the images we can obtain measurements of the position and directionality of each tadpole, from which we can generate inter-tadpole distances and angles between neighboring tadpoles. A high frequency of small angles and short distances generally suggests that tadpoles are schooling. Comparing the distribution of these angles and distances across treatment groups allows us to quantitatively assess which groups are schooling better than others.”

- Hannah Park

“My biggest takeaway from this experience is learning how artistic interventions can impact future scientific study. Hannah came into this project saying that we couldn’t see significant differences in the tadpoles’ behavior with the naked eye. By using images from her experiments, I think we were able to create a model that conveys the findings in a visually aggregate way, without relying so much on the data. Hopefully, this will inspire new experiments and forms of visualization that can help to better understand this field of research.”

- Jordan Metz