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“I’d had Josh in my Art from Code class,” says Hirsch. “He has this background in the sciences and STEM, but also is a fantastic artist as well. And he landed on this idea to create a sculpture and have its behavior linked to the actual data coming from different labs on campus.”

To start, Cunningham spent a week tying knots to create his net. Then came the process of suspending the net from strings and connecting them to the motors. Getting the motors to communicate with each other and move together proved difficult.

“The main challenge was essentially having 64 blindfolded dancers and getting them to dance at the same time without music—and the only thing they can do really well is count,” says Cunningham. 

That was only the beginning of the technical problems he had to overcome. He had to contend with electrical issues, motors overheating, timing, and synchronicity problems. During this time, he reached out to artists and museum curators to learn how they construct interactive exhibits. He had a chance to speak with the artist Michael Oppenheimer, known for his kinetic wind sculptures, and the two continued to correspond by email throughout the project. Oppenheimer encouraged Cunningham to remain curious and to create a space for others to indulge their curiosity. “It is not an easy task,” Oppenheimer told him. “It involves countless trial and error. One has to be comfortable with not knowing.”

“I was at a point in my project where I was very much in the not knowing and very uncomfortable with it,” says Cunningham. “I could see it coming together, but I still didn’t know how to do 80% of it. I had to learn to let myself be O.K. with not knowing and with asking for help and that was really empowering.”

The day before the show, Cunningham ran into an issue where one row would stop working, increasing the strain on the surrounding motors. One by one, the motors began to overheat and fail.

“At that point, I realized I would never get all 64 motors to work. One moment, I had a mostly moving sculpture and the next moment, there was no hope of it moving the next day,” Cunningham recalls. 

“Even with the roadblocks that came up, I do consider the project a success. You never learn to solve these kinds of problems and grow unless you encounter them,” says Hirsch. “A project like Josh’s really does embody the spirit and the nature of the liberal arts. It is a truly interdisciplinary project and I think that was evident in the people who came to the opening and the conversations that were happening.”

For Cunningham, seeing people from various disciplines come together at the opening of his installation in Kittredge Gallery was worth the effort and the disappointment. He enjoyed seeing people connect this sculpture to the scientific texts posted around the space and asking detailed questions about the science he was visualizing. 

“Having the science community come was really cool because they got to engage with the art side, and then having the art community be able to see how art can express science was super rewarding.”