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Can art bridge the increasingly precarious divide between Americans?

If so, Teri Rueb said, it’s not likely to be something you see in a gallery or a museum. It’s one reason her canvas is typically a landscape that invites people using a particular space to slow down and be moved by the sound she introduces into particular places.

“When we talk about other people from other parts of the country, it seems we don’t even start from a place of basic humility—like respect for how you live, or what your culture is, or the history of where you live,” said Rueb, a professor of critical media practices at CU Boulder’s College of Communication, Media, Design and Information.

Rueb is one of six CMDI professors to win Arts and Humanities grants through the university’s Research and Innovation Office. It’s an impressive feat, with CMDI faculty claiming one-quarter of the 20 grants awarded this year; four of the college’s seven academic departments were recognized with funding.

The CMDI faculty recognized with grants are:��

• Steven Frost, assistant professor, media studies. Threads of Resistance: Sampling Labor Histories Through the Lowell Mill Textile Archives.
• Zannah Matson, assistant professor, environmental design. Mine-o-Polis: A Board Game About Mining and Extractive Capital.
• Hillary Rosner, assistant teaching professor, journalism. Studies in Nature: Lichen.
• Shawhin Roudbari, associate professor; Sophie Weston Chien, chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow, environmental design. Dark Papers: Advancing Forms of Design Justice Discourse.
• Rueb, professor of critical media practices. Confluences: Mobile App-Based Site-Specific Soundwalk and Website Archive.

The Dark Papers project is an initiative of , a collective of educators, researchers and thinkers that’s critically re-examining design education and practice to be more inclusive.

“Dark papers are really just short, quick, urgent conversations—almost research seedlings,” Chien said. “It is both a record in time and a way to connect and expand dialogues that are happening.”

There is a strong activist strain to this work, which is designed to bring an antiracist perspective to problems in design and architecture. It aims to do so by bringing more voices to the table, including some who have been excluded or underrepresented in academia.

“Dark papers fit in a larger ecosystem of the college, where we have faculty and students doing interesting work in things like extraction, or disability justice,” Roudbari said. “And a bunch of them also do creative dissemination models to raise awareness of these issues.”

The grant will help Dark Matter U complete some badly needed blocking and tackling, like making its website accessible and paying for transcription services. But the project is already getting attention in the professional world, including that examined topics like design justice and how to transform professional practice.

“We’re not trying to replace the peer-reviewed journal,” Chien said. “Instead, we’re asking, what are the conversations you need for a journal article? And how can those conversations be their own kind of instigator to move these ideas forward?”

, is a site-specific sound experience already installed at Ucross, which hosts artists in residency at its Wyoming location, situated amid working ranches. The region is unique—it’s been shaped by agriculture and resource extraction, but is close to arts communities and, of course, Ucross itself. Visitors to the campus who download a free mobile app can hear voices from the community—local ranchers, past artists and field recordings—as they wander the landscape.

The sense of connection in Confluences isn’t just about the land visitors can see, but its original inhabitants. During the course of the project, she worked with Native historians, ethnobotanists and astronomers to better incorporate the narratives of Indigenous people in her art.

Confluences, which Rueb created alongside interdisciplinary artist Laurids Sonne, soft launched earlier this year, and is scheduled to formally debut in August.

“The project has this opportunity to bring people from very different walks of life together, and maybe make the rural-urban dichotomy become more porous,” Rueb said. “There’s simply not enough unscripted, unaffiliated, nonpartisan public space for debate and dialogue at this moment. If we can change that in the tiniest measure, giving amplification to the diversity of walks of life that make up our country, maybe that would help mend some old wounds, and find new ground for conversations.” ��