The project includes an artistic creation for Universum on the Campus Umeå where you find four institutions with different orientations belonging to the Umeå University. Universum is intended to function as a hub and an entrance to the university. It should be a place where people gather, regardless of which faculty you belong to, and the place where you go for information and service. Metaphorically, it is a door into the university and a starting point for those who seek to enter the university’s universe of knowledge, learning and research.
The artwork should reflect this but also, regardless of the chosen location, strengthen Universum’s role on the campus area. This means that the art should elucidate Universum’s function as the path into Umeå University and carries many opportunities. Here, ideas can be drawn from science fiction culture’s notions of wormholes (shortcuts between two points in time and space), paths into new dimensions and a path into a place where existence is explained. This does not mean that the new artistic creation should stop at astronomy as a science or at popular cultural descriptions of space and science. It is more important to describe the importance of science and learning for how humanity will tackle the great challenges of the future and for the development of society. The clear interdisciplinary focus of Umeå University and its dynamic and open culture play a major role here. Universum should be seen as the path into a variety of different activities, to broad learning and to a wide spectrum of research disciplines. An artistic creation based on this will strengthen the identity of both Universum and Umeå University.
There are several possible locations for the new artistic creation, both indoors and outdoors, and both building-integrated and free-standing artworks are possible.
