Project Title: The Layers of Art & Science

Artist: Houda Bakkali

Year: 2026 | Ongoing series; principal pieces completed. Ready-to-exhibit (v1).

Project Summary / Abstract

An interdisciplinary XR work exploring how emerging technologies and creativity can share scientific and medical knowledge in an accessible, participatory, and emotionally engaging way through global audience experiences.

Project Description

“The Layers of Art & Science” is an immersive exploration of my personal journey in medical communication and the emerging visual and digital communication models I have researched and developed since 2009. The work reflects the different layers of knowledge and practice that shape this field, addressing themes such as innovation, methodology, outcomes, continuity, and future challenges. Exploring the potential of new technologies and creativity to facilitate medical and scientific communication and make it accessible through art. 

The work merges learning and creativity to examine how contemporary artistic practices and emerging technologies can expand scientific and medical knowledge beyond traditional formats and spaces. It invites audiences to explore how the intersection of art and technology can help universalize access to medical and scientific information without spatial, temporal, or generational boundaries.

Through a didactic and immersive approach, the work combines accessible educational resources with hybrid exhibitions that allow participants to both learn about these technologies and experience the artworks from physical to immersive and interactive versions.

Ultimately, the work highlights the transformative potential of creativity and emerging technologies in redefining how medical communication can be created, shared, and experienced.

Objective

This piece aims to clarify scientific and medical communication by using accessible technologies to translate and humanize complex knowledge through the personal and professional artist experience. Technological complexity and spectacularity is not presented as an end in itself, but transformed into a vehicle for making science approachable through art and creativity.

Statement

In this work, in continuous evolution, art explains, communicates, and builds. It makes us think and feel. It becomes a space for learning, reflection, and experimentation through a physical artwork, XR/AR content, audiovisual media, and interactive pieces.

In this work, I do not seek anonymity or neutrality. The layers of my practice bring the human figure to the foreground, together with lived experience and professional background, in order to connect with the audience through a symbolic language that is creative in appearance yet clear and accessible in meaning.

Capable of both improvisation and control of the medium, these layers are metaphorical and at the same time real, literal and methodical, with a starting point in the recognizable and a selective character in which interpretation unfolds between science and creativity.

This creativity does not aim to demonstrate, but rather to invite discovery through reason and emotion, because here the purpose of digital art is to explain science and invite us to feel it. 

Artistic Concept and Relevance

In this work, my body, gaze, and experience in the fields of digital art and scientific communication form a territory for exploration and experimentation. A space in which to discover how my practice has adapted to the disruptive impact of contemporary digital art, to examine the layers of power enabled by technology, and to explore how aesthetic impact merges with scientific rigor through an art form that seeks to captivate while informing audiences about issues as vital as health and science.

By combining physical art, motion graphics, virtual spaces, and augmented reality, the work creates an immersive storytelling experience focused on science communication, emphasizing the importance of health communication.

Each layer of the work offers distinct content through which audiences can access and understand the impact of emerging technologies in the medical field, the principles of effective medical communication, and the role of art in informing and raising awareness about global health issues. The work goes beyond presenting theory; it invites audiences to learn how to select and apply these tools, promoting science and health in an open, universal, and cross-disciplinary way.

Medium and Technologies

“The Layers of Art & Science” is a multidisciplinary work created in several languages and adapted for all audiences.

It is designed to be shared without spatial, temporal, or generational limitations.

The work combines:

• A large-format print as the primary visual storytelling medium.
• A motion graphics piece introducing dynamic visual narratives with educational content and information on how technology and creativity impact and improve science and medical communication.
• Interactive augmented reality (AR) layers designed to connect audiences with educational content and information on how technology and creativity impact and improve science and medical communication.

Technical requirements

• Physical exhibition space for the printed artwork (100 × 75 cm).
• Mobile devices and internet access to experience the AR content via a free app or QR.
• Projector or screen to display video content.

Deliverables

• Print (100 × 75 cm).
• Augmented Reality (AR) experience, accessible via QR code or/ free app.
• Video (2-minute loop, subtitled).

Current status

Ongoing series; principal pieces completed. Ready-to-exhibit (v1).

Target audience (cross-disciplinary)

Scientists, artists, general audiences, students, patients, and cultural mediators.

What audiences will learn or experience

The impact of creativity and emerging technologies on science communication and medical dissemination, a field Houda Bakkali has been working in for many years. From this perspective, several layers focus on highly specific medical and scientific topics of current relevance and global social interest.

Audience Experience

The audience engages with the work through multiple entry points that combine observation, interaction and immersion.

• The audience can access the virtual content through QR codes or by scanning the physical artworks with mobile devices to experience immersive augmented reality pieces.
• They can also view versions of the work through an audiovisual format conceived as learning piece.

Each piece and each piece is conceived as a continuation of another, creating a unified framework in which audiences can participate, experiment, and learn.

Research and Methodology

The work is based on interdisciplinary artistic research that integrates:

• Development of both physical and interactive-immersive visual narratives and platforms.
• Audiovisual content and experimental video-learning formats.
• Scientific documentation and conceptual interpretation: interviews, articles, podcasts, infographics, etc.

Impact and Contribution

The work aims to:

• Bring the general public closer, globally, without generational limitations, and without spatial or temporal barriers, both within and outside the traditional art ecosystem, as well as within and beyond digital art spaces, to the real impact, tools, challenges, and opportunities of the intersection between new technologies and creativity, in order to convey scientific and medical knowledge through different platforms and formats.
• Learn about and experiment with this intersection, and explore the potential of digital art and its tools beyond aesthetics and expressive impact.
• Provide access to all the work’s content through open tools and resources that help democratize and universalize knowledge, making it more inclusive and easier to understand and implement for all audiences.