© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

For the Art + Science Competition entitled States of Change, we asked to see photography that examines art and science through transition, transformation, and instability. Change may be gradual or abrupt, visible or difficult to perceive, ranging from emotional shifts to environmental conditions. We invited artists to consider how photography can reveal states of change—where boundaries are not fixed and conditions are continually shifting.

We approached the jurying of the Lenscratch Art + Science Award with several key concepts in mind. Chiefly, we favored artists who expressed how applied science and scientific inquiry (or the lack thereof) can have a tremendous impact on people broadly. Highlighting artists whose practice illustrated an understanding of photography that is intrinsically bound to the scientific method also felt like a key factor to consider. From the use and development of gum arabic to charge-coupled devices, photography is nothing if not science perfectly blended with fine art, but not all photographers navigate their creative lives with this in mind. And so we sought entries that wrestled with these ideas while exuding visual excellence in alignment with our personal tastes.

Collaborative artists Mary Magsamen and Stephan Hillerbrand have been awarded First Place in the 2026 Art + Science Competition for their series Electrically. Drawing from their family photographic archive, the artists crop away emotionally charged narratives, leaving fragments of everyday life—an interior or exterior portion of their home, a cloud in the sky. Electricity is then introduced directly to the photographic surface, burning and scarring the paper with dark, branching patterns reminiscent of inverted lightning. The process creates physical traces of an invisible force we typically perceive only through its effects.

Electrically confronts familiarity with danger, erasure with renewal, and tangible, familiar life as we know it with forces we experience but can not see. By introducing electrical current, these ordinary photographs are transformed into one-of-a-kind objects, where what has been removed exists alongside what is left to chance. The work reflects the unpredictability of life and how we navigate forces beyond our control.

“Curtains” from the series Electrically, archival inkjet prints with fractal burning, photographic triptych, 44” × 70”, 2022. A photographic triptych printed with archival pigment inks on paper, then soaked in a saline solution that allows electrical currents to travel across the surface. As the currents move toward one another, they create unpredictable branching patterns, permanently burning and scarring the photographic images. © Hillerbrand+Magsamen

A bronze medallion, embedded in the brick next to the front door of our 1960s house, is emblazoned with the charge to “Live Better Electrically.” The medallion was part of one of the most successful postwar mass marketing home advertising campaigns in US history by General Electric and Westinghouse.

We have spent more than twenty years living in this house, raising a family and accumulating thousands of photographs of our life together. For this project, we returned to this archive looking for photographs that carried an overwhelmingly strong emotional presence or energy. We then cropped away the event itself, leaving behind seemingly ordinary fragments: a cloud, the drapes in our bedroom, kitchen cabinet doors, grass, a hand. What remains are peripheral details from photographs of celebrations, losses, and everyday family life. Removed from their original narratives, these fragments become charged containers for memories that are no longer completely visible.

After a tumultuous couple of years, we want to live better too, and reconnect. Through a dynamic and dangerous process of destruction and renewal, we print these photographs at large scales and translate electricity into a system of abstract visual language. We draw directly with electricity in an unpredictable method that creates one of a kind works as the electrical current burns, scars, and fuses with the photographic image.

By using Lichtenberg burning, also known as fractal burning, to discharge electricity through our artwork, we give a nod to the Surrealists’ process of “automatic drawing.” Fractal burning takes its name from German experimental physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 to 1799, who also authored The Waste Books. The performative burning technique requires a unique collaboration between us and two points of electricity, resulting in beautiful fractals of charred deposits created by electrical currents.

This work is about memories, home, histories, and a fusing of science and art.

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

Video documenting the artists’ experimental process of using high voltage electricity to permanently burn branching patterns into archival inkjet prints.

Hillerbrand+Magsamen are a collaborative artist team whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses photography, video, performance, sculpture, and installation. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at FotoFest, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Everson Museum, Griffin Museum of Photography, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Fusebox Festival, The Momentary, and Chicago Underground Film Festival. They have participated in artist residencies, including the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, and the Robert Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, Florida. Their work has received support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Sustainable Arts Foundation, Austin Film Society, and Houston Endowment.

Instagram: @hillerbrand_magsamen

Electrically, Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Live Better Electrically Medallion Campaign Advertisement, c. 1950s Promotional advertisement for the Live Better Electrically Medallion Home program, presenting the fully electrified house as a model for modern American domestic life, convenience, progress, and family prosperity.

Medallion, Live Better Electrically Photograph of an original Medallion emblem from the Live Better Electrically campaign, a symbol used to identify homes designed around the promise of a fully electrified American domestic life.

Panels From the series Live Better Electrically, archival inkjet prints with fractal burning, four panel photographic grid, 40” × 40”, 2022. Four identical photographs of the wood paneling in the artists’ living room, each subjected to a different fractal burning process. Electrical currents create unpredictable branching patterns across the photographic surfaces, transforming the familiar domestic interior into four distinct images. © Hillerbrand+Magsamen

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

“Moments” from the series Live Better Electrically, archival inkjet prints with fractal burning, 20” × 20”, 2022. Each image is a cropped fragment of a family photograph rediscovered through the memories stored on the artists’ phones. These fleeting moments, easily forgotten or lost among thousands of digital images, are printed and subjected to fractal burning. Electrical currents permanently scar the photographic surfaces, transforming ordinary family memories into fragile records of time, chance, and loss.

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

© Hillerbrand+Magsamen

About the Jurors:

Linda Alterwitz is an independent interdisciplinary artist with a focus on photography. For over two decades, her work has combined art and science exploring the unseen systems that shape our world and the relationships between humanity, technology, and the natural environment to encourage dialogue around choice, trust, and collective experience. Using a high-resolution thermal camera and other digital and analogue techniques, she visualizes phenomena beyond ordinary perception.

She has exhibited widely in traditional exhibition and site-specific installations at institutions including FORMAT25, Derby, UK; Museum of Art & History, Lancaster, CA – part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide Getty Initiative; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, among others.

Alterwitz’s work is held in permanent collections including the Institute for Art + Environment, Reno, NV;  Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA; Hilliard Museum of Art, Lafayette, LA; Nelson Atkins Special Collections Library, Kansas City, MO; Santa Barbara Museum of Art Fearing Library, Santa Barbara, CA; Rochester Institute of Technology, Wallace Library, Rochester, NY, among others.

Recent awards include Nevada Arts Council Fellowship for Visual Arts 2025 and 2014, Individual Artist Grant from Healthy Communities Coalition 2023, NV, Individual Artist Grant 2020, Montana Arts Council, among others.

Instagram: @lindaalterwitz

Ben Hickey is the Executive Director for the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts in Buffalo, New York. Previously he was curator of exhibitions and Emily Cyr Bridges Endowed Professor of Art at the Hilliard Art Museum on the campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. With over one hundred exhibition credits, artists he has exhibited include Brian Kelly of the Marais Press, Letitia Huckaby, L. Kasimu Harris, Robert C. Tannen, Richard Landry, Pat Phillips, Sonya Clark, Hasan Elahi, Dawoud Bey, and James Surls.

Hickey’s most recent writing can be found in Beili Liu: Mend, a monograph published by the Art League Houston in celebration of Liu’s 2024 Texas Artist of the Year Award. Other essayists include Bridget Bray, Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Eddie Chambers, Katie Pfohl, and Kay Whitney.

In 2023 Hickey received a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Travel Grant to co-present research related to Marais Press on-campus collaborations at the 51st Annual Art Libraries Society of North America in Mexico City. Earlier in his career, he presented Reshaping Our Programming: The Artist in Residence Program at the New York Historical Society in conjunction with an Association of Art Museum Curators annual conference. He has also served as a panelist or consultant for Villa Albertine, the Joan Mitchell Center, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, PhotoNOLA, and the San Antonio Art League.

Earlier in his career, Hickey held positions at the Masur Museum of Art, California Museum of Photography, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and the Arts Council of Buffalo & Erie County. He is an active member of the Association of Art Museum Curators, having served as a trustee from 2015 to 2020. He earned his master’s in art history from the University of California Riverside and his bachelor’s in history from Canisius University.

Instagram: @_normal_ben_