OUR PHILOSOPHY

The Metamorphosis Project is an open access platform that seeks to explore ideas and experiment at the intersection of art and research.
We build community around conversation. We ask bold questions about humanity, society and our collective futures. We challenge the status quo through critically engaging debate, academic rigor, and authentic interdisciplinary and convergent thinking. We seek to break down barriers and siloes between disciplines and embrace the Renaissance form of humanistic practice and transdisciplinary creativity.
WHAT WE DO
We create moments for people to come together and converse, ideate, create and transform.
We do this through our Podcast, Journal, and Exhibitions.

WHO WE ARE

We are a community of researchers, artists, philosophers and creators.
We are meta thinkers and relentless doers. We crave the unfamiliar, and write our futures. We prefer the path less trodden. We are The Metamorphosis Project Collective.
OUR STORY
The concept for Metamorphosis emerged in 2015 when Founder and Creative Director, Jennifer Halton, was completing her PhD in Musicology on Renaissance Italian festivals – an artistically rich performance medium in which technological and cultural Innovation thrived during the early modern period. She studied the environmental conditions that enabled and accelerated this innovation and found that in all cases, inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration was at the root of major advancements in scientific, cultural, and social innovation. Jennifer queried why and how traditional research institutes had become so siloed, disconnected, and disembodied from this way of thinking and working. The Metamorphosis Project was born to disrupt the monodisciplinary research model and instead, promote cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary conversations and collaboration between academia, Industry and the arts. The Metamorphosis Project went on to become an award-winning research collaboration funded by the Irish Research Council and supported by Dublin City Council and several Irish company sponsors. The inaugural Project commissioned a group of academics and artists to collaborate on new works of installation, object-based and performance art that communicated diverse research across STEM and the Humanities, metamorphosing text-based research into art forms. The project aimed to reveal the symbiotic relationship between research and art via a free public exhibition and an interdisciplinary symposium. The symposium addressed how to promote meaningful partnerships in Ireland through thoughtful collaborations in and between research and artistic practice, and between academia and Industry. The project culminated with a conversation and performance by internationally-acclaimed cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger, whose repertoire includes multiple collaborations with German film directors Werner Herzog and Martijn Maria Smits. Now living in Western Australia, Jennifer is (re)launching The Metamorphosis Project as an online space that fosters a community of interdisciplinary practitioners working at the intersection of art, research and entrepreneurship. The project will spark rich conversations across a range of diverse themes, with a podcast series and a literary journal. Metamorphosis will deliver a major exhibition in 2026 marking the 10-year anniversary of the Project.
