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Santa Barbara, CA – September 4, 2025 — The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) marked its 30th anniversary during Santa Barbara’s First Thursday Art Walk with a one-of-a-kind Art + Science exhibition. An evening of scientific discovery, sensory exploration, and community engagement—highlighting the innovative ways art and science can come together to tell ecological stories.
At the heart of the celebration was the debut of Taste Cartographies: Documenting Anthropocene Terroir Through Systematic Flavor Analysis , a new body of work by NCEAS’s 2025 Artist-in-Residence, Beth Ames Altringer Eagle . Her multidisciplinary installation transformed data about regional ecological disruptions into edible scores paired with data-driven abstract drawings, inviting guests to perceive ecology through taste.