Young Marsilius Fellows 2024-25: Competition and Exhibition „The Art of Going Wrong“
Visualizing the beauty of dead-ends, failures, and aberrations in research – a competition.
EXTENDED DEADLINE: 01 July 2025
We, the Young Marsilius Fellows (YMF) 2024-25, an interdisciplinary group of early career researchers, warmly invite submissions for our upcoming exhibition: "The Art of Going Wrong". Research and knowledge generation rarely follow a straight line – across disciplines, we always encounter dead ends, unexpected results, or experiments that go wrong. However, we have discovered unexpected beauty and value in research not going according to plan. With this exhibition, we want to shine a spotlight on the raw beauty of research: not the polished version presented in journals and conferences, but the fascinating, everyday one happening across disciplines at our university.
We welcome submissions from all disciplines that showcase the artistic and intriguing side of research "gone wrong". Examples might include (but are not limited to):
- A failed chemical reaction that produced unusable yet visually stunning material,
- The long-awaited find in the archive, which then failed to live up to expectations, but was fascinating in its own way,
- Texts, transcripts, or translations that became beautifully unreadable,
- Experimental setups or equipment that dramatically malfunctioned,
- Beautifully crafted arguments and hypotheses that turned out to be flawed,
- Data visualizations or plots that defied mathematical models,
- Even comics explaining your adventures like e.g. the ones created by
The only requirement for the submission is that it can be printed as a DIN A0 poster (*) which, in case of being selected, will be displayed in our interdisciplinary exhibition at the YMF event on July 17th, 2025.
Extended submission deadline: July 1st, 2025 (EOD). Submissions can be individual or in groups of up to three persons. Please submit your artwork (in jpg or pdf format). Alongside your submission, please provide a brief description (up to 1000 characters, directly in the online form) explaining the story behind your "unexpected artwork".
The jury will consider the following criteria when selecting submissions for display at the YMF event:
- Connection to the event theme: „Dancing with right and wrong? An interdisciplinary symposium on knowing, doing, and not being sure.“ This year, as Young Marsilius Fellows, we explored the concepts of right and wrong from various perspectives, metaphorically „dancing“ with these ideas. When did your research „dance“ with the unexpected?
- Visual appeal: Although scientific in nature, your visualization can be colorful, striking, and visually engaging.
- Creativity and originality: Think beyond typical charts and graphs, and the visualizations or types of posters we commonly encounter at scientific conferences.
Participants will be notified by early July if their submission is selected for the exhibition, and will be asked to provide high-resolution files of their artwork. Poster printing will be covered via the Marsilius Kolleg. On the day of the event, all attendees will participate in selecting the winners. The authors of the top three selected submissions will receive a tailored prize. All contributors to the exhibition can take home their printed posters after the event.
Please note the terms and conditions of the competition below. If you have further questions, please contact Clara Vazquez-Martel (YMF, Materials Science, clara.vazquez@oci.uni-heidelberg.de), Esra Oktay (YMF, Viral Vector Technologies, esra.oktay@bioquant.uni-heidelberg.de), Jonas Wachinger (YMF, Global Health, jonas.wachinger@uni-heidelberg.de) or Tobias Just (administrative director of the Marsilius-Kolleg, just@mk.uni-heidelberg.de)
We look forward to celebrating the art and wonder of unexpected outcomes together.
The Young Marsilius Fellows 2024-25
(*) While we decided on this format to facilitate a common medium for the exhibition, we encourage creativity and originality. Feel free to incorporate interactive elements like QR codes that link to audio or video, or to use your printed poster to facilitate public engagement with your artwork. If you have an artwork in mind that you struggle to present in a poster format, please get in touch with us and we will try to make it happen.