SAP&O – Science+Art+Participation in&about the Ocean

[photo G.Lupinacci/Raw-News for SeaPaCS]

“We all came from the sea once, and therefore anyone wishing to understand life on this planet has to first understand the sea.” (Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World)

Conversation about ongoing projects and future plans (or dreams) for tightening our connections with the ocean and the water.

SAP&O is an observatory point at the edge of science, art and participation about/around/in/on the Ocean (and Water); a meeting place where discover new perspectives, friends/colleagues/inspirations with or without any specific scope (but for sure, without the pressure of being productive over being creative, humanly curious and allowing ourselves to enjoy “wasting” some time to let ideas flowing…); a non-formal widespread common room of people sharing similar passions and interests around a tea/beer/coffee to reflect on our research/experimentations/practices, cross-fertilise competencies and experiences, support each other in whatever imagined way, stimulate and be stimulated; a venue where purpose and product-oriented outcomes can be brought about. The initiative stems from the meeting between artist Sonia Levy, curator Chiara Famengo, and social geographer Chiara Certoma’, during which their shared interests coalesced.

We are collectively wondering how can the combination of art and participatory processes contribute to exploring and establishing a connection between society and the ocean and water. Additionally, we are interested in how can art practices enhance social and natural science research on the ocean and water, particularly from a methodological perspective. So the questions we aim to answer are:

Can you share your experiences with methodological approaches in collaborations between arts & sciences (natural and social sciences) in exploring watery socio-ecologies? Additionally, if you have been involved in art-science collaborations and participation, could you offer insights into the methods employed? Or, to put it otherwise, how do you employ art to create new methods of engaging and gaining insights?

Below, a list of participants’ products:

  1. Sophia Kochalski, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Marta Dievina, Latvia; Ludovica Montecchio, Italy; Benjamin Lewin, Italy; Baiba Pruse, The Nederlands

We would like to share with everyone our project “From Sea to Street”, an EU-funded citizen initiative investigating the potential role of marine-themed murals in strengthening people’s connection with the sea and the ocean. Some English links for the project: https://eu-citizen.science/project/458; https://www.instagram.com/from_sea_to_street/

In addition, my colleagues have completed the following pieces of research/ art/ action, that fit with your description and are hopefully interesting for the exchange:

  • School children learning about the aquatic environment via origami instead of work sheets. Project created by Marta Dievina for WWF Latvia. Example for the origami sheet attached, some impressions fro her work with the school children can be found here:https://babitesvidusskola.lv/nerinas-upes-kvalitates-izpete/
  • Lagoon Letters, a project co-created by Ludovica Montecchio and her colleague Benjamin Lewin as a tale against global anxiety. What would the Venice Lagoon say if it could talk?The letters were produced following the Ocean / Uni curriculum for fall semester 2022. Letters attached, and can also be found under this link, together with other projects: https://ocean-archive.org/view/3275
  • here is one more contribution from my colleague Baiba Pruse, it’s a movie she produced about the Venice lagoon: https://www.earthfuturesfestival.com/the-films/v/elementi-minimi

2. Heather Green (Herberger Institute School of Art, Arizona State University, USA

Ghost Net Project: Collaborative art/poetry project raising money for Puerto Peñasco divers fishing sustainably

Vermilion Remains: Deep mapping project with ethnographic writing from scientists, fishermen, community, and working with historic biological specimens and artifacts to portray past culture and species.

Intertidal Transect: Art/science collaboration, mapping the phenology of the intertidal through monthly photographic transect over one year

Tidal Timespace: Deep mapping project comparing two tidal landscapes, mudflat fieldwork, ethnographic writing, collaboration with fishermen, scientists + community

(future idea) Mapping the intertidal

topography and species (past and now current loss of many, with special focus on turban snails) in Bahía La Cholla, Sonora, Mexico

3. Chiara Certomà, University of Turin, Luisa Galgani, University of Siena, Federico Fornaro, Italian Naval League, Giuseppe Lupinacci, Raw-News, Alessio Corsi, University of Turin, Italy

EU project “SeaPaCS. Participatory Science against Marine Pollution” (supported by the European funds of the IMPETUS4CS project and endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade). Visual (graphic, photographic and video) material about plastic & life entanglements in the Med Sea, giving rise to new recombinant ecosystems. We studied from a chemical and biological perspective and adopted a participatory approach to engage people in thinking about our new hybrid world. And how to live with it. 

4. Ruth Brennan, Trinity College Dublin and Stephen Hurrel, Hurrel Visual Arts

Sgeulachdan na Mara / Sea Stories – an online cultural map of the sea is based around the island of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The project explores the intimate relationship between people and place and seeks to make visible the rich cultural knowledge that exists in the seas around Barra. It has been developed in association with Voluntary Action Barra & Vatersay (VABV) and involved school pupils interviewing local Barra fishermen and the older members of the community. The website was launched on Barra on Saturday 16th November 2013. The project received major funding in the form of a Creative Scotland ‘First In A Lifetime’ Award and additional funding from Comunn na Gàidhlig. 

Sea Stories grew out of research undertaken by social ecologists Ruth Brennan and Iain MacKinnon and audio-visual material generated by artist Stephen Hurrel for the publication Dùthchas na Mara / Belonging to the Sea (Authors: MacKinnon and Brennan. Photographs: Hurrel). On the Gaelic speaking islands of Arranmore (Donegal, Ireland) and Barra (Outer Hebrides, Scotland) the fishermen believe that their livelihood and way of living is being threatened by powerful governmental forces who are not listening to them. In Barra, the dispute centres around two proposed marine Special Areas of Conservation designations while in the islands off Donegal (including Arranmore) the dispute is around the Irish moratorium on drift-net fishing for salmon. The publication was funded by Colmcille and was launched at the Clan MacNeil Gathering on Barra on 15 August 2012.

Clyde Reflections (33mins, HD Video, 2014) is a meditative, cinematic experience based on the marine environment of the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. The film features underwater and microscopic footage, combined with voice recordings of people who have a close relationship with, or specialist understanding of, the Firth of Clyde. These include a retired fisherman, a marine biologist, a diver, a marine conservationist, a spiritual leader and a physical oceanographer. The film premiered at CCA in November 2014 and was installed in the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Glasgow for six weeks in Summer of 2015. The project was funded by Imagining Natural Scotland, a Creative Scotland funded project during Year of Natural Scotland 2013.

Producing Seascapes (25:52mins, HD Video, 2016) sets out to explore how visions of coastal environments and seascapes differ between European, national, regional and municipal planners, as well as local people and visitors. In this case study, based around the Northern Bohuslän archipelago and coastal region on the west coast of Sweden, we wanted to find out to what extent the Swedish planning approach takes into account how people value their marine environment. This pilot project was developed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Scotland and Sweden, consisting of art-science team Brennan and Hurrel from Scotland, working with Prof. Andrea Nightingale, University of Gothenburg and SLU Uppsala, and Linus Karlsson and Elina Anderson from the University of Gothenburg.

  • Brennan and Rozanov art-science collaboration: 

‘Managing for Diversity: keeping everyone afloat in Irish fisheries‘ by Brennan and Rozanov (6:47, 2020) is a short animation about the diversity of Ireland’s fishing industry, with a focus on the offshore islands small-scale fleet. Almost three thousand islanders live on eighteen islands off the west coast of Ireland. These islands are not connected to the mainland by a land causeway. While many of these islands are dependent on a small-scale fishing industry for survival, their fishing communities face challenges in navigating complex fisheries governance systems at local, regional, national and EU scales. This animation is intended to provide a snapshot of the complexity of the issues at play and the difficulties for small-scale boats in accessing the fish that are a public resource.

  • Individual projects from Stephen Hurrel:

The Sea, The Sails and the White, White Blades (three-screen installation and blown glass) http://www.hurrelvisualarts.com/work/art-science/sswwb/

+ single-screen version: The Sea, The Sails and the White, White Blades (18mins)  https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/110308271

Adrift, Cologne http://www.hurrelvisualarts.com/work/installations/adrift-cologne-2009/

5. Lorena Rocco and Silvia Strocco, University of Padua, Italy

Marine Education: https://ilbolive.unipd.it/it/news/mariniamo-scuola-studenti-barca-vela

Sound landscape: artistic reflection on the relationship between sound and acoustic pollution

6. Kristin Bergaust, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

My ongoing artistic project is Ocean Connections, an artistic animation of the Oslofjord based on mathematic modelling and conversations with marine biologists and ecologists. Here is the first iteration:

It is part of this SciArt project in the European Community and will be presented in an exhibition in May 2024 in IMAP, Brussels: https://science-art-society.ec.europa.eu/front

Earlier work on the Oslofjord resulted in the book Oslofjord Ecologies and several artworks. Free, downloadable pdf here: http://rixc.org/en/acousticspace/issue/788/ Overview: https://www.oslofjordecologies.net/

Video works: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/486356502; https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/876325482

Curating and organizing a larger art event focused on the Oslofjord in 2024. We made a dummy for a website on circular economy. Only in Norwegian so far: https://www.oslofjord-triennale.no/

A related, three-year artistic research project on Futures of Living Technologies is just concluding, it reflects different interests within technology, science and living environments, humans and non-humans: https://feltproject.no

7. Luca Bertocci, PoliTo, Italy
On a peer-reviewed academic journal: “Galleggiare nel cambiamento climatico. Scenari dall’Olanda”. At: https://iris.polito.it/handle/11583/2982485

For an Italian research collective: “L’Arcipelago Toscano. Note per navigare domandando nell’Alluvione Planetaria”. At: http://www.intotheblackbox.com/articoli/arcipelago-toscano/

8. Owain Jones, Bath Spa University, UK

I run a blog on Tidal Cultures and two other blogs/maps about the Severn Estuary:

Tidal Cultures: Blog; and Twitter

Severn Estuary Art Atlas (SEAA): Art map/blog

Severn Estuary Survey (SSS): My photographs of the Severn Estuary over 40 years (map and blog)

Tidal Timespace: Imprints & Palimpsests: Project with Heather Green of Arizona State University

Interested in the ecologies and cultures of the UK’s 163 amazing estuaries (an overview and a few key case studies).

 Tides / sea papers: https://www.academia.edu/88575755/_The_Breath_of_the_Moon_The_Rhythmic_and_Affective_Time_spaces_of_UK_Tides; https://www.academia.edu/81123760/Sounding_grief_The_Severn_Estuary_as_an_emotional_soundscape; https://www.academia.edu/81123750/Lunar_Solar_Rhythmpatterns_Towards_the_Material_Cultures_of_Tides; https://www.academia.edu/81123749/On_Breathing_and_Geography_Explorations_of_Data_Sonifications_of_Timespace_Processes_with_Illustrating_Examples_from_a_Tidally_Dynamic_Landscape_Severn_Estuary_UK_;https://www.academia.edu/110312385/The_Horizon_Holding_the_Edge_of_the_Known_Word_Placing_the_Sea;

With Heather Green: https://www.academia.edu/92724673/Rivers_mouths_tides_memories_A_creative_inter_deepmapping_of_two_river_tidal_places_Love_of_place_memory_and_affect_movements_patterns_marks_and_practices_of_care

9. Sonia Levy, Royal College of Art, UK

Podcasts conversations Seascape Epistemology and the Venetian Cocoon; More-than-Human Underwater Filming

Exhibition: Coral Love, Sainsbury Centre; Liquid Intelligence, Museo Thyssen

10. Pamela Buchan, University of Exeter, UK

We are mid-production for a short animated film on marine citizenship, due by the end of the year. Transdisciplinary co-production of marine identity Various irons in the fire on participatory

11. Ocean Networks Canada

ONC Science Hub: Here you can join for science collaborations and to receive updates about installations and experiments by the Ocean Networks Canada. The ONC is a research initiative and organization that operates ocean observatories on the west coast of Canada. The ONC has their own Artist-in-residence program https://www.oceannetworks.ca/about-onc/

ONC Artist-in-Residence: https://www.oceannetworks.ca/news-and-stories/stories/2024-artist-in-residence-program-call-for-proposals-1/ ; ONC Science Hub: https://community.oceannetworks.ca/landing?from=https%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.oceannetworks.ca%2Fspaces%2F6703071%2Ffee

12.TBA21-Academy

TBA21 is a multifaceted initiative that intersects art, science, policy, and conservation to deepen our understanding of the Ocean. You can join their digital ocean comm/uni/ty to connect with collaborators across disciplines and get access to educational sessions, materials and updates.

TBA21-Academy page: https://tba21.org/academy; Ocean-archive: https://community.ocean-archive.org

13.Sasha Woods, Earthwatch

ProBleu project  https://www.pml.ac.uk/science/projects/ProBleu

FreshWater Watch https://www.freshwaterwatch.org/

14. Geraint Whittaker, Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Germany

I am an artist researcher, and also a social and cultural geographer, doing a post-doc at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in north Germany. I am interested in exploring how art-science collaborations can be used to investigate, challenge and change public perceptions on some of the most pressing threats facing our oceans. Specifically, I am interested in how we can combine sound and audio data with artistic methods to investigate the impacts anthropogenic changes are having on our seas. As an artist researcher I combine both my experience as a practicing musician, film maker and sound artist with my background as a geographer. So my postdoc involves me both creating artistic projects as well as academic output and I work closely with Professor Kimberley Peters (who i’m sure whose work you are familiar with). Projects I have created include:

The Polar Sounds Prioject –  Here I gave acoustic data to over 100 artists from 31 countries to reinterpet and create compositions – we have the interviewed these artists and are writing up the results – https://hifmb.de/polar-sounds-2/

The Mirrorrs exhibition – Here I created a sound installation that follows the acoustic journey of the Minke Whale as it travels from Antarctica to Namibia and then measured the audience feedback – https://hifmb.de/mirrors/

The Ocean Science Jam – As you have seen, this is a new concept I have created and we bring strangers together to jam to marine science to produce sponteanous responses  –  https://hifmb.de/transfer/art-science/ocean-jam-night/

This year I have also written and published a mini literature review on art-science collaborations and the Ocean in journal Frontiers in Marine Science: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1234776/full

And published some reflections on the UN Ocean decade and ocean art in society and space:  https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/creating-a-sea-we-all-care-about-art-science-collaborations-the-ocean-and-public-engagement

15. Gabriella Palermo, University of Palermo

(forthcoming) Steinberg P., Palermo G., The Trans-actional Ocean: Excessive Mobilities and Immersive Temporalities at Sea, in “Social and Cultural Geography”.

(2023) Palermo G., Geografie more-than-wet del Mediterraneo Nero: marginalità, eccedenze, (ri)gener-azioni, in “Documenti geografici”, n. 1 gennaio-giugno 2023, pp. 25-44.

(2023) Palermo G. Dalle geografie terracquee alla wet perspective. Scie e onde del Mediterraneo Nero, in A. Pase, A. Bondensan, S. Lucchetta (a cura di) XXXIII Congresso Geografico Italiano Geografie in movimento Padova 8-13 settembre 2021. Volume primo. Elementi, animali, piante. Mobilità dei costituenti, delle forze e degli organismi, Cleup, Padova, pp. 271-276.

(2022) Palermo G., Ghosts from the Abyss: the imagination of new worlds in the sea-narratives of Afrofuturism, in “Lo Squaderno”, No. 62, July 2022, pp. 39-41.

 (2020) de Spuches G., Palermo G., Between Wakes and Waves: An Anti- geopolitical view of a Postcolonial Mediterranean Space, in S. Marcenò, V. Favarò (a cura di), Rethinking Borders. Decolonizing Knowledge and Categories, New Digital Frontiers – Palermo University Press, Palermo, pp. 33-60.

17. Kim De Wolff, University of North Texas, USA

Hydrohumanities: a call for bridging salty/fresh ocean and river scholarship divides, and for leading (not just responding to) water conversations with the social sciences and humanities 

Plastic Naturecultures: Ocean-plastic entanglements across living/nonliving divides and the need for ‘solutions’ that do not default to separations/abstractions and the perpetuation of associated violences (including plastic production and ocean plastic pollution as settler colonialism – which is a major component of my monograph currently in progress) 

18. Lìgia Oliveira, artist&researcher, Portugal

I’m an artist, designer and researcher, and I lead my independent practice aiming to bring the climate crisis to the centre of the cultural arena in order to accelerate the necessary behavioural changes, by fostering new forms of connection between people and nature with an interdisciplinary, multi-scale approach. It has been difficult for me to network and to exhibit my artistic work, as I currently live in a quite peripheral area; so your invitation was especially important!

Some recent examples of my work are:”Reconsidering the Body and/in the Landscape” – https://www.ligiaoliveirastudio.com/reconsidering-the-body A text in which I approach the intersection of disciplines (arts, design, architecture) through a reflexive discourse on our relationship with Earth, how cultural disciplines play a key role in changing paradigms within climate change, and in particular, how culture can be a means for us to nurture our relationship to nature. It was published in “Designing in Coexistence – Reflections on Systemic Change”, a book resulting from the discursive program and as the final product of the Croatian Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Same As It Ever Was
“Embracing the Abyss: Kinship with the Unknown” – https://www.ligiaoliveirastudio.com/embrassing-the-abyssAn essay exploring the Deep Sea as a concrete example and metaphor of “the other”, the unknown, and expands on notions of engagement and kinship from there, published at TBA21-Academy’s Ocean Archive Journeys for “Culturing the Deep Sea: Towards a Common Heritage for Allkind”
“Bodies of Water” – https://www.ligiaoliveirastudio.com/bowA series on which I explore our sensory and biological interconnection with the sea

19. Fernando Martín Velazco, artist, Mexico

I’m an artist with my practice focused on expeditions, and I have worked a lot in the Pacific (I’m based in Mexico), especially with gray whales, but also making some underwater sound art. 

– The Leviathan’s Playing cycle, an art-science project related to the interaction between gray whales and humans: https://en.stultiferanavis.institute/los-juegos-del-leviatan-descriptivo A short introduction to this project could be the next work, Meyijbén: https://en.stultiferanavis.institute/meyijben

-Tinnitus, a sound research project carried out from drifting listening processes in underwater contexts: https://en.stultiferanavis.institute/tinnitus

20. Maria Vittoria Marra, Galway Atlantacquaria, Ireland

Dr Maria Vittoria Marra, Education and Public Engagement Officer at Galway Atlantaquaria (GA) and Secretariat of the Irish Ocean Literacy Network, is currently involved in Galway Bay is Calling (GBiC), a creative project co-developed by GA with the classical music organisation Music for Galway and the Atlantic Technological University which was funded in July 2023 through the Creative Climate Action Fund II of the Creative Ireland Programme. GBiC aims at combining music and ocean literacy to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change in Galway (Ireland) among the local communities. Through their attendance to a series of ocean literacy and behaviour change workshops, the choirs and musician groups involved in the project first will boost their awareness of the ocean’s influence on them, and their influence on the ocean, and then they will develop an original music piece in collaboration with internationally acclaimed cellist Naomi Berrill to inspire the local community’s ocean and climate action. This music piece will be premiered at the opening ceremony of the international festival CELLISSIMO organised by Music for Galway in May 2024 in Galway and it has the potential to convey ocean literacy to a broader audience in a country like Ireland, where music is the most important cultural facet. At the end of GBiC, GA will also host a music & ocean literacy event involving the three music groups participating in the project to be held on Culture Night 2024. This is not unusual for GA which has been hosting local musicians’ performances in its premises since 2022 for ‘Culture Night‘, a national moment celebrating culture and creativity which is celebrated every third Friday of September across Ireland since 2005. In fact, GBiC represents a milestone on a journey to promote ocean literacy through music started by Dr Marra & GA at the end of 2020. Back then, Dr Marra established a collaboration with the songwriter Sean McGrath and the local non-professional musical ensemble Galway Ukers (of which Dr Marra is one of the members!) to carry out a project aimed at raising ocean awareness & action via the development of an original marine-themed song. Inspired by the title of a popular Irish movie, the project was originally called ‘Amhrán na Mara’ (which stands for ‘Song of the Sea’ in Irish Gaelic), but it soon changed name to ‘Amhráin na Mara’ (‘Songs of the Sea’) because several members of the group were inspired by the proposal and wrote one or more original songs. In some cases, it was the very first song they had ever written by themselves. In summer 2021, two of these songs were included in the programme of the first Ocean Literary Festival in the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea basins, and amateur videos were also produced for these songs that are called ‘Pigfish‘ and ‘Ocean Love Song‘ respectively. In spring 2022, the ‘Amhráin na Mara’ project was further developed via a collaboration with the Claddagh National School in Galway and the Marine Institute’s Explorers Education Programme which brought to the co-development of an additional original song between the musicians and the children in the 5th class of this primary school. This inter-generational project co- developed between the school and the local community represented by the amateur musicians who are part of the Galway Ukers has strongly contributed to the decision to award Claddagh National School with the Special Judges Awards for the Explorers’ Ocean Champions School Project & Awards in 2022.

21. Phillip Vannini, video-ethnographer, Canada

Phillip Vannini lives by the Pacific waters of an island in the Salish Sea in British Columbia, Canada. Over the years, his research has taken him by ferry boat to the islands of the Salish Sea (Ferry Tales, 2021), by kayak and canoe to riverways and seaways inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites (Inhabited, 2021 & In the Name of Wild, 2022), and most recently by ladders and elevators into the bedrooms of the world’s underwater hotels. This latest project, a world’s first, looks at how architects and guests relate to underwater spaces as multi-sensorial and imaginative spaces. His latest article, with April Vannini is From heterotopia to alloútopia: more-than-human geographies of Singapore’s underwater Equarius Hotel. Phillip’s ethnographic research routinely goes beyond the written word, typically employing film as a way of disseminating research beyond the academy. His llatest films include In the name of wild (https://www.inthenameofwild.com/), and Our teacher (https://ourteacherfilm.ca/), a story about traditional cedar canoe-carving. A documentary series on underwater hotels is currently under post-production. When not busy with work, Phillip can be found on the beaches or in the waters of the West Coast of Canada, or wherever else he is able to travel.

NEWS&EVENTS

  • Our first meeting, 4th of December 2024:

Feel free to go through our collective presentation and add your address, ideas, and proposals: https://jamboard.google.com/d/1PLxVELv4ZCmUQoT229J4ObyRcx8A6ylbe4qmwpiqKl4/viewer?f=0

  • SAP&O Pills. Feeling the Ocean

“SAP&O pills.Feeling the Ocean” focuse on how the combination of science, art and participatory processes can contribute to exploring and establishing a connection between society and the ocean. Transectorial and transdisciplinary-inspired artistic and creative processes promoted by scientists, artists, activists, seagoing people and ocean-lovers that experiment with new forms of investigation and expression to explore to motivate, trigger and support our commitments toward ocean challenges. Particularly we focus on participatory or collaborative artistic and creative processes on the belief that engagement can bring about a deeper understanding and commitment of society with ocean hazards and challenges, not only via cultural consumption, but also in experimenting with artistic/performing arts themselves. We are, however, not only interested in these processes per se (and), but also in how art and creative processes can enhance social and natural science research on the ocean, building upon the experience of our discussion group SAP&O. We are interested in how different scientific theories, findings, and methods can be elaborated and shared via artistic creations and co-creative experimentations, and how multiple means and forms of expression (i.e. film, photos, staged performances, digital creations, etc.) can be used to produce collaborative scientific storytelling, science-in-action stories, and emotionally impactful outputs. Embodied and embedded perspectives, from the inside and below narrative approaches able to both describe and stimulate interest and fascination on the scientific aspects of the ocean and society relationships, together with showing the knowledge and art-in-the-making are welcome.

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