The Art of Science

O

ne of the challenges set out by the UN Ocean Decade (2021-2030) is to confront ‘[h]humanity’s relationship with the ocean’ by identifying and overcoming ‘barriers to behaviour change required for a step change’. The UN go on to state that to do this, they aim to create an ‘inspiring’ and ‘engaging’ ocean for society. Although an ambitious and complex thing to attempt to do, key in the overall process of increasing public awareness on ocean health will be communicating important scientific ocean research, and one such effective tool is the use of art (whether in the form of music, film, images, sounds, sculpture, performance, installations, drawings, poetry and so on) (Aragón et al., 2019; Moser and Pike, 2015). As such, art-science collaborations, where artists and scientists team up to create artistic output based on scientific research, are increasingly valued by intergovernmental organizations, non-profits, universities, and policy makers as fundamental to inspiring changing relationships with the sea (Brennan, 2018; Dupont, 2017; Jefferson et al., 2021; Laffoley, 2014; Paterson et al., 2020; Stocker and Kennedy, 2011). Examples of these include The Ocean Decade and the UN World Oceans Day websites, the European Marine Board’s artist-in-residence initiative, the annual Photo and Art Awards held by The Joint Programming Initiative Healthy and Productive Seas and Oceans (JPI Oceans) as well as creative organizations such as The Ocean Agency, Oceanic.Global, One Ocean Hub, Sea Walls, Artport, and tba21 (to name but a few). All of which put art-science at the centre of their focus when initiating projects which tackle ocean conservation and education. This is reflective of a wider realisation that changing attitudes on critical issues such as climate change cannot be the responsibility of scientists alone, and that art can play a significant role in creating new spaces for education and interaction (Davis and Turpin, 2015; Ede, 2000; Marks et al., 2014; Sleigh and Craske, 2017).

In a world of increasing science misinformation (Gerbina, 2021), then, it is arguably imperative that rigorous research be paired with innovative and effective ways of disseminating such data so that anthropogenic impacts on the ocean can be more widely understood and changed. How change can be initiated through artistic practice is a complex thing to implement and measure, and requires asking what people already know, what is their motivation to change and whether change is even within their power, and so careful consideration of audience engagement and impact is something that needs to be given further academic attention (Marks et al., 2014). This piece will reflect on the role of oceanic art-science collaborations which have an intended goal for public consumption and will consider how their potential impact for engaging numerous publics might be realised during the next decade. 

Who is the Audience and Where Does the Power Lie? 

When it comes to public engagement, art’s ability to transcend linguistic barriers means that it has the potential to speak to diverse audiences around the world, making the message it holds more accessible to ordinary people than, for example, an academic paper or policy report. Making art accessible, however, depends on questions such as “Who gets to make art?”, “Who is it for?” and “What is its purpose?” (Pitts and Price, 2020: 6). The strapline of the UN Ocean Decade is to produce ‘the science we need, for the ocean we want’, and when thinking of using art to communicate important scientific information, it must be remembered how the term ‘we’ can become a universalising catch-all for society at large, erasing differences (see Yusoff’s discussion of the Anthropocene, 2018). In other words, creating art for an ocean ‘we’ all care about, should begin by asking which ‘we’ is targeted. Recognising that multiple publics exist, and that accessibility, as well as how information is received, depends on numerous economic, cultural, social and territorial factors, should be a fundamental consideration when formulating which strategies to adopt when planning an art-science collaboration. By doing so, this will open important questions such as: Who do artists and scientists work with? What is created and why? Where shall it be displayed? Who is involved in the process? Who gets to engage with the output? 

Measuring the Unmeasurable?

As we enter a Decade for the Ocean where art-science collaborations are becoming more important, a complex question to consider will be, what will ‘successful’ public engagement look like for these projects by 2030? For those who would argue that the fact that something is produced from a collaboration between an artist and a scientist is by itself enough, regardless of the audience, this question might feel counter-intuitive. Indeed, those art-science collaborations that have no intention to engage the public can also have considerable value for contributing to academia. Art-science collaborations can change the way scientists and artists work through promoting “interdisciplinarity and knowledge co-creation” (Galafassi, 2018: 71), as well as highlighting innovative and marginalised perspectives that would otherwise go unexplored (Bendor et al., 2017; Curtis 2012; Polfus et al., 2017). Art-science collaborations can thus provide creative opportunities to investigate new ways to ‘do’ science (Duxbury, 2010). There must therefore always be a space for artists and scientists to experiment, with no aim other than to feed the creative curiosity of imagination and discovery. 

However, if the goal of the UN Ocean Decade is to not only be about learning but also societal change (Trott et al., 2020), should ocean related art also appeal to do the same? In other words, because art -science collaborations pair artists with access to scientific institutions and the research, reach and funding that comes with it, must art-science collaborations that are intended for public consumption consider the audience and then measure appropriately their feedback, the longitudinal impact of these works on them, and whether it enacts a change in attitude about the importance of ocean health and conservation? 

Of course, this is not an easy thing to do. Firstly, changing behaviour is not a straight-forward, linear, apolitical route to environmental transformations (see Blythe et al., 2018; Whitehead et al., 2014). Just because a public (this can range from ordinary people, to fishing communities, to CEOs of energy companies to business magnates) may be more educated on an issue does not necessarily mean they will act in a way that is favoured by the scientific community (Kelly et al., 2022). How information is received very much depends on who is communicating it and how it resonates with varying socio-cultural identities, and often, political and social elites command persuasive authority on how attitudes develop and change (Van Boven and Sherman, 2021). Second of all, it is difficult to measure the ineffable ways that individuals might be inspired by art. How can we know the long-term impacts an exhibition has on someone without spending a significant period of time following their lives? Thus, measuring impact is complex. More attention is beginning to be given by social scientists and social psychologists to researching how art can encourage pro-environmental behaviour through asking questions such as what attitudes exist prior to, and then post, engagement with environmental art and art-science collaborations (Burke 2018 et al.; Curtis et al., 2020). What should be guaranteed, then, is that more research focuses on these lines of enquiry and when planning and executing art-science collaborations during the UN Ocean Decade, that questions surrounding audience impact, longevity and sustained behavioural change be considered as critical.

What Should ‘We’ Consider?

Although for brevity I will not develop an in-depth framework here for art-science collaborations, I do want to suggest three things that should be considered when making space for collaborations between artists, scientists and the ocean. Although these might not be possible or desirable for every project, their consideration in the planning phase will help projects focus their overall goals and purpose.  

(1) The importance of emotions: A key finding of the research exploring the arts and ocean science is that the better the understanding of the emotional ways that people connect with the ocean, the increased likelihood said people will engage with an interest in marine conservation (Brennan, 2018; Dupont, 2017; Jefferson et al., 2015, 2021; Stoll-Kleemann, 2019). Art is effective because it moves people. It can make us feel something and provide access to experiences that as Eisner (2006: 15) argues, make it “difficult to see the world… in any other way”. This is not to say that scientific research is devoid of creativity, imagination or storytelling, as indeed Ede (2006: 2) reminds us, scientific progress could not happen without the process of “daydreaming”. Art, however, is a transformational tool like no other because it appeals to people’s emotional and sensual relationships with the world. Making people feel something is important for environmental engagement (Curtis et al., 2012), and so considering and measuring “self-efficacy” and “emotional involvement” should become an important focus for connecting scientific knowledge on the oceans with a wider audience (Stoll-Kleemann, 2019: 7). This way, audiences can better understand how their own lives can be impacted through their relationship with the sea. Public communication needs to be as much (if not more) about making people care about the issue as it is about making people understand the issues (Burke et al., 2018; Weik von Mossner, 2013).  

(2) Proximity and distance: Art can stimulate people to reflect on their own relationships with place and their position within the natural surroundings of their everyday lives (Van der Vaart et al., 2018). Ocean-related art can play out differently depending on proximity to the ocean. For those who live close to a shoreline, it is a tangible relatable feature of everyday life, whereas for those who don’t, it could be too distant to comprehend. What can be powerful about ocean art, however, is that it can transport those living miles away from the ocean deep into the sea, providing an extension of oceanic worlds, in what Peters and Steinberg (2019) call an ocean in excess. Essential for art-science collaborations for an Ocean Decade is to therefore consider how a project can appeal to both local and global sensibilities so that not only are the more ‘in vogue’ issues covered, but they become relatable with examples. 

(3) Community Engagement: Kelly et al. (2022) have highlighted the importance of local knowledge and a sense of place in relation to the success of ocean health education. Engagement is a two-way process of listening and interaction, not just disseminating (Gelcich, 2014). For art-science collaborations to have longevity after the ‘event’ (which increases the likelihood of them having long lasting impact), they need to go beyond asking “what are we going to tell them”, to asking “how do we develop relationships with the public” – and more so a range of heterogeneous and various publics, close by and distant to, the seas. In other words, projects need to move from coercion to co-creation. This is not to say that standalone artistic pieces do not have a place to inspire and educate; they do. To maximize the benefits of research institutions’ available resources in art-science collaborations, projects must consider how their output can be shared and created with various publics, and seek to understand the impact of this process. As we roll further into the Ocean Decade, there is an opportunity for art-science collaborations to elevate not only public understanding but also participation in the protection of the oceans, in turn democratising that protection through a wider involvement of people. 

We Came, We Fished, We Conquered! 

To end this piece, I want to share a short project of my own to reflect on the gaps that art-science collaborations can potentially fill. As an artist-researcher I have considered the ways in which art can be used to think about our spatial relationships with the world (Whittaker, 2022; Whittaker and Peters, 2021 a, b). One such project I recently worked on was an exploration into the relationship of ‘ordinary’ people with the ocean in my hometown of Swansea, Wales. By ‘ordinary’ I mean people who aren’t directly involved in the decision-making processes of how the sea is governed, and who enjoy it in their leisure time.

This was a personal art project documenting a location in the city, to understand human relations somewhere familiar to me, that has been a part of my life since I was a young boy. However, at its heart, it also engaged issues of socio-environmental change. Swansea is a coastal city in South Wales. After years of neglect, its West pier (which acts as a bookend between the 7 miles of beach which makes up Swansea Bay) has been reconstructed. As the British Port Authority began repairing the damaged pier, they began altering a structure that, although deteriorating for years, has remained an integral place for Swansea locals to fish, relax, socialise, and get away from the city.

For months prior to the beginning of the building work, I began documenting the people who make this place unique. What I discovered is an extraordinary mosaic of the diversity, resilience and ingenuity of the people who frequent this often-forgotten part of the city. It is a place where people from diverse races and religions congregate to discuss the successes and failures of the day’s catch. It is a place where generations of families teach each other new skills. It is a place where very little else matters other than just being present.

However, it is also a place that highlights the complicated relationship that humans have with the ocean. A consistent feature both on the pier itself and in the surrounding water is the rubbish and waste which floats and blows by. It is a reminder of the detrimental impact society has on ocean environments. The purpose of the four short films I produced, which were consequently exhibited at the Mission Gallery Swansea, were to not only provide an insight into why the pier means so much to so many, but also to highlight the reliance society have on the oceans and to interrogate some of these detrimental human impacts. The pier is thus a paradox of life and death, creation, and destruction and reveals the clear challenge society faces by exposing the contradictory relationship humans have with nature, consequentially relying and respecting it as much as it is used and destroyed. 

You can watch the films here. 

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Geraint Rhys Whittaker is an artist-researcher 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, he is interested in how we can combine sound and audio data with artistic methods to investigate the impacts anthropogenic changes are having on our seas. His creative work has appeared on numerous international TV, Radio and online channels and has been displayed in diverse galleries throughout the world in Wales, England, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, US, Spain, Portugal and Russia. His written work has been featured in academic as well as non-academic articles and book chapters.

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