Dwight Owens

and 7 more

c\cite{Beck_2021,Claudet_2020,Cunsolo_2018,Franke_2020,process,Jung_2022,Kemmis_2014} In 2021, and again in 2022, our globally scattered group of artists and scientists followed the Exquisite Corpse process for co-creating multiple threaded series of artworks inspired by extreme ocean events. In 2023 some members of our two groups convened a series of collaborative synchronous sessions to create a shared understanding of the paths we took to join this creative community and engage in this open ArtScience collaboration.Prompted by a sense of curiosity, a shared passion for the ocean and the will to collaborate, artists and scientists came together (virtually) to forge relationships around the shared intent to deepen our understanding of transdisciplinary ArtScience and how it can contribute to ocean knowledge. Discovering common ground (and creating a grounded commons) and mutual interests, we set forth on a path of curiosity into a formal Exquisite Corpse cycle. We created an array of art projects drawn from a semi-ambiguous “seed” within a semi-safe, not-always-comfortable space for experimentation and creation. Through cyclical introspection, enactment, opening, giving, and receiving, we developed our artwork series and relationships among our group. Finally, in the sharing of these series, we experienced new insights about our individual and collective perceptions of extreme ocean events, while simultaneously further deepening our relationships and appreciation for the potency of ArtScience collaborations.This poster was presented at the AGU23 Meeting in San Francisco, CA, on 13 December 2023. Conference abstract URL: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm23/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/1266010

Julia Jung

and 4 more

Ocean governance is characterised by social-ecological complexity and divergence in stakeholder values and perspectives. Meeting the challenges set out in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development will require transdisciplinary approaches that can embrace multiple ways of knowing to develop shared understandings within interdependent communities of practice and ensure they can be applied in interventions that are adaptive, proactive, socially just, critically reflexive and fit to meet the Decade’s challenges. We present the outcomes of an innovative participatory art process, the Exquisite Corpse Project, with the aim of highlighting multiple perspectives, and developing empathy between participants. We will engage a selected group of researchers from the emerging ‘Ocean Art-Ocean Science’ community to explore the topic of marine heatwaves and their impacts based on data collected in the Northeast Pacific by Ocean Networks Canada and other sources. Through a facilitated process, participants will create three pieces of art that will build on each other and will be exchanged between participants. At the end, all created artworks will be reviewed by the full group to explore emerging insights on marine heatwaves and to surface participants’ underlying values and emotions, which is rarely done in scientific circles where the main mode of discourse employs rational dispassionate exchange. By creating a fun, emotionally-engaging process, we aim to show how the Exquisite Corpse project can strengthen interpersonal bonds, build social cohesion, create opportunities to surface people’s values and perspectives, and develop new transdisciplinary insights in a non-confrontational way. This study is part of an ongoing process exploring transdisciplinary approaches for multidirectional art-science collaborations and developing new research methods for including artistic insight and expression within the scientific discovery process. Instead of the conventional ‘outward looking’ strategy of many art-science projects translating scientific outputs to new formats, our approach is primarily ‘inward looking’. We aim to provide an opportunity for scientists to create art, thus allowing them to explore their own emotions, values and experiences through different ways of knowing.