Art-science cross-fertilisation. The Human-Tech Nexus: good practice of project-based collaboration

1. Climate Service and Art_portfolio

GERICS is a kind of living lab where natural, social and art scientists work confluently.

With Climate Service and Art at GERICS we dispose of:

• Practical experience

in close collaboration with scientists and artists.

Pilot case: Artist fellows from HIDA’s (Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy) Art meets Science program, see https://www.helmholtz-hida.de/en/new-horizons/art-meets-science/, worked for 3 months closely together with GERICS’s scientists to carry out their artistic research on a climate-related project.

• A tailor-made network

Collaboration between scientists and artists is only meaningful and effective if both sides are willing to open up to each other and ideally have a common intersection (e.g. data affinity). On both sides, we have extensive contacts that meet this requirement. To make these contacts available to a wider audience and, not least, to promote cooperation between the arts and sciences, we are considering setting up a customized database.

• Our research interest

is in measuring the impact of arts and culture towards the sustainable climate transition (“behavioural change for systemic transformations towards climate resilience”).

2. Project-based art-science collaborations

With this portfolio of experience and research interest, we embark on projects such as The Human-Tech Nexus (The HuT), funded by the European Union, https://thehut-nexus.eu

Pilot cases

2.1 ECCA

Together with Full Circle Playback Theatre Dublin (PT) and partners from the project (UNISA, CMCC, GWP-CEE) we developed "Staging EWS Stories" at ECCA 2023, see https://thehut-nexus.eu/the-hut-is-going-to-take-part-to-ecca-conference/.

Using the interactive and improvisational format of PT, participants of the session told their personal stories about extreme weather events and Early Warning Systems (EWS) they had experienced, which were then mirrored by the PT performers on stage.

The objective has been to build a community of "climate scientists, artists and activists" and using personal stories to change behavioural patterns in the long run.

A publication under the provisional working title "Pinning the butterfly" by the scientists and artists involved (Smetanova, Van Laake, Rianna, Pietruszka, Calvello, Schluensen-Rico) is in planning.

2.2 The HuT’s General Assembly in Valencia

For the last consortium meeting, we linked this year's organiser and The HuT partner UPV (University of Valencia) with its department of Industrial Design and co-curated an art-science project. One of the results, a greenhouse art installation by local artist Salva Mascarell decorated with scientific warnings and filled with heat is open to the public in the Botanical Garden of Valencia until January 2024, see https://thehut-nexus.eu/find-out-interesting-insights-after-the-last-general-assembly-of-the-hut/.

Ultimately, the aim was to raise awareness among the citizens of Valencia: droughts and heatwaves will shape the future of this city if the right measures are not taken.

Further art-science collaborations within this European project are foreseen on a regional level. The objective is always to involve the local community, where the fusion of art and science is a prerequisite from the very beginning.