--Meeting point at 7pm, after the Icebreaker in the hallway A1!---
A variety of herbs, grasses and mosses grow in even the most densely built-up cities - in pavement cracks, in wall crevices or sidewalk greenery. They are often overlooked (and trampled down), but play an important role in urban ecosystems.
Join us for a walk to make these overlooked inhabitants of our cities visible! We will be taking a walk from Davos Congress into the city to identify and mark the plants we encounter with coloured chalk and name them. We’ll also be taking photos and sharing them on social media under the hashtag #krautschau - giving the little green inhabitants of Davos the attention they deserve, highlighting their beauty and resilience, and making them visible beyond the city.
This low-threshold, interactive activity creates a bridge between environmental education, artistic intervention (street art in the best sense of the word), and biodiversity research. The format sparks conversations, and invites people to explore ecological connections right in their everyday surroundings. By combining science communication with creative expression, it engages a wide audience – from curious children to casual passers-by to the Forum participants. The #Krautschau draws attention to the value of urban biodiversity and encourages dialogue on the relationship between humans and nature in urban contexts.

A freshwater sound-bath that explores the watery origins of our primordial selves - the perfect place to reflect during a busy symposium.

Centred around a multichannel audio meditation on underwater soundscapes, it brings Darwin's concept that humans emerged from a "warm little pool" into an aural reality. Within these pools we encounter Earth's earliest biorhythms - the photosynthetic rhythms of aquatic plants that continue to be fundamental to human existence. Featuring hydrophone recordings from an array of ponds, lakes and rivers, the installation explores the diversity of freshwater soundscapes alongside video excerpts and real-time audio feeds from some of the UK's largest conservation organisations, including National Trust and WWT.

Emerging from the experience as aquatic listeners, participants will have the chance to leave a recorded message for their future, land-based beings. What message does the water carry?

Event type: Surround sound installation with visual projection.
Location: Studio space
Duration: 1hr
Equipment required from WBF: 4 x full range speakers, low-lighting with projector, preferably floor cushions/bean bags for listeners to lie on.

Séverine Morfin is blazing a trail with music that is attentive to nature and porous to the sounds of the world around us, building a large-scale transdisciplinary project where musical creation and ecology become one. Bringing together contemporary, traditional and jazz musicians, two researchers and a visual artist, the violist and composer orchestrates an unlikely encounter between a unique string quartet and soundtracks recorded at the Parc forestier de la Poudrerie (93). Birdsong, bat calls and toad croaks are “played” alongside instruments in an elegant, melodious and sometimes hypnotic repertoire, where everything is organically linked.

Faced with the climate crisis, what role can composers and musicians play? They can create a channel for sensitive wonder at living things in order to activate the desire to care for them. As sound specialists, we can also serve biology by making people hear species that we cannot see but which live among us. The spatialised recordings will enable staff to closely monitor the evolution of life in the park in order to better preserve species, and will provide ethologists with material for their research on biodiversity.
With CHOREME, it is almost as if we are witnessing the birth of a living organism, an entity that has a life of its own, that breathes. A beating heart.

Séverine Morfin, viola and composition
Odile Auboin, solo viola with the Ensemble Intercontemporain
Malik Ziad, guembri, mandol, leading figure in Gnawa and Chaâbi music
Guillaume Magne, guitarist with the ONJ
Céline Grangey, sound engineer and sound designer, biophony recordings

Damien Delorme: Researcher in philosophy, University of Lausanne.
Yann Tremblay: Researcher in eco-ethology at IRD, bioacoustics and research

Fungi populating aquatic environments are amongst the lesser known organisms of such ecosystems. Without being seen by the naked eye, they contribute to aquatic microbial communities within glacial meltwater, freshwater basins and oceans, at the global level. Ranging a large biological and functional diversity, aquatic fungi demand for global acknowledgement by the scientific as well as the non-scientific communities.

The exhibited artwork seeks to represent the extraordinary biodiversity of aquatic fungi by depicting some of their floating life forms as well as colours that represent their preparation for micro-imaging. Moreover, the combination of creative work with living fungi that are visible in their macroscopic form establish a contemporary vision between the macroscopic and microscopic.

Floating Life emanates from the exchange between aquatic mycologists and the young artist Sara Manfio, currently a student at the Venice Academy of fine arts, and was established within the framework of the interdisciplinary project Art of Marine Sciences (ARSMar). It was exposed in Venice at the exposition “Bio≠ Biodiversity as Essential Coexistence”, and it is now further contributing to the acknowledgement of aquatic fungi as an essential component of the global biome.

Invasive Alien Species (IAS) are among the top five threats to global biodiversity. To bring this urgent issue onto the global agenda, we must not only inform but visibly demonstrate the impact invasive species have on ecosystems and communities.

In collaboration with Fauna & Flora International, the Villars Institute, and the Woven Foundation, this project introduces an immersive art installation that brings the science of IAS to life. The work physically inflates within the space, gradually expanding and displacing the audience pushing them out of their ‘habitat’, just as invasive species do to native flora and fauna.

This performative sculpture is accompanied by a series of panels that narrate the collective effort of the partners to agendize IAS, and develop educational tools to make both the science and societal impact accessible to the public.

By merging factual precision with emotional experience, this piece is a demonstration of next-generation science communication—using art and culture as active tools to shift public understanding and inspire informed action on one of biodiversity’s most pressing challenges.

RhiZone: [M-Other] belongs to a series of immersive XR artworks (RhiZones) inspired by rhizosphere—the symbiotic networks between roots, fungi, and microorganisms. These underground networks, based on diversity and interdependence, have evolved over millions of years, securing sustainable well-being for all stakeholders.
RhiZone[M-Other] was realised in the frame of the SPUN Expedition: Mycorrhizal Wealth of East Carpathians. The focus of the scientific research was the mycobiome biodiversity of the rhizosphere of the monumental trees (so-called "mother trees") and their role in sustaining natural ecosystems, especially in the buffer zone of the Bieszczady National Park. It is an area of exceptional biological and cultural importance, on the border of Poland, Ukraine and Slovakia.
“I was surrounded by the beech-fir forest, which has dominated this area for hundreds of thousands of years, survived even the ice age. The experience of a deep time of nature, a strong feeling of belonging to the processes that exceed my individual being, was a driving force behind “RhiZone-Mother” - an imaginative portal to the dynamic ecosystem of profound holobiosis.”
The title RhiZone: [M-Other] underlines relations “m(e) – other” / “m(ycorrhiza) – other”, as well as origins and continuity expressed in the notion of “mother”.
The artistic narrative is based on the documentary material from the Expedition (2023).
The duration of both video and VR is 6 min.30 sec.
The installation embraces 3D stereoscopic projection and a VR stand.
Space: darkened room with white wall/screen for projection,
Equipment: 3D projector & glasses, sound system/speakers, VR, computer & monitor,
Artwork’s website: https://artscience-node.com/art-mycorrhizal-wealth-of-karpaty-spun-expedition-joanna-hoffmann/

The artistic workshop: “The Breath of the Soil: Memory Nexus” explores relations between soil ecosystems and humans through the language of smell. The smell of soil, produced by microbial life and chemical processes, carries ecological knowledge while evoking personal emotions and memories that shape our identities and bonds with the environment.
The workshop is rooted in the Horizon Europe / Mission Soil project: SPIN-FERT.
Within 90 minutes, participants are guided through a collective experience combining science, art and memory. The session starts with an introduction to soil health challenges and analysis. Participants then smell soil samples and record memories triggered by the scents. These reflections are clustered into four groups, serving as bases for creating a collaborative “RNA memory molecule”—a 3D molecular-poetic model symbolising soil as the basis of life. The model is later printed in bioplastic and returned to the soil, recalling circular processes in nature and soil economy. The memory molecule is also archived as part of an interactive online collection.
Goals
To raise awareness of soil as a fundamental resource, central to biodiversity and human well-being.
To cultivate empathy for soil through sensory, emotional, and cultural engagement.
To demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary art-science methodologies in addressing complex environmental challenges.
Expected Outcomes
A collective “RNA memory molecule” as a physical artefact and digital archive.
An insight into soil ecosystems and EU Mission Soil.
Enhanced environmental awareness and appreciation of soil as a living biological and cultural medium.
Inspiration for participants to integrate creative, participatory methods into their own fields of research, education, or community engagement.

Interested participants to meet in front of Invasive species artwork in Foyer A1 for short round of exchange with artists

interested participants to meet in front of Invasive species artwork in Foyer A1 for short round of exchange with artists