Making the Invisible Ocean Visible:! Artistic strategies of public art and design projects concerned with ocean sustainability challenges and their potential of sparking off behavioural change.
Life on earth depends on an intact marine ecosystem. The fact that humanity is destroying the oceans in unrecoverable ways is well known, but society fails to step in and take the necessary measures. Simply providing the public with informations does not lead to a sustainable behavior. Unfortunately, effektive solutions in reestablishing a symbiotic relationship between humanity and the seas have to include fundamental changes in human behavior. Sustainability scientists therefore agree, that sustainability challenges require new ways of knowledge production. The visualisation of yet invisible processes, the use of everyday language and the emotional involvement of people will be crucial. New approaches therefore have to be transdisciplinary, community based, interactive and participatory. Many of the demanded approaches are already intuitively practised by artists working in the public realm. The reengagement of artists in society and its challenges is a major trend. The aim of the proposed practise based PhD is to research the impact of public art and design projects on the perception of ocean sustainability in special and environmental destruction with its consequences for human rights in general. The strategies of involving people in art projects concerned with sustainability challenges will be analysed and the projects potential of provoking transformative changes will be rated. Central element of the practical research will be the curation of an interdisciplinary and multi-format symposium / festival concerned with the described artistic projects. The close link between art / design and the public could be the missing link between science and the public and has to be researched in order to promote (ocean) sustainability.
