Art, Science and the Dying Sea

I am currently researching the transdisciplinarity of art, science and nature, fuelling my own practice on the degradation of the world’s coral reefs and immediate marine ecologies.

Transdisciplinarity was a theory first introduced by Jean Piaget in 1970, director of the International Bureau of Education, and founder of the Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva (the theory of knowledge). The term has been defined by Basarab Nicolescu, Romanian Theoretical Physicist, and founder of The International Centre for Transdisciplinary Research, through three postulates: “The existence of levels of reality, the logic included middle, and complexity. In the presence of several levels of reality the space between the disciplines and beyond disciplines is full of information” Transdisciplinarity sets out to understand the present world beyond the education of science, using a crossover of disciplines, unlike multidisciplinarity which uses separate disciplines mutually but not interactively.

I also wish to include the theories of chaos and randomness, to enhance the ideas of fragility, and the implications that slight environmental fluctuations have on the marine eco system.

In my work I aim to use science and amalgamate it with my art based practise to produce visual interpretations on symbiotic relations between marine animals, algae’s and reef ecology, encompassing the negative effects of climate change and human interference. In doing so I hope to raise awareness of the fragile state of our ocean habitats, and that the issue deserves as much attention as the melting ice caps and the destruction of rain forests.

I strongly believe that science alone cannot solve the issue of climate change, neither can art nor any other single discipline for that matter. Only using transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary practises will we be able to move forwards, and limit the damage humans have already done.