Melting Art, Creativity and Marine Sciences to foster Ocean Literacy in the Mediterranean area

ended

ART4SEA aims to create a transnational and interdisciplinary cooperation program that involves artists, creative professionals, digital media experts, and marine scientists to co-produce a combination of physical and digital artworks focused on raising the public awareness about Ocean Degradation and Climate Change, thus motivating people to assume a more environmentally friendly behaviour in their everyday life. ART4SEA will engage 24 international artists, selected through an open call, that will be trained by the project staff about: a) the main environmental challenges that marine scientists are facing; b) Ocean Literacy methods; c) sustainable practices in arts; d) digital technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality. A distributed residency program will take place in 3 small Med islands (Ustica in Italy, Alonissos in Greece and Gozo in Malta) where artists will be inspired by the stunning natural environment, the old seafaring traditions and the direct relations with the locals. They will be also motivated to integrate their artworks with the marine, natural and architectural landscapes of the islands, thus creating an open-air and underwater museum that could characterize the three Islands as lighthouses of the Ocean Conservation. Also, the creation of born-digital artworks will be stimulated, even for those artists that have poor or no experience with digital techniques thus supporting their digital transition. Physical creations will be also digitized thus allowing the production of a fully virtual exhibition (enjoyable both on the web and the metaverse) containing all the ART4SEA artworks. This process will be supported by an ad-hoc platform that will include an authoring tool to facilitate the construction of the virtual space. Four exhibitions and a final grand event will be organized in combination with workshops and other participative initiatives addressed to maximise the public engagement and to involve the widest range of