24/04 2024
OPEN APPLICATIONS | The Sea Sees Us: Speculative Design Workshop
Metamedia Association in collaboration with The Design of Visual Communications Department (Arts Academy in Split) is organizing a speculative design workshop under the title The Sea Sees Us. The workshop will take place during the 26th edition of Media Mediterranea festival, from 27 May to 1 June 2024 in the gallery of the Association of Istrian Architects – DAI SAI in Pula, Croatia, and will be led by designer and marine scientist Skye Morét (Portland, Oregon, USA).
// Workshop Context
While gazing up at the figures of the sailor and the swimmer, the ocean has a different perspective of time, of scale, and of interconnection. This speculative design workshop will explore and connect us to our future on a blue planet through design that provokes and sparks engagement today. Many see the ocean as resource, as political, as carbon sink, as transportation, as refuge, as kinship, as potential cure, as wild agent, and as imaginative space. But how does the sea see us? When we invert the periscope and see an alien, cerulean volume, we know our human understanding pales in comparison to the ocean’s complexity. How might our finally taking the ocean’s perspective help us imagine the future?
Through a speculative lens, the workshop will investigate critical marine thresholds, sensing devices, and imaginative frameworks of the Anthropocene with an ecofeminist and interdisciplinary approach. We will engage with empathy for a future ocean and its myriad inhabitants and will interrogate the promise of digital solutions in an analog, aqueous world. From coastal Antarctic robots and Pacific deep-sea mining to Mediterranean plastic pollution, ocean farming, remote sensing, digital twins, and more, we will employ speculative design to interrogate objects and materials within these scenarios and ecosystems from the viewpoint of the sea. We will share these interrogations in a final public exhibition and presentation that collectively asks, ‘In a radical ocean future, how will the sea see us?’
// General information
The call is addressing a diverse range of participants, from students to young professionals in the fields of design, art, media, marine sciences, ecology, anthropology, sociology, etc., ages 18-35. The working language of the workshop is English, fair fluency in spoken English is thus expected. Participation in the workshop is free of charge. Accommodation expenses are fully covered for all accepted participants by the organizers. Food and travel expenses are not covered and are at the expense of the participants themselves. Refreshments will be provided during the workshop.
// Mentor
Skye Morét is a designer and marine scientist. Her diverse background on the ocean—having sailed 100,000 km around the globe—fuels her abiding belief in the power of art and design to engage with the ecological complexities and dependencies of our planet. Skye’s work uses data-driven design and visual storytelling to investigate marine ontologies, specifically in the contexts of swiftly changing ecosystems and climate justice. She was previously a Senior Researcher on TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Archive project, a Design Director at data visualization studio Periscopic, and Skye led the Collaborative Design + Design Systems graduate program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (USA) for the past three years. Her installations have been exhibited at Science Gallery Dublin, the European Parliament in Brussels, and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, among other venues. Skye has authored multidisciplinary publications in Science, Slate, Migrant Journal, Popular Science, Roads & Kingdoms, and Public Radio International, among others. www.skyemoret.com
// Applications
To participate in the workshop, please fill out the application form. For more information, contact us at kontakt.radionice@gmail.com. Final date for application is May 15, 2024. The number of participants is limited. All applicants will receive notification of a selection decision by email on May 20, 2024. Once selected and notified, the participants will be expected to respond to all communications by the organizers duly.
// Design
Oleg Šuran
