ArtScience x Blended Intensive Programme - ReTune: Environmental Interference
In the week of 11-15 November 2024, the blended intensive programme (BIP) "ReTune: Environmental Interference" was organised by lecturers of the BA ArtScience department and International Affairs office as part of the ArtScience elective European Affairs. It was attended by around thirty students and professors representing 3 academic institutions:
- KABK Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (Netherlands)
- Iceland University of the Arts (Iceland)
- École supérieure d'arts & médias de Caen/Cherbourg.
The idea of the project was to examine our relationship with the environment through creative, artistic, and scientific interventions. Retune signifies a harmonious recalibration in response to environmental interference, acknowledging the urgent need to address pressing ecological challenges.
Collaboration across disciplines
In this international collaboration, students did research and collaborated across disciplines in projects that ranged from eco-conscious artworks and installations to scientific endeavours that harness technology for environmental monitoring and conservation.
Approaching from a meta media perspective, the lecturers involved encouraged the students to critically engage with environmental issues through diverse lenses, for instance by mapping sustainability principles onto artistic and scientific practices.
This project opened the notion of reclaiming harmony amidst environmental disruption. The excursions to the Zandmotor in Kijkduin, and the Marker Wadden in the Markermeer, invited students to consider the impact of man-made nature on ecoystems and propelled them to envision alternative pathways towards ecological resilience. All participants embraced this call by nurturing a culture of critical inquiry and experiences.
Artistic interventions
In particular, artistic interventions played a crucial role in the ReTune process. Students got acquainted with ecological art practices that raise awareness, provoke reflection, and challenge conventional perspectives on nature. By integrating artistic processes with scientific principles students developed projects that connect audiences in meaningful dialogues about symbiocene environments.
The students also engaged in collaborative interdisciplinary research, design projects, and local initiatives aimed at re-imagining (non) human interactions with nature. Furthermore, students developed holistic strategies to look at environmental interferences, promote bio-diversity conservation, and cultivate sustainable lifestyles. They will develop these holistic strategies further in the second edition of this blended intensive programme, planned in Reykjavik in the spring of 2025.
The students wrapped this project by setting up mini installations in which all findings and artistic practices where incorporated raging from sound, image, poetry, drawings, 3D scans.
The topic raised interesting philosophical questions. How do we retune ourselves and find symbiosis with nature? It also provided a good opportunity for students to practise translating their findings and research into an experience for the wider public. Their research and installations will be also be showcased in the third edition of this blended intensive programme in Caen, during the Interstice Media Festival, which will take place in December 2025.