About

Project

Our water-based environments are facing major challenges. We are all individually and collectively responsible for their protection and health. This requires altering our relationship with our rivers, seas, and oceans, through systemic changes in our lifestyles and policies.

Blue Genes is about the young blue generations. It reflects that our genes have evolved and will evolve through both hereditary symbiosis between different organisms and the epigenetic influence of our environment. But its meaning goes much beyond, as life implies an interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social and cultural phenomena. Living beings do not only learn, react and evolve to the environment but they also co-produce and live the environment, their cognition and consciousness develops by interacting with the environment. This environmental cognition or action (enaction) defines how we live, as there is not a gap between sensing, feeling and being.

The Blue Genes community are people who share a common harmonic vision of our belonging to nature and to the Ocean as its central and essential component. We are concerned about the state of our oceans and want to find new ways to increase our connection and engagement with the marine environment, via the Arts & Sciences.

Goals

The idea of a Blue Genes community arose in early 2022 from the preparation of a research proposal on the engagement of the young generations with the Ocean and waters. Following these preliminary contacts, we met for the first time on October 27, 2022. This first exploratory online workshop was a bottom-up way to share ideas about increasing peoples’ connections with our marine environment and ecosystems. Four main ambitions were collectively agreed upon and they became our goals.

New Rituals

Find new collective rituals to connect with the Ocean. A platform of sensorial practices of knowledge that aim to increase the connection of people with the Ocean.

Share knowledge

Apply innovative techniques to share knowledge and raise awareness. Create a safe space to share innovative ideas, projects or initiatives that will make a difference, bringing marine conservation goals to a broader public.

Methodologies & Tools

Share practical skills, tools, methodologies and strategies to create a source of innovative case-studies and successful initiatives.

INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Find new ways to learn together within an interdisciplinary network of arts & sciences. Create a community that shares a passion for nature, based on design and arts that foster marine sciences, finding collaborations, sharing knowledge and carrying out research.

Partners

The Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM) is a leading marine centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and is its largest dedicated to marine research. Under the motto “Ocean Science for a Healthy Planet,” the ICM conducts frontier research and fosters both knowledge and technology transfer on topics related to ocean and climate interactions, conservation and sustainable use of marine ecosystems, and impact mitigation of natural and anthropogenic hazards. In-depth knowledge, determined action, and coordinated management are essential to confronting these global challenges, thereby driving sustainable development of humankind.

Josep Lluis Pelegrí

Senior Researcher

Ifigeneia G. Leontsini

Community manager

Carine Simon

Citizen science, outreach
& education

Vanessa Balagué

Scientific Culture

Noemí Fuster

Community engagement

María Elena Carbajal

Citizen engagement

BAU is a College of Art and Design located in Barcelona. It is affiliated to the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia, , which offers undergraduate, graduate and PhD programs within the European Higher Education System. BAU's mission is to become a driving force of knowledge and innovation at the service of society. It focuses on the attention given to students and their global training so that they incorporate the values of respect, equity, social commitment and responsibility towards people and professional rigour. BAU Research carries out its research work as a creative exploration at the intersection of art, science and design. A way to face the challenges of contemporary society through hybrid, critical and imaginative methodologies. Blue Genes is a project by the research unit IMP (Instituto de Materialidades Políticas).

Marina Martínez

Research intern