A work by the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure Inspired by its late founder, the great artist and creative thinker Newton Harrison 

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Sensorium is both a work of art and science that sets out to synthesize the survival problems that the world ocean faces in our emerging heat shocked future. We believe that new and creative answers to questions regarding the ocean’s ability to regenerate and return to ecological well-being will emerge from integrating core artistic concepts and creative strategies with current scientific resources and modeling, generating a new synthesis that builds on the strengths of the underlying science and the perspective of the artistic experience. These thoughts underpin the design and the work of Sensorium.

 

Sensorium is not a computer game nor an entertainment medium. Sensorium will start as an educational tool and continually develop to become a communication laboratory, one that challenges its visitors to investigate phenomena by asking questions to listen and heighten their awareness. In so doing we hope to exercise a new way of thinking and acting in response to the requests from the Life Web that is in crisis. 

 

»Everything is interrelated«, as Alexander von Humboldt phrased it, and this interrelation includes ecosystems, humankind as well as the arts and sciences – natural sciences, ethnology, information technology and architecture.

 

Sensorium follows this holistic approach as a matter of principle providing the means for new thinking, insight and action: Sensorium takes a generalist approach scanning the whole in all cases, becoming a specialist as circumstances require.

 

This work is inspired by the late Eco-Art Pioneer, Emeritus Professor Newton Harrison (UCSD) & Research Professor (UCSC) and conceived by the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure, based at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

 

The team implementing and developing the project includes Distinguished Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin Ph.D., Director, The AlloSphere @ UCSB, Juliano Calil Ph.D., Virtual Planet Technologies, Center for Force Majeure Director Joshua Harrison, Co-Director Kai Reschke and Petra Kruse Ph.D. (both also Directors of the European Center for the Force Majeure).