SLOWNESS
.Science, arts and technology for the living ocean
An Interspecies Communication Project - the exploration of a common language. The focus of the research conducted by Ocean Seed is the exploration of the field of interspecies communication in order to shed light onto the subtle mechanisms and bonds connecting us to the other reigns of the Biosphere, with an emphasis on the oceans and cetacean communities.
Why Slowness?
Communication derives from the latin word communicare, which means sharing or bringing together.
Before an exchange of information can take place, there exists, first and foremost, an intention - the intention of togetherness, fueled by the desire to understand and embrace the other’s sentienty.
This innate capacity is being eroded by the ever-accelerating pace of our growth-oriented society. Time, more than ever, has become a scarcity and a commodity. There is a real urgency to reclaim a certain form of slowness and re-inhabit time * honoring the legacy of our ancestors, human and non-human, while reaching out to the future in order to gain a real perspective on the impact of our decisions and actions on our immediate surroundings and the Earth’s environment.
With Slowness, our aim is to explore interfaces of communication with marine animals and reveal different expressions of togetherness - through music, movement, mimicry... - to re-invent our relationship with Nature and allow for a meeting of hearts and minds to emerge with non-human species.
Bio-Electromagnetic Field
When meeting another species, it is mostly our intuitive, sensing bodies that are at work. We become aware of a form of transmission talking place - a passing of information, as if the other’s presence infused us with a primordial wisdom, providing a glimpse of the wholeness of the relationship they nurture with their environment.
Such an experience is of course deeply subjective and hardly quantifiable.
However, with the support of novel technology, we can now delve into the invisible and translate into quantifiable and objective measurements the inner experience of inter-species encounters. By interpreting the minute fluctuations of our electro-bio fields - both of the human and the non-human protagonists - we can start shedding light on the impact of our emotional state on other beings and the living environment.
Upon realizing a battery of tests with human beings and terrestrial animals (cows and horses), the idea of employing the technology underwater, to our encounters with marine life, came to mind. Here was the opportunity to reconcile feeling with fact, the rational with the intuitive. The technology would allow us to apply science as a way of knowing and understanding what our sensing bodies felt so vividly. It would offer tangible existence to a language, which was heretofore invisible and expand our exploration into the science at the heart of all interactions.
We hope these results can serve as guideposts to help us grow into conscious participants in this ever-evolving web of relationships. Provide opportunities to see our place in Nature with new eyes and inspire in each of us a wider sense of identity as a unique and integral part of the living body of Earth.*
Please email us at: jean-marie@ghislainjm.com for detailed information on the technology and our data collection method.
* Coming back to Life By Joanna Macy and Molly Brown