Sea-Water Amplification (SWA) is a hybrid environment for education and research. It currently operates on the Portuguese coast of Praia de Norte and on the island of Pico in the Azores archipelago.

Source NASA

As a collective which is primarily focused on art-research practice, we are able to cultivate intercultural values by artistic means. Art’s great value lies in its ability to remain open and accommodate diverse perspectives on the world, overcoming language barriers and connecting various cultural and aesthetic preferences.

The education and research environment Sea-Water Amplification (SWA) aims to develop, in a small transdisciplinary team of three people, interspecies communication and multi-sensory methods of cognition in relation to the outdoor pedagogy and epistemology of seascape. The epistemology of seascape in this project is not only a critical knowledge of the ocean or other marine-aquatic environments, but also encompasses a multitude of events and ideas that are organized according to how they move and interact, emphasizing the recognition of our own perspective, mode of perception, and place within a dynamic, constantly moving interface. Multiple ocean transformations are perceived and explored on many levels and in many different ways, each mobilizing specific knowledge and referring to different conceptual frameworks, different imaginations, tools, and means. We explore how diverse the representational practices that make up the world are, and we seek to deepen these further.

Our interest is attracted by porosity – the permeable boundary between land and water. Ocean transformations are partly seen, listened to, felt, understood, interpreted and questioned. Certain kinds of media, in relation to the aquatic environment, allow us to co-create communities and shape identities that we may never have had the chance to touch. Working together, we strive to develop tools and ways of cognition that are available and open to the widest possible range of co-creators. One of the requirements for ocean cognition and study, therefore, is to pay increased attention not only to the specifics of the ocean itself, but also to the particular observer/perceiver that interacts with the oceans, or with other marine-aquatic environments.

The educational and research practice of the Sea-Water Amplification (SWA) environment seeks to develop and deepen thinking with oceans and or other marine-aquatic environments. We do not approach the ocean as something absolutely different, but as an intelligent dynamic environment, a boundary of perceptibility that we know only through the many accumulated moments that are recorded through our bodies.

The current research team consists of: Aleš Čermák (artist, transdisciplinary researcher), Jindřiška Křivánková (choreographer, performer, lector), Andreia Gonçalves Sousa (scientist and educator).

• The hybrid environment for education and research Sea-Water Amplification (SWA) is created in collaboration with the art-research platform Ausdruck Books Hybrid Publishing Platform.