# Sensing the Ocean through the Exquisite Corpse
## ArtScience method

Julia Jung, Aleksandra Cherkasheva, Charlotte Corporeau, Jayalaxshmi Mistry, Diego Narvaez, Alison Laurie Neilson, Dwight Owens, Camille Parrain, David J Riddell, Anna Zivian

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Julia Jung, Aleksandra Cherkasheva, Charlotte Corporeau, Jayalaxshmi Mistry, Diego Narvaez, et al.. Sensing the Ocean through the Exquisite Corpse ArtScience method. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 2025, 13, 10.1525/elementa.2024.00051. hal-05451140

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PRACTICE BRIDGE

# Sensing the Ocean through the Exquisite Corpse ArtScience method

Julia Jung<fnref n="1" />,<fnref n="2" />,* , Aleksandra Cherkasheva<fnref n="3" />, Charlotte Corporeau<fnref n="4" />, Jayalaxshmi Mistry<fnref n="2" />, Diego Narvaez<fnref n="5" />, Alison Laurie Neilson<fnref n="6" />, Dwight Owens<fnref n="7" />, Camille Parrain<fnref n="8" />, David J. Riddell<fnref n="7" />, and Anna Zivian<fnref n="9" />

The current interconnected crises of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and lack of justice and equity suggest that existing mainstream actions are inadequate and that different approaches are needed. Using a participatory action research approach, we aimed to demonstrate the potential of the asynchronous group-based "Exquisite Corpse" art process to catalyze meaningful relationships within an interdisciplinary group of ocean ArtScience practitioners. We conducted two action cycles and iterations of this process and a final action cycle of collective meaning-making. The first iteration took place in Fall 2021 with 7 participants focused on the topic of "ocean hypoxia"; the second focused on "extreme ocean events" with 10 participants in Spring 2022. The third action cycle in Spring 2023 resulted in the themes of "curiosity and connecting with people in a safe(r) space," "semi-ambiguous seed as a catalyst," "space for experimentation and creation," "sharing findings and experiences," "collective creation of connected artworks," "finding commons and common ground(s)," "giving, receiving and opening," "developing relationships," and "boundaries navigating fluidity." These themes describe the benefits that can arise from the Exquisite Corpse process on both individual and community levels of practice that could be extrapolated more widely and illustrate the potential contributions of ocean ArtScience on a systemic level. On an individual level, participants gained new scientific, artistic or personal insights, expanded their practices and deeply connected with other participants. At the community level, we argue that participatory exercises like the Exquisite Corpse process can increase relational trust, generating community-wide benefits. Additionally, activating pluralistic perspectives can help communities create more welcoming spaces for diverse participants. These emerging relationships have strengthened this budding community of practice, with further projects and opportunities growing from the endeavor. Our project also highlights how ArtScience approaches can help meet the challenges of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

**Keywords:** ArtScience, Transdisciplinarity, Participatory action research, Ocean Science, Exquisite Corpse, UN Ocean Decade

## 1. Introduction

"Imagine someone saying, 'Our fundamental situation is joyful.' Now imagine believing it.

*Or forget belief: imagine feeling, even if for a moment, that it were true.*
(Nelson, 2009, p. 89)

To address the current interconnected crises of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and lack of justice and equity, existing mainstream actions are inadequate; we need different approaches. Creative perspectives are especially important for our ocean, which is often neglected in general public discourse, despite the ocean being the

<footnote n="1">¹Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Kelowna, BC, Canada</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Cobra Collective CIC, Egham, UK</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Sopot, Poland</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴Ifremer, Université de Brest, CNRS, IRD, LEMAR, Plouzané, France</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵Visual Artist, www.diegonarvaezh.com</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶CICS.NOVA, NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Ocean Networks Canada, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸LIENS, UMR 7266, University of La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹Ocean Nexus affiliated researcher, Kingston, RI, USA</footnote>

<footnote>* Corresponding author:
Email: jjeduocean@gmail.com</footnote>
largest habitat on Earth and a crucial driver of our climate. Interest in the ocean as a space for increased commercial activity has been growing (Jouffray et al., 2020; Hallgren and Hansson, 2021), building on a misguided narrative tradition that casts the ocean as a frontier, something to be discovered, explored, colonized, and exploited for human use (Steinberg, 2018; Germond-Duret, 2022). The degraded state of the ocean today, including rapidly warming waters, declining fisheries, and a quickening pace of biodiversity loss, urges us to help rebuild the ocean's resilience (Duarte et al., 2020; Halpern, 2020).

Rebuilding the ocean's resilience will require transfor-
mative approaches to ocean science and marine conserva-
tion that address the current barriers to justice, equity,
diversity, and inclusion in those fields (Johri et al.,
2021). We find those barriers somewhat mirror the
exploitative perspective on the ocean. They include the
ongoing impacts of colonial and neocolonial perceptions
and actions (Datchoua-Tirvaudey et al., 2023; de Vos et al.,
2023), which echo and reinforce the structural racism
pervasive in many fields of science (Weinreb and Sun,
2023). Other barriers include the lack of diversity in many
ocean science and marine conservation spaces, which
reflects broader trends among environmental NGOs and
foundations (e.g., Green 2.0, 2024). This lack of diversity
limits engagement and success of marginalized and over-
burdened groups such as early-career researchers, Black,
Indigenous, and people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals
and women (Johri et al., 2021). Addressing those barriers
would not only make marine research more equitable but
also more effective by increasing policy implementation
and possibilities for innovation and cross-cultural
exchange through drawing on diverse and context-
specific forms of knowledge (Belhabib, 2021; Johri et al.,
2021; Datchoua-Tirvaudey et al., 2023; Spalding et al.,
2023). Traditionally, the majority of ocean science has
been conducted from the point of view of a single con-
ceptual world, a so-called "one-world world," deriving
from a Eurocentric ontology of modernity (Law, 2015).
This one-world world of ocean science is dominated by
the natural sciences (Law, 2015; Bennett, 2019; McKinley
et al., 2022). The need for a paradigm shift in ocean sci-
ence and marine conservation is echoed in the establish-
ment of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable
Development (UNESCO-IOC, 2021), which calls for
increased co-creation and transdisciplinary research (Clau-
det et al., 2020; Franke et al., 2023). As aptly summarized
by Adrienne Maree Brown: "There is such urgency in the
multitude of crises we face, it can make it hard to remem-
ber that in fact it is urgency thinking (urgent constant
unsustainable growth) that got us to this point, and that
our potential success lies in doing deep, slow, intentional
work" (Brown, 2017, p. 114). In the case of ocean science
and marine conservation, this work means acknowledging
the ocean's ontological multiplicity by making space for
a plurality of coexisting narratives (Neilson and São Mar-
cos, 2019), and linked interdisciplinary, multisite, and
multiscale methodologies (Mazé et al., 2018), that aim
to address those barriers to justice, equity, and inclusion.

The interdisciplinary initiatives known collectively as Ocean ArtScience can make substantial contributions toward addressing the challenges of the UN Ocean Decade and beyond (Jung et al., 2022), especially concerning relationships. A recent review on behalf of UNESCO suggests Challenge 10 ("Change Humanity's Relationship with the Ocean") to be reworded to "Restore Society's Relationship with the Ocean" (Glithero et al., 2024, p. 9). Calling for more inclusion, the review cited the concept of "Two-Eyed Seeing," which was brought forward as a guiding principle by Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall, who is the designated voice on environmental matters in Unama'ki-Cape Breton (Bartlett et al., 2012). However, the review neglected to engage with the power issues that secure dominant norms while excluding other ways of knowing. ArtScience initiatives can transform power inequities for innovative and more pluralistic forms of transdisciplinary collaboration. As detailed in the ArtScience manifesto (Root-Bernstein et al., 2011), ArtScience aims to create sustainable futures through collaborations where different knowledges can be integrated in an open and exploratory way (Root-Bernstein et al., 2011). Breaking the perceived binary between art and science, art-based research can help us to create space for the engagement with and representation of multiple contexts and plural perspectives in an emotionally engaging way (Strand et al., 2022), drawing on the idea of a *pluriverse* (Escobar, 2018). The pluriverse is based on the Zapatista understanding of the world as "*un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos* - a world in which many worlds fit" (Escobar, 2016, p. 20). Recognizing that people have different experiences of reality (Blaser, 2013), the pluriverse can help to promote anti-colonial thinking by inviting a divergence, plurality, and multiplicity of knowledge systems and perspectives into ourselves and allowing them to coexist (Trisos et al., 2021).

Adopting a worldview based on the concept of the pluriverse also means listening to the ocean's perspective (Christian, 2013; Escobar, 2016) and reflecting on how our engagement with the ocean is shaped by our terrestrial perspective (Jue, 2020). Moving from a terrestrial viewpoint, a new "seascape ecology" approaches the ocean from a perspective inspired by art and painting, suggesting that we observe a seascape through our senses. It prompts us to engage with the ocean from a holistic perspective as a complex socio-environmental space beyond its biophysical components (Pittman, 2018). This approach highlights the plural contributions that artistic perspectives bring to imagining new ocean narratives, which, in turn, depend on critically and collectively reimagining the way we conduct ocean science and marine conservation toward more equitable ways of collaboration (Bennett, 2019; Lubchenco and Gaines, 2019; Spalding et al., 2023). Linking back to our underlying ontologies and toward a pluriverse, away from the one-world world, in order to build more equitable futures, we "must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds" (Muñoz, 2009, p. 1). To do so, we suggest in this work that we need tools
of imagination that are imbued with playfulness and
space for experimentation.

The benefits of these approaches for transdisciplinary collaborations have gained increasing attention (Tosca et al., 2021; Jung et al., 2022; Blaeser et al., 2023; Whittaker, 2023). ArtScience collaborations can help to surface the plurality of value systems, narratives, and ontologies held by different groups regarding the ocean (Brennan, 2018). Beyond surfacing those values and perspectives, ArtScience collaborations can provide new ways of understanding and visualizing the ocean as a “multiplicity of spatialities” that “exceed liquid encounters alone” (Peters and Steinberg, 2019). These quotations refer to the many different ocean meanings held by different people, who may or may not touch its waters. ArtScience offers opportunities to bring the ocean closer to people and enact a pluriverse by demonstrating that there is not one right way of seeing and connecting to the ocean. Unlike interdisciplinary and comparative research, ArtScience can bring an international community together in ways that bypass historic and contemporary power inequities to dialogue and cocreate knowledge. This more inclusive rebuilding of humanity’s relationship with the ocean addresses Challenge 10 of the Ocean Decade (UNESCO-IOC, 2021).

A number of Ocean ArtScience collaborations have already successfully bridged art and science and put this more inclusive and pluralistic approach into practice (e.g., Paterson et al., 2020; Tosca et al., 2021). Our collaboration follows a similar path by addressing the futures we want to see not as “some distant place or a time to come, but the futures we find already enfolded in the present” (Crone et al., 2022, p. 13). To build this bridge between art and science in practice, we enacted the *Exquisite Corpse* method, a group-based, asynchronous art process, to explore our relationships with the ocean and each other. This method (described below) derives from a Surrealist approach that allows co-creation and open-ended exploration of a topic and the emerging group relationships. We chose this focus on relationships in line with the idea of emergent strategy (Brown, 2017), based on an understanding that the strength of our insights comes from “the strength of our relationships, which could only be measured by their depth. Scaling up would mean going deeper, being more vulnerable and more empathetic” (Brown, 2017, p. 8).

In the following, we describe and reflect on the process,
including our impressions and insights from this Ocean
ArtScience project from 2021 to 2024 based on the Exqui-
site Corpse method. We start by describing the practical-
ities of our project origin, followed by our methodology
and associated theoretical approaches, which are partici-
patory action research, the Exquisite Corpse method itself,
and projective techniques. Then we present our position-
ality statements; such statements have become a common
addition to manuscripts in the social sciences and are
increasingly included in other branches of sciences. They
have potential for fostering reflexivity, accountability, and
transparency about power dynamics to support equity,
especially in transdisciplinary collaborations (Cadman
et al., 2024). Next, we describe the process and outcomes
of each action cycle. We focus on describing the process in

detail because the benefits described at the end of this
publication are specific to our group and linked to our
positionalities. However, the general process itself and the
ways of engaging in such ArtScience practices could be
adapted by others leading to similar experiences. In the
section “Emergent Themes,” we discuss our insights into
this process, its methods, and associated benefits in the
context of ArtScience collaborations more broadly. In the
conclusion, we summarize the main outcomes of this pro-
ject and its relevance for scientists and interested
ArtScience practitioners in the context of the UN Ocean
Decade. Finally, we conclude with a section on our grati-
tudes and undercurrents to highlight the role they play for
transdisciplinary collaborations.

**2. Methodology and approaches**

2.1. Project origin

This collaboration emerged organically from a series of ArtScience endeavors between the authors Jung and Owens, which grew out of an ArtScience webinar “Ocean Art, Ocean Science: How 3 artists are using science to express care for the ocean” organized as part of the #VirtualBlueDecade initiative (Virtual Blue Decade, 2019–2021). Through a research paper exploring the role of ArtScience initiatives for the UN Ocean Decade (Jung et al., 2022) and the development of an innovative #SciArt session at the Ocean Sciences Meeting 2022 (Owens et al., 2022), the question of how to strengthen an emerging community of ocean scientists arose. Concurrently, Jung had been piloting the Exquisite Corpse project within the Cobra Collective (a social enterprise focused on using participatory visual methods to address sustainability challenges) and the Marine Social Sciences network (Jung, 2022). In both instances, the Exquisite Corpse process helped to strengthen community relationships by exploring a topic in a fun and emotionally engaging way. Jung was originally introduced to the Exquisite Corpse project through a group of friends, who casually “played” it as a game and creative side-project in their personal lives. Inspired by the ongoing ArtScience endeavors and particularly the wish to put the theoretical concepts from Jung et al. (2022) more into practice, Jung suggested exploring the potential of the Exquisite Corpse method more formally through a joint project. As members of the Cobra Collective, Jung and Mistry had also been looking to expand the repertoire of the Collective more toward art-based methods. Like many other arts-based researchers, we wanted our explorations to be useful (Chilton and Leavy, 2020), and in this case, specifically useful to broadening the perspectives of the scientific community. At an immediate level, we wanted this project to strengthen our ArtScience community emerging from previous projects and disparate initiatives. More broadly for this article and on a theoretical level, our objectives were to develop the Exquisite Corpse process as a participatory method that could be adapted by others to build relationships and surface values on complex topics generally and to gain insights into the contribution of art-based methods to the UN Ocean Decade by exploring extreme ocean events through this creative and emotionally engaging process.
## 2.2. Participatory action research

We used a participatory action research approach to create space for the emergence of possible individual and collective transformations (Kemmis et al., 2014). Participatory action research is an adaptive research framework that encourages co-creation and ongoing adjustment of the research process aiming to create transformative change (Kemmis et al., 2014; Bradbury et al., 2019). It can be used in combination with many different techniques that highlight the importance of knowledge gained through experience and working together. Research happens in cycles of planning, action, observation, and reflection. Each cycle aims to draw out emerging insights that are acted upon in consecutive cycles where the approach is adjusted based on reflections from the previous cycle (Kemmis et al., 2014). The action cycles from this project are shown in **Figure 1**. We conducted two cycles of the "Exquisite Corpse" process, described below, followed by a final cycle of collective meaning-making. This final cycle of our work was the one through which we conceived, drafted, reconceived, and revised this article.

We sought to explore the varieties of insights and transformations that could emerge from this type of collaboration. From the onset, we wanted to hold space for one another's different academic and practice-based interests and include them in the emerging process. Even though authors Jung and Owens initiated and facilitated the process, they also engaged as full participants, with the intention of strengthening the emerging Ocean ArtScience community of practice. They entered into these roles in full awareness that these types of potentially transformative processes require a form of vulnerability. By joining both as facilitators and full participants, they could authentically invite others to create a safer space together, where community and insights about ArtScience as well as the oceanic topics chosen for the Exquisite Corpse cycles could emerge.

## 2.3. The "Exquisite Corpse" method

The Exquisite Corpse is a group method to create a collection of connected artworks. It establishes a playful container for an emotionally engaging space where participants can collectively explore a topic through

a plurality of perspectives. Beyond exploration, the aim is to surface underlying values and emerging insights openly in a group setting.

The Exquisite Corpse method used in this project was developed by working writer Roz Ray in 2010 inspired by the art exercise pioneered by the Surrealists Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, André Breton, and Marcel Duchamp in the 1920s (Ray, 2025). In the original exercise, the surrealists wrote several lines of poetry on a piece of paper, then folded back what they had written so that only a single word or short phrase remained visible for the next participant as inspiration. The name "Exquisite Corpse" (cadavre exquis in French) was derived anecdotally from the first time they did this art exercise, which resulted in the line "the exquisite corpse will drink the new wine" (le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau). Recently, the Exquisite Corpse principle has gained popularity and inspired a range of ArtScience projects (de la Fuente, 2020; Januchowski-Hartley et al., 2022), including the one described in this article.

The asynchronous adaptation of the Exquisite Corpse method by Roz Ray that we used in this project differs from the original Surrealist exercises as well as other Exquisite Corpse methods in notable ways. We thus join a long history of Exquisite Corpse devotees and adopters, including artists Frida Kahlo, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gina Beavers, Eric Croes, and Simone Kahn (Gotthardt, 2018). Kahn reflects on her experience of using the Exquisite Corpse method saying "[w]e were at once recipients of and contributors to the joy of witnessing the sudden appearance of creatures none of us had foreseen, but which we ourselves had nonetheless created" (Kahn, 1998, p. 19). The process of playing also continually leads to new versions of enacting this method, as the whole Exquisite Corpse spirit is based on innovation, unpredictability, and collaboration (Gotthardt, 2018). Creation in the original Exquisite Corpse Surrealist method and in the version used by de la Fuente (2020) is more focused on random emergence, as each part of the drawing or sentence does not stand without the overall outcome.

In our project, we chose to invite a broad range of media by both scientists and artists to encourage a plurality of individual expressions. Starting from a common inspirational prompt, each participant creates an artwork; after 2 weeks, the works are exchanged between participants, each becoming a new prompt for a subsequent artwork. At the end of the process, all artworks are shared during a virtual "party" to reveal, review, and revel in the collective creation. In this version of the Exquisite Corpse method, creation is both collective and individual as each creation can stand on its own, as well as be a part of the overall outcome and process. In contrast to the approach taken by Januchowski-Hartley et al. (2022), our facilitators, Jung and Owens, were also active participants, as relationship-building among the group was one of the objectives. Even though our collaboration also took place during the first years of the Covid-19 pandemic, our approach was not a direct response to it. However, the lack of in-person meeting opportunities probably contributed to the urge to find connection in virtual spaces. Jung,

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** Overview of the action cycles of this project including topic and participants of each cycle. Each of the three action cycles followed the same pattern of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting on the given topic (in italics) where the insights gained from each cycle were incorporated in the following one.</figcaption></figure>
Owens, and Zivian belonged to the #VirtualBlueDecade initiative focused on promoting virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing. Therefore, the asynchronous component and longer timeline with the aim of building community virtually was a core conceptualization of the project from the beginning.

## 2.4. Projective techniques

From a research perspective, the Exquisite Corpse method can be classified as a projective technique (Jung, 2022). In this group of methods, participants are invited to project their feelings, thoughts, memories, and ideas onto an ambiguous stimulus (in this case, the scientific “seed” presented along with intentional ambiguities; Section 3.2) with the aim of surfacing their underlying attitudes, values, perspectives, and worldview (Lindzey, 1959; Rabin and Zlotogorski, 1981; Kitzinger and Powell, 1995). This connection between projection and internally held elements has been described with an adaptation of the “iceberg” metaphor linking individuals’ external behavior with their internalized worldview (Satir et al., 1991; Innes, 2002), as demonstrated in **Figure 2**. Through the Exquisite Corpse process, by switching between creating something and reflecting on another person’s creations, these internal elements are surfaced and shared among the group. Each participant’s perspectives are not compared directly but understood as noncompeting plural realities that can coexist.

## 2.5. Positionality statements

In line with our ethos and the approach of participatory action research and to situate the insights that have

emerged from our interactions, we provide context on our backgrounds and positionalities to eschew universal claims of our experience. As agents of knowledge production (Taylor, 2005), we come from multiple disciplines of natural and social sciences and diverse artistic practices. Our group is from many different and merged nationalities and cultural backgrounds, and we have convened online across the Atlantic to connect North America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Some of us work in higher education, others in government, private research institutions, non-governmental organizations, or community associations. This diversity means that we approach our collaboration from a range of circumstances that have affected our preferred ways and capacity to engage, and which are partly reflected in power differences within our group. Seeking more enjoyable interactions and meaningful outcomes for us as individuals, and as members of institutions and communities, is a common motivation for us (see Figure S1 for selected examples of our motivations and experiences). Along with recognition of our diverse positions and experiences of privilege, we identify as part of the “natural” living world and thereby require the same protection and care that we seek for the “ocean.” We see ourselves and each other as bodies of water that are part of the water cycle as well as the systems of neocolonial capitalism (Neimanis, 2019). We came together to decipher our connections especially via critical analysis of the systems that cause our own destruction and in which we are simultaneously complicit.

Given that one of our project aims was to strengthen the broader ocean ArtScience community through participation of artists and scientists involved in previous projects and disparate initiatives, we also see our practice of collective meaning creation as a “political act of transformation” (Neilson and Castro, 2016, p. 214). Due to our varied backgrounds and worldviews, it was important to us to embrace our differences as generative tensions and to view our collaboration as a performative ontological project that creates a *holding space* or microcosm for plurality (Gibson-Graham, 2008). While putting this collective aim into practice, we were thus mindful of our individual positionality statements.

Aleksandra Cherkasheva is a satellite oceanographer with a passion for combining art and science, living in Sopot, Poland. Her key art and science project was an oceanographic theater, in which participants engaged in the life of oceanic plankton and felt the ocean rhythms.

Alison Neilson is a university researcher who identifies as an able-bodied, white, English first-language speaking, cisgender female. Her ocean justice scholarship is done in collaboration with Portuguese-speaking small-scale fishing communities in the Azores Islands. Her struggles with the impacts of past trauma, while acknowledging the privileges she experiences compared to her local collaborators, inform her understanding of voice, knowledge creation, and the strength of collaborative art to elucidate complex power dynamics.

Anna Zivian identifies as a white, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual female now living on the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe as a second/third

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.** The Exquisite Corpse process for mediating between internal deeply held values and external behavior. This process (shown in dark blue) mediates between a person's internal deeply held values and external behavior by inviting them to project whatever comes up for them onto an ambiguous stimulus, then express internal elements through external artwork and elicit them further through collective responses and reflections. Iceberg icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com.</figcaption></figure>
generation Ashkenazi diaspora and first-generation unin-
vited resident, as well as in Italy. She has been working on
questions of knowledge, risk, decision-making, equity, and
justice, first from a Science and Technology Studies back-
ground, then within a white-led ocean conservation orga-
nization, and now as part of a social science research
collective working on ocean equity and justice. While
much of her professional work addresses ocean issues,
mountains, and desert are in her heart.

Camille Parrain is a French geographer living by or at sea, traveling the oceans and islands. Her transdisciplinary seascAPE approach connects her to senses, communities, and environment. The stream carries her from the Tropics to the Arctic, from the ocean to the mountains to flow through the diversity and interactions of people and places.

Charlotte Corporeau is a French scientist who has stud-
ied animal biology for 25 years. She has a background in
human physiology and applies her knowledge to study the
adaptation of marine organisms to global change. Her life
is in nature, with nature and for nature.

Dave Riddell comes to his work in science, education, and community as an Irish immigrant to unceded Lākʷəŋən territory. His experiences as a neuro- and genderqueer educator (and learner) and trauma survivor underpin his work both inside and outside of the classroom.

Diego Narvaez is a Mexican visual artist living on Vancouver Island, BC. He is interested in challenging the ways we define landscape, the environment, and nature. Recently, he has expanded his scope by participating in collaborations with people from different disciplines and backgrounds.

Dwight Owens presents as an able-bodied, white, late-
career, native English-speaking, cisgender male living as an
uninvited guest on unceded Lākʷəŋən territory. He is nei-
ther an artist nor a scientist, although his work collabora-
tions are principally grounded in both streams.

Jayalaxshmi Mistry identifies as a brown woman, environmental geographer, and a potter. Her work focuses on combining science and traditional knowledge, with a particular focus on Indigenous rights, fire management, and craft, and with self-determination as a core value.

Julia Jung identifies as a white, genderfluid, and queer German and early career ocean scientist currently living on the ancestral and unceded territory of the syilx Okanagan people. Dey have transitioned from marine biology to transdisciplinary ocean ArtScience with a focus on relationships within collaborations as well as between human and nonhuman entities.

3. Process

**3.1. Summary of our first two cycles**

Two groups gathered to enact two independent 6-week
Exquisite Corpse cycles in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.
Authors of this article participated in one or both cycles.

3.1.1. Topics

The Fall 2021 cycle focused on ocean hypoxia, which
refers to low levels of dissolved oxygen in seawater; severe
and sustained hypoxia diminishes fisheries productivity,
risks ecosystem collapse, and imposes significant societal
and economic costs (Breitburg et al., 2018). Coastal ocean

hypoxia can be caused by increased nutrient levels that
trigger excessive algal blooms (Diaz and Rosenberg, 2008).
When the algae die, sink, and decompose, oxygen is con-
sumed, creating hypoxic conditions. Regions that fre-
quently exhibit hypoxia include the Gulf of Mexico,
Chesapeake Bay, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and other
populated areas with high nutrient runoff from agricul-
ture, urban development, and wastewater. However, nutri-
ent runoff is not the only mechanism that can produce
hypoxia along coastal margins. In August 2021, extreme
hypoxia was detected along the southern British Columbia
(Canada) continental shelf, with oxygen concentration
<60 µmol kg⁻¹ (Franco et al., 2023). The oxygen values
recorded during this event were the lowest summertime
oxygen values that had ever been recorded at this location,
representing a departure from the seasonal climatology of
more than 2 standard deviations (Franco et al., 2023).
During this hypoxia event, the increase in nutrient levels
was due to early and intense upwelling alongside local
shifts in seawater density, which brought deep nutrient-
rich waters to the surface. This nutrient supply triggered
an anomalously strong spring phytoplankton bloom,
resulting in oxygen depletion well into the pelagic zone
(Franco et al., 2023). This 2021 hypoxia event in the
Northeast Pacific became the focus for our Fall 2021 cycle.

The phenomenon of hypoxia is not new; throughout
the Earth's history major hypoxic events, often triggered
by global climate shifts or volcanic activity, have led to
widespread changes in marine ecosystems (Gernon et al.,
2024). However, in recent decades, a long-term global
ocean deoxygenation trend has clearly emerged as an indi-
rect result of anthropogenic climate change (Breitburg
et al., 2018), with particularly rapid oxygen loss in the
Northeast Pacific (Cummins and Ross, 2020; Ross et al.,
2020). The hypoxia event described above is thought to
reflect the ongoing expansion and shoaling of this
regional oxygen minimum zone (Barth et al., 2024). As
a consequence of the decreasing oceanic oxygen baseline,
extreme low oxygen events are projected to become more
frequent and extreme (Gruber et al., 2021). Franco et al.
(2023) also concluded that as this trend progresses,
increases in frequency of extreme hypoxic events, like the
one observed in summer 2021, which was categorized as
an extreme anomaly, are likely (Franco et al., 2023). The
hypoxia 2021 event was chosen as the seed topic based on
data collected by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (Line P and
La Perouse campaigns; Fisheries and Oceans Canada,
2025) and the Folger Deep in situ instrument systems
of Ocean Networks Canada (Ocean Networks Canada Soci-
ety, 2023). We wanted to use a prompt based on recently
measured indications of this unusual event to invite
potential new insights about an at-the-time poorly under-
stood oceanographic phenomenon that could lend itself
to a range of unexpected associations.

The Spring 2022 cycle centered around the explosive
eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano on
January 15, 2022 (Global Volcanism Program, 2022). This
extreme ocean event generated a tsunami that inundated
portions of Tonga as well as Fiji, American Samoa,
Vanuatu, and other Pacific Nations. The eruption was the
<table><caption>Table 1. Disciplinary backgrounds reported by Exquisite Corpse participants in Cycles 1 and 2</caption><thead><tr><th>Cycle</th><th>Ocean and Environmental Sciences</th><th>Social Sciences</th><th>Arts</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Cycle 1 only<sup>a</sup></td><td>Geographic information systems<br>Wildlife</td><td>Bio-cultural heritage<br>Ocean outreach and engagement<br>Sustainability</td><td>None reported</td></tr><tr><td>Cycle 2 only<sup>b</sup></td><td>Indigenous knowledge<sup>c</sup><br>Fisheries<br>Geography<br>Oceanography</td><td>Indigenous knowledge<br>Human geography<br>Indigenous communications and leadership<br>Ocean justice</td><td>Indigenous knowledge<br>Visual arts: painting<br>Music technology<br>Theater</td></tr><tr><td>Both cycles<sup>d</sup></td><td>Marine biology and microbiology<br>Marine biological resource management</td><td>Education and instructional design<br>Environmental social science<br>Marine social science</td><td>None reported</td></tr></tbody></table>

largest explosion recorded by modern instrumentation (Yuen et al., 2022). The seed prompt included local stories and perspectives as well as data and imagery from the event (Owens, 2022a). Here, our aim was to demonstrate the plurality of approaches and experiences from such an extreme ocean event, including scientific data and the resulting global linkages and consequences, but also to stay attuned to the local impacts and realities of this catastrophe. Overall, our intent with the chosen topics was to engage a group of interested artists and scientists in topical extreme ocean events that allowed for connection of local events to the planetary scale of our ocean.

### 3.1.2. Participants

Participants self-selected following an email invitation distributed to people involved in previous ArtScience activities of authors Jung and Owens. All participants completed consent forms and initial questionnaires developed by Jung and Mistry prior to joining the initial kick-off meeting. At the start of the third action cycle, the consent process was re-imagined collectively with the design of an updated consent form (Form S1). The questionnaires were analyzed by the facilitators, Jung and Owens.

Seven participants comprised the Fall 2021 cohort, and 11 the Spring 2022 cohort, with 3 participating in both. The combined groups ranged in age from 26 to 68, with self-identified genders of 56% female, 28% male, and 17% nonbinary. As illustrated in **Table 1**, participants have expertise in a broad range of disciplines.

### 3.1.3. Artworks

The two cohorts from Cycles 1 and 2 produced artworks in a wide variety of media, as summarized in **Figure 3**.

An example thread extending from a seed image through three derivative works created during Cycle 2 is shown in **Figure 4**. Although some artworks have been incorporated into this article, many artworks produced during these cycles were not provided by the artists for broader distribution. The afterlives and ongoing status of these artworks have varied greatly. For example, some case study elements comprising the seed video for Cycle 2 (**Figure 4a**) have been incorporated into a scientific workshop on ocean data access and visualization. The mixed media work by Neilson (**Figure 4b**) has been used in a university postgraduate course on social science of the sea, while the edible sculpture created by Zivian (**Figure 4c**) was consumed shortly after being photographed. Finally, the dance performed by Cherkasheva (**Figure 4d**) inspired the author to dedicate more time to dance art, spurring participation in dance courses and competitions. Some of the works produced in Cycle 2 were submitted to one section of a virtual art show (**Figure 5**) that was presented at the 2022 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, and a visual poem, composed by Owens and inspired by these works was shared via YouTube (Owens, 2022b).

### 3.1.4. Motivations

Prior to each cycle commencing, each participant completed a non-anonymous, preprocess survey (Form S2) developed by Jung, which detailed a variety of motivations for joining. Initial survey analysis was completed by removing submitter names and grouping responses into clusters. These clusters were reviewed and condensed into summaries, shown in **Figure 6**, by the coauthor team during a working session. The summaries include numbers

<footnote><sup>a</sup>Reported by 4 of 7 participants in Cycle 1.</footnote>

<footnote><sup>b</sup>Reported by 8 of 11 participants in Cycle 2.</footnote>

<footnote><sup>c</sup>One Cycle 2 participant identified as belonging to an Indigenous community. Indigenous knowledge has been repeated across all columns because it was deemed by the authors not to fit neatly into categories of physical sciences, social sciences, or arts; rather, many longstanding Indigenous knowledge and traditional knowledge approaches integrate all aspects in the forms of stories and art forms.</footnote>

<footnote><sup>d</sup>Reported by three participants of both cycles. Note that the number of backgrounds exceeds the number of participants as some participants indicated multiple disciplinary backgrounds.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3.** Media formats of artworks produced by the two Exquisite Corpse cohorts. Colors indicate when the artworks were created: Cycle 1 in Fall 2021 (brown) and Cycle 2 Spring 2022 (blue).</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 4.** Seed image and derivative artworks from one thread in Cycle 2. (a) Satellite image of the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption. (b) Initial work in the 3-part thread: untitled mixed media work by Neilson. (c) Second work of the 3-part thread, based on image b: an untitled edible sculpture by Zivian. (d) Third work in the 3-part thread showing a still frame from a dance recording performed by Cherkasheva (Video S1).</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 5.** Still frame from the Exquisite Corpse Project presented at the 2022 AGU Fall meeting. This section, appearing as part of the virtual art show during the 2022 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, was generated from Cycle 2 in Spring 2022. The work was produced and curated using Artsteps (Semmens et al., 2022).</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 6.** Bubble diagram inspired by the organic form of salps summarizing motivations for joining the project. Parenthetic numbers indicate total participant mentions for each motivation category; bubble sizes loosely indicate the same. Figure developed by D Narvaez.</figcaption></figure>

of mentions for each cluster. The bubble diameter range approximates the range in numbers of mentions. Most participants listed multiple motivations for joining.

## 3.2. Third action cycle: Collective meaning-making

The third action cycle, January 2023 to May 2024, consisted of the process of collective meaning-making for this article by a subset of participants from both previous cycles. Building from these cycles, the group sought to

apply aspects of the Exquisite Corpse process to the creation of this collective work, which delves into understanding not only how the Exquisite Corpse process manifests but also how it affects those engaged.

Sabrina Imbler (2022, p. 175) captured the group's approach to collective meaning-making while writing and revising this article: "Salps allow each individual to jet at its own pace in the same general direction. It is not as fast as coordinated strokes, but it's more sustainable long-term, each individual sucking and squirting as it pleases. Slow and steady, say the salps. It doesn't matter how fast we go, only that we all get there in the end. We may all move at different paces, but we will only reach the horizon together." The bonds that held the team together were formed during the first two action cycles. Without these bonds in place, the third action cycle would not likely have reached fruition.

Meaning-making sessions were conducted via a series of biweekly or monthly synchronous and co-creative 60–90 min video conferencing sessions between Fall 2022 and Summer 2023. The participants first brainstormed possible pathways forward, including whether to explore further experimentation with the Exquisite Corpse method or engage in a retrospective assessment of the first two cycles and associated insights. The team chose the retrospective approach, and went on to explicate emergent topics and themes, which became the focus subjects for a series of Free Writing workshops led by Owens and Jung, during which participants wrote prose passages and/or created illustrations summarizing each theme. Subsequent workshops refined and expanded the collective understanding as co-authors reviewed and revised one another's theme
summaries. The explicated themes and steps were compiled into a working process diagram (which later evolved into the Ocean ArtScience navigational map; **Figure 7**), initiated by Narvaez in Miro (an online collaborative whiteboard platform) and co-iterated by the co-author team. Through these introspective-expository-graphical processes, initially amorphous ideas were expanded and refined collectively.

In more theoretical terms and as highlighted earlier, the team approached this project from a perspective of slow scholarship (Mountz et al., 2015), as an act of resistance to the academic and organizational structures they found themselves enmeshed within. Most, but not all, members of our group engaged in this work aside from their main/official source of income. This imbalance, in addition to the inherent disciplinary and livelihood diversity among the team, created significant power and capacity disparities. The group addressed this imbalance by creating a flexible structure that was attuned to everyone's needs and capacities. A core group explicated the details of our collective meaning-making; a second group of reviewers provided input at later stages. In the case of the core group, certain members did have the resources (in terms of time and/or funding) to fit this project into their schedules in a way that allowed them to take on the bulk of the writing; they also were operating in positions where academic publications are currency. Had that not been the case, then creating the flexibility that allowed group members to take on the roles that best met their personal circumstances and still let them contribute fully might have been more difficult.

Throughout, special attention was devoted to personal and emotional challenges occurring within members' lives. The focus was on the community engaged in a collective process. The team invested time to ensure everyone who wanted to contribute had an opportunity to share their perspective. To enable this sharing, the team held a series of writing and collective meaning-making workshops resulting in a series of emergent themes presented in Section 4 and our "Ocean ArtScience navigational map," shown below.

Various tensions and conflicts arose during this process. With a nod to Donna Haraway's "Staying with the Trouble" (Haraway, 2016), the team's motto for approaching this situation was to *stay with the tensions*. This staying required the team to renegotiate consent and reconceive a shared understanding of how to write this paper collectively. Points of incoherence arose from the challenges of harmonizing writing styles from different disciplinary and linguistic backgrounds, balancing theoretical depth versus breadth, adherence to particular disciplinary frameworks, and the process of integrating multiple perspectives into the navigation and structure of the shared draft manuscript. Some of these points of tension grew from the seed itself. While Exquisite Corpse processes often generate a negotiated seed through a voting process, the seed selections here were driven by the ideas of the facilitators, Owens and Jung, which meant that the way the seeds germinated varied substantially among the participants. Because of the regular check-ins and free-flowing discussions, though, there were opportunities to discuss some of the contradictions that arose, and the process of creating

artworks allowed participants to process their concerns or confusion through their personal creative process.

Discussing and writing about the relationships the group developed through the creation rounds surfaced additional tensions, not all of which were completely resolved. During the editing process, some sections of this paper that held meaning for individual authors were left by the wayside or rewritten in ways that changed an individual author's original intent. That process is never comfortable, but the act of working through changes and making (new) meanings together provided opportunities to learn together. It is an integral part of what Lauren Berlant has titled the inconvenience of other people: "the affective sense of the familiar friction of being in relation" (Berlant, 2022, p. 2). With a nod to Anna Tsing, friction is a critical part of creative and knowledge-generating collaboration (Tsing, 2004).

The draft manuscript also mirrored the more general travails of the writing process in the beautiful way that the large is often reflected in the small and mundane. The group aspired to retain all source ideas and notes in one place, allowing everyone to access them; continually invited every member to comment, suggest, and edit freely; and also strove to keep the document manageable, coherent, and readable for reviewers. The team came to consider this work as a *collective text collage*. Rather than one new piece of writing, cut from whole cloth, the draft contained distinct patches of verbal expression that together created a new whole. Later, the team strove to integrate these disparate contributions into a cohesive whole by inviting all members repeatedly to collectively review, revise and polish the text through a series of synchronous discussions and asynchronous revision cycles. As a result, while the text still reflects a plurality of our voices, it also flows as a cohesive whole.

### 3.2.1. Summary of benefits

Following both Exquisite Corpse cycles, written questionnaires (see Form S3 for an example from Cycle 2) were completed by participants. Findings from these questionnaires are combined below and summarized in **Table 2**. Survey respondents were unanimous in expressing interest in discussing the process further, sharing their artworks more broadly and collaborating on a follow-on research project. For the first Exquisite Corpse cycle, Jung held follow-up interviews with the participants. Excerpts from the interviews are also included in the detailed exploration of benefits below.

The reported benefits (**Table 2**) between the cycles partly overlapped. During both cycles, participants felt increasingly connected to their work and to each other. Other benefits mentioned in only one of the cycles reflect the varied artistic and scientific dimensions addressed in the different cycles. The opportunity to experiment with new expressive modes and media was only mentioned during the Spring 2022 cycle, during which several participants with preestablished artistic practices decided to experiment with media outside their normal repertoire. The benefits of enhanced scientific understanding and surfacing perspectives and values were only reported
<table><caption>**Table 2. Benefits reported by the participants**</caption><thead><tr><th>Reported Benefits<br>(Post-Surveys<br>and Interviews)</th><th>Fall 2021</th><th>Spring 2022</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Opportunity to experiment with new expressive modes and media</td><td>—<sup>a</sup></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Greater appreciation of human (and nonhuman) dimensions of ocean extreme events</td><td>X</td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Enhanced scientific understanding</td><td>X</td><td>—</td></tr><tr><td>Deepened connections with co-participants, strengthened relationships</td><td>X</td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Surfacing perspectives and values</td><td>X</td><td>—</td></tr><tr><td>Greater sense of connection with ocean art-science community</td><td>X</td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Deeper introspection/ connection to one's own scientific work</td><td>X</td><td>X</td></tr></tbody></table>

during the Fall 2021 cycle, which likely reflects the more scientific orientation of that cycle focused on eliciting values through close engagement with the seed material.

### 3.2.2. Overview of the analysis process

In a collaborative synchronous session, the authors brainstormed themes and processes (described in Section 4) relating to the overall process of joining this creative community and engaging in the Exquisite Corpse process. These ideas were then transformed into a Miro diagram (Figure 7), designed by Narvaez and collectively revised by group members. This diagram describes the process, landscape, and journeys undertaken.

Through cyclical introspection, enactment, opening, giving, and receiving, the authors co-created threaded series of artworks. In the sharing of these works, they experienced new insights and further deepened their collective relationships.

## 4. Emergent themes

Themes emerged during initial workshops and were iterated and revised continually during the writing process. Theme segments, based on the landscape map (Figure 7), were each written initially by a different author, then revised and edited collectively. The themes emerged organically through our process, but they resonate with themes that have been identified within the literature on transdisciplinary or ArtScience collaborations. The integrated examples and links to those citations below do not represent an exhaustive review of the literature but instead reflect the context of our backgrounds and positionalities.

### 4.1. Curiosity and connecting with people in a safe(r) space

The authors' Exquisite Corpse community evolved from initial sparks of curiosity among a loosely affiliated group of people exploring the interconnections between ocean art and ocean science who recognized a common willingness to collaborate, experiment, and inspire. Similar to Loveless (2019), the authors were driven by a longing for creativity, generative resistance to bring more affect, and sustainability into their daily lives (Loveless, 2019). There was a shared intent to try new approaches and to test new communication and collaboration tools in an open-ended exploration. Within a safe(r) virtual space for brainstorming, individuals are afforded the space and encouragement to offer ideas without fear of criticism. We use the term safe(r) rather than safe space to acknowledge that safety is relative, meaning that people have varied requirements to feel safe at different times (The Roestone Collective, 2014).

Just as a seedling must be protected from the elements, this social field of trust acts as a shelter, within which new shoots of inspiration and curiosity can grow. This shelter becomes a fertile holding space for an Exquisite Corpse cycle. Participants were assured that their contributions would not be judged and that creation in any medium was welcome. They were informed that the sharing of their works could be limited to just the participant group, ameliorating fears of external judgment. Also made clear was that the 2-week time window for creation implied that works could be rough and unfinished. The directive was to take inspiration from the seed, reflect, and react by creating something—anything—to share. Participants were intrigued by what might emerge from their collective diversity. This spark might be visualized as a glittering iceberg: intriguing, constantly melting and shifting, unexpectedly deep and fluid in the way that personal insights and connections to the whole shifted over time despite its solidity.

### 4.2. Semi-ambiguous seed as catalyst

The Exquisite Corpse process grows from a seed that allows each participant to project their own thoughts, ideas, and experiences onto it. Our seeds combined scientific data, first-hand accounts, and emotional dimensions to highlight thought-provoking elements, including the importance of scale; switching between models and facts and personal experiences; and how to start from a basis of empathy when talking about extreme ocean events. Thereby, we created a semi-ambiguous seed by combining various diverse non-ambiguous elements.

Seed presentations for both iterations contained some deliberate ambiguities. Many data plots, clips, and photos were presented to the group without detailed explanation. The Hunga Tonga volcano explosion was chosen as a seed (Figure 8) because it was timely and represented an example of ocean risk quite different to that posed by hypoxia. The element of ambiguity to the seed itself is what allows the Exquisite Corpse process to function as a projective technique (Lindzey, 1959) and was a catalyst for deepening insights.

<footnote><sup>a</sup>Benefit not reported.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 7.** Map of our Exquisite Corpse landscape journey with zoomed segments. a. The curiosity-driven factors that helped convene artists and scientists interested in the ocean. b. Factors involved in developing relationships among participants. c. Factors contributing to a group finding common grounds. d. Semi-ambiguous seed as a catalyst. e. Giving, receiving, co-creating, and opening a space for experimentation and creation. f. A low-resolution version of the overview map with insets corresponding to panels a–e. A full-resolution version of the diagram is available as Figure S2.</figcaption></figure>

For participants in the first cycle in Fall 2021, examining the topic of hypoxia through the Exquisite Corpse process “infus[ed] hypoxia with mood and emotion and story, beyond a simple word or a scientific concept” (Participant 1). A participant described their experience as developing a “broader and more visceral appreciation of hypoxia, seeing … how it might be to experience the impacts of hypoxia directly and physically. Before, it was more of a science-based and clinical understanding that lacked a sense of vibrancy and connection to experience” (Participant 2). Some participants deepened their scientific understanding of the topic. For example, discussing the artwork “Gordia Capillata” (Figure 9) elicited reflections about current

ecological implications of climate change and hypoxia and ocean acidification for one participant. For others, the ambiguity deepened their appreciation and understanding of human dimensions.

Sharing context and deeper intentions about the creation process mediated those conversations. For Jung, the key idea behind this artwork was responding differently to the common perception of jellyfish as one of the expected “ecological winners” of ocean acidification (Lee et al., 2023). The proliferation of jellyfish alongside a shift toward other opportunistic species, such as gelatinous zooplankton, in many human-perturbed ecosystems has been dubbed “the rise of slime” (Jackson, 2020; Lee et al., 2023). Jellyfish have
<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 8. Lightning strikes from the Hunga Tonga volcano explosion used in a seed presentation.**</figcaption></figure>

This slide, which includes an animation of lighting strike data (in color), along with other forms of data displays presented on different slides, became the prompt that initiated all artworks created during Cycle 2. Lightning loop created by Chris Vagasky using data from Vaisala Global Lightning Dataset GLD360 (Said, 2017).

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 9. "Gordia Capillata," a mixed media artwork by Julia Jung.**</figcaption></figure>

Images of water droplets and illustrations of Gordian knots are digitally overlaid onto a watercolor painting that is ripped to reveal a cross-stitched jellyfish. This artwork emerged from Cycle 1 during interactions over the seed presentation on hypoxia and asks metaphorically what we might be able to learn from the ways jellyfish navigate our changing ocean to squeeze through the Gordian knots of our times.

been described as “the vanguard” (Jackson, 2020, p. 494) of these changes in species and population dynamics, which has reinforced their generally negative public perception (Vandendriessche et al., 2016). Instead of following this framing, which is likely to blame jellyfish for environmental changes beyond their control, Jung’s piece asked what we might be able to learn from jellyfish that enables them to thrive in our changing ocean. Metaphorically speaking, how could we become perhaps softer, more flexible and adaptable and thereby able to squeeze through the Gordian knots of our times instead? What would it mean to “live with” new

realities that we cannot engage with in conventional ways? The process during our discussion about this topic echoes Alaimo’s work who also noted that with jellyfish “[a]esthetic attachments overlap and conflict with concern for ecosystem health and biodiversity, as many visual representations of jellies provoke pleasure and wonder that cannot be directly channeled into the ethics, politics, or practices of species protection” (Alaimo, 2013, p. 141).

The process prompted some participants to reflect on their research and practice as ocean scientists. One participant reflected: “I felt a little bit disconnected from the meaning behind the work, [...] I felt like I was just looking at data, but not really taking any time to actually let it sort of sink in [...] for example, [...] we were collecting that [conductivity-temperature-depth] data. And to me, it was just kind of numbers until this project. So this, this really allowed me to kind of dig into how it actually makes me feel. So I was really excited about that” (Participant 3).

Participants also explored philosophical questions about their research practice and the need for a change in research practices. One reflected, “My thoughts [were] about how this is related to the ways we study climate change and how sometimes hypocritical/ethically tricky this can be given the resources needed to conduct such studies,” and “It asked me some questions about the way we need to do things. Maybe we could find some other ways to do things [as scientists]” (Participant 4).

### 4.3. Space for experimentation and creation

The term “experimentation” may often be viewed as a purely scientific process, but it is also an artistic process (Rheinberger, 2018). Several participants appreciated the opportunity to experiment with new and unfamiliar media, such as digital watercolor, sculpture using Lego bricks, or food art. Two participants highlighted the process of invocation/provocation—drawing inspiration from unexpected seeds. Another relished the challenge of translating expressions from one medium to another.

One participant mused, “I believe that daily we all are experimenting with being human, experimenting with being part of societies, part of ecosystems, part of spiritual systems. Is co-creation of knowledge not experimental? I do not have an instruction manual that tells me how to respond to the bird chirping in the morning, or how to think about the journal article I just read” (Participant 2). The Exquisite Corpse process is an invitation to experiment with our conceptualization of the ocean, while remaining mindful of all the others who are simultaneously experimenting and being experimented upon. This approach engages a hypervigilance to treating each other gently and offering our true voices as the deepest manifestation of care. The manifestation of this hypervigilance occurs in our fingertips as we draw paint onto the brush, in our ears as we listen to the ocean, and in our hearts as we open ourselves up to connection. Knowing ourselves as bodies of water and parts of the ocean leads us to create visions that draw on both art and science.
### 4.4. Sharing findings and experiences

The sharing of artworks activates a form of “low-stakes vulnerability” that facilitates emotional connection. Hamilton et al. (2021, p. 250) define such vulnerability as the “suspension of ordinary defenses that would inhibit trusting a complete stranger, or several, on something so personal.” Participants decide what information about themselves and the creative process they want to share. “Findings” can be understood as what is meaningful for each participant. Findings might include changes in perspective, new scientific insights, or new artistic skills. They may emerge as deepened curiosity and meaningful self or group reflections.

Experiences shared may include individual experiences during the creation process as well as collective experiences during the Exquisite Corpse concluding cycle or “party.” Each experience might in turn draw on or trigger various other associations. This generative process holds space for different needs and degrees of emotional vulnerability. When such expressions are held with respect, kindness, gentleness, and understanding, others can find encouragement to share more openly. Sharing findings, artworks, and experiences also stimulates group inspiration and creativity, highlighting the plurality of possible interpretations. This sharing can diminish the sense of competition or urge for perfectionism by demonstrating that there is not one “right” way to do things. As each artwork is created within a limited time frame and with often limited access to suitable tools or materials, it reflects the unique context of each participant.

### 4.5. Collective creation of connected artworks

Through the Exquisite Corpse artworks, new doors opened for all participants to create in unexpected ways. Creating collectively means to share and to let oneself be exposed, becoming vulnerable when creating pieces and handing them to the next participant. Doubts emerge—one of us wondered, “Will they read it according to what I wanted to express, will they understand what I meant?” (Participant 5). Vulnerability arises from handing someone a deeply personal piece, which the recipient must try to connect with, then respond creatively. The one handing off cannot know how their work will be interpreted—it becomes the departure point for another’s creative adventure and experience.

Receiving an artwork can also arouse a sense of vulnerability. On the basis of incomplete or ambiguous information, we must try to connect with what the other is offering, internalizing it before starting to respond. This process can feel like someone has left a paradoxical riddle (perhaps similar to the koans used in Zen practice) to sit with and learn from. With an artwork, not only one's mind but also one's body and senses might start to react, and so the internal dialogue reflecting on the piece and the other's intention begins (Chilton and Leavy, 2020). We may wonder: how did they come up with what they are presenting to us? What was the path they followed and how can we move forward from this path? While working on one's piece, the other's work accompanies you, casting some light, whispering options.

### 4.6. Finding commons and common ground(s)

How can we foster shared understanding while appreciating and holding space for multiple perspectives? Reflecting on ways to surface plural perspectives without asserting dominance over a specific point of view, one participant stated, “Consensus is fraught for me, right? Because you don't want consensus just for its own sake. But you want to be able to hear perspectives. And [the Exquisite Corpse process] is a way to hear perspectives and to share perspectives” (Participant 6). A superficial consensus created only to smooth over disagreements can subsume divergent and different ideas in order to maintain order, usually controlled by the hegemon. Instead, the Exquisite Corpse process enables both a very personal, individual experience and a collective pathway for creating a commons and finding common grounds. The plurals here recognize that there are multiple places where people can share common experiences, beliefs, and hopes; not just a single meeting point or single basis for commonality. In that sense we agree with Robin Wall Kimmerer who wrote that “it is understood that there are many versions of truth, and that each reality may be true for each teller” (Kimmerer, 2003, p. 76). The plurals also acknowledge that art is not a space that is owned by a single individual (even if individual artworks are), but rather a space where people can find individual meaning in shared experiences and bring individual experiences into shared knowledge. As explained by Donna Haraway, we each come with our own situated and partial perspectives (Haraway, 1988), which by sharing with each other can still lead to shared common ground(s).

Finding common ground (or common grounds or creating a commons) unfolds through layers of relationship-building. First, the seed is agreed upon and shared. The ensuing phase fosters individual-to-individual relationships, as each finished artwork is shared with one receiving participant to become a new seed for further creation. This process repeats, encouraging personal connections and the opportunity for common ground at each handoff. Full blossoming comes into focus during the final unveiling of three-part artwork threads, where the pathways from the initial seed to derivative interpretations are revealed and individual-to-individual connections merge. A rich array of interconnections becomes evident to the group.

This concluding “Exquisite Corpse Party” is an event where surprise, amazement, sharing, learning, interpretation, and forming deeper relationships can happen. We discovered that many threads explored similar themes, aesthetics, or questions, amounting to a collection of common grounds. Surprising synergies emerged as the common grounds between pieces and threads deepened insights through collective discussion. Sharing context and deepening insights during the party encourages situated knowledge and art. One participant explained, “The Exquisite Corpse process starts as a communal project of co-creation, bringing parts together to see a new whole, and recognizing that that whole is by a group where no one has all the knowledge at the start.” Science/knowledge production and art often have these parallel strands
of mediating between the individual and the collective/
collegial (Loveless, 2019). As eloquently described by Aluli-
Meyer et al. (2019, p. 159), the art-based braiding meth-
odology that they apply also “entails searching for echoes
and resonances between voices while leaving space for
dissonances.” In the Exquisite Corpse ArtScience process
these parallels are addressed in a similar way that looks for
commonality while honoring dissonance.

4.7. *Giving, receiving, and opening*

Collaborative creation is often an open exploration. An
open mind is likely to find new ways of working collabo-
ratively as well as learning from others and from oneself.
We came together from different backgrounds to share in
the spirit of giving to the group without expecting any
specific results. The openness to experience, to give, and to
create together is what fosters reciprocity, creating a web
of connections. Robin Wall Kimmerer, reflecting on her
experience of reciprocity and creation, notes that "writing
is an act of reciprocity with the world; it is what I can give
back in return for everything that has been given to me"
(Kimmerer, 2013, p. 152). This way, an unfolding spiral is
activated where opening to reflection, experimentation,
and creation generates acts of sharing perceptions, which,
in turn, enhance receptivity to others' creations. This open-
ness can generate curiosity that ignites a new cycle of
experimentation and creation. The spiral keeps growing
outwardly, while collaborations unfold, and inwardly in
the experience of each participant as they open to new
experiences by giving and receiving.

4.8. *Developing relationships*

Relationships are central to the Exquisite Corpse process;
they influence every aspect of the process but are also one
of the key outcomes. One participant explained, “[Rela-
tionships have] always been at the core of the Exquisite
Corpse process for me—relationships with the other peo-
ple participating in your cohort, but also with myself”
(Participant 5). Another participant described “a type of
magical flow that happens between us when we co-create
together. We may have come together from different
places and different roles or activities, but once we share
a corpse creation with one another, we relate through and
in this magic. It draws us together beyond our individual
motivations and work/life goals” (Participant 4). Referring
to this depth of connection, another participant related
how this work “adds depth to relationships that are often
missing in ‘pure’ science partnerships.” They also noted
that here we “created a relationship by not knowing each
other but starting [with] the inner journey” (Participant 1).
The importance of relationships is echoed once again by
Adrienne Maree Brown (Brown, 2017) but also for exam-
ple by Nancy Bleck’s community-based art project Uts’am
Witness. Reflecting on her experience, Bleck describes
how she has “come to appreciate that community partic-
ipation and cross-cultural collaboration are not easily
understood relationships. Perhaps one part of [her] job
as an artist and cultural worker is to assist people ([her]self
included) in feeling comfortable with not understanding.
We do not go into collaboration knowing what the

outcomes will be before we actually do the ‘work’.” (Bleck,
2015, p. 154).

For existing relationships, one of us described how they
"gained a greater sense of who they are and feel closer to
them" (Participant 6). Another described how "seeing that
side of them and experiencing their work has deepened
my appreciation for them as people and as co-workers"
(Participant 2). For new relationships, one participant
appreciated having "met new people in a really interac-
tive, exciting context and liked how the art they created let
them introduce themselves in an unusual way" (Partici-
pant 6). Overall, the project "reiterated that we all want
to feel connected to each other and to the work that we
are doing. It is easy to just feel like you are 'going through
the motions'. Projects like this are very important in order
to feel connected" (Participant 7). Perhaps in this way
methods like the Exquisite Corpse process can serve func-
tions similar to what Cleo Wölfle Hazard describes as a co-
benefit of fieldwork: "En route, in cars, in boats, or on
trails, we speculate about broader questions and patterns
of research much more widely than in any formal talk or
paper" (Wölfle Hazard, 2022, p. 80).

The process seems to have laid an initial foundation for
further development of our ArtScience community of
practice, with many finding a stronger sense of connection
and motivation to continue this endeavor. We felt less
alone with our interests and values, finding support in
each other. Another participant expressed "hop[ing to]
be involved in future communities about arts and science,
it makes you think and grow and feel best armed for the
future and for others!" (Participant 4). This echoes Love-
less' call for transforming academia into a more creative
and sensorially attuned space (Loveless, 2019). Another
was "even more convinced of the importance of connect-
ing art and science communication, and [...] encouraged
and invigorated by the other participants in this project"
(Participant 8). Yet another participant described the pro-
cess as "a step in the evolution from individuals and dis-
parate projects toward a community of practice"
(Participant 2). They further expressed their hope for the
possibility of building community through connections to
the participants and "extension to the broader community
of people interested in exploring the ArtScience interface"
(Participant 2).

4.9. *Boundaries navigating fluidity*

Personal boundaries are like membranes between us and
the world; they mediate what we choose to accept and
share. Following Sophie Lewis' wonderings in amniotech-
nics, "when is it time to release a boundary?" (Lewis, 2019,
p. 166). A boundary can be flexible, yet firm. We found
that our shared commitment to a process with clearly
defined boundaries enabled the vulnerability that can lead
to deepened insights. This commitment to paying close
attention to everyone's boundaries in the process afforded
the opportunity for everyone to participate in the creation
and interpretation processes.

From a more metaphorical perspective, this sense of
fluidity guides our interactions. The ocean, with hardly any
strict lines and constantly in movement, is a place of
perspective, there are different interacting types of trust within communities: interpersonal trust between community members and collective trust in the community itself (Costa et al., 2018). ArtScience collaborations in the form of participatory exercises like the Exquisite Corpse method can increase relational trust (or emotional connection) by creating an environment that surfaces plural values and perspectives non-confrontationally. The increase in relational trust also has community-wide effects beyond the intrapersonal relationships (McAllister, 1995). Trust is crucial for communities of practice as it improves the quality and quantity of knowledge-sharing (Holste and Fields, 2005; Usoro et al., 2007), which is one of the most important bases for communities to catalyze innovation and create paradigm shifts (Ehrlichman, 2021). Additionally, endeavors like the Exquisite Corpse method that put plurality into practice can help communities create more welcoming spaces for diverse participants. For a community of practice, such collaborations can also provide opportunities to connect with other, larger networks. For example, members of our group have been invited to share emerging insights and potentially organize similar Exquisite Corpse-style activities with the Ocean Knowledge Action Network (2025) and TBA21-Academy (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, 2025).

On a systemic level, there are many ways in which the different possible dimensions of ArtScience collaborations and the emerging relationships from them can contribute to addressing the challenges of the UN Ocean Decade (Jung et al., 2022; Whittaker, 2023). Apart from challenge 10—Changing humanity's relationship with the ocean—ArtScience collaborations can contribute to addressing the other challenges in a more holistic way. Returning to Escobar's concept of pluriversality of knowledges (Escobar, 2018), ocean ArtScience can foreground holistic engagement with the ocean beyond natural science perspectives (Boswell, 2021). Art-based methods can help to give voice to perspectives that have been marginalized (Capous-Desyllas and Morgaine, 2018), especially Indigenous knowledges and perspectives (Strand et al., 2022). Collective art-based participatory methods can help create shared visions of futures that we would like to see (Clover et al., 2020) and that, even though they may seem utopian, are still rooted in the present. These visions might include societal transformations that seem impossible now and yet are visions shared among a specific group of people in the moment and therefore in a way also being enacted in the moment (Muñoz, 2009; Brown, 2015).

Much of our exploration of the Exquisite Corpse process has prompted us to reflect on our collective and individual relationships with the ocean. While our common reflections and conversations have happened via video calls, the process prompted us to engage from a more embodied perspective—to seek out the ocean in each of our contexts and engage in a more affective rather than solely rational way and continue enacting those utopian moments in our own contexts (Shefer and Bozalek, 2022). This type of engagement promotes an active, creative, and embodied approach to creating collective meaning and understanding (Clover et al., 2016). Within the framework of this project and

similar initiatives, positive outcomes play out over longer time scales as relationships and people evolve and grow. The results continue to unfold through years, creating new opportunities and meanings. For example, the project influenced Cherkasheva to change the way she was conducting oceanographic measurements in the Arctic where making such measurements can be challenging. As a result of participating in the Exquisite Corpse project, Cherkasheva began using more experimental methods instead of traditional approaches to estimate phytoplankton productivity in the Arctic (Cherkasheva et al., 2025).

Another example of follow-on impacts occurred for Owens, for whom engagement in this project inspired an active determination to seek opportunities and venues to promote artists and their work within scientific contexts. This determination led to his instrumental role in coordinating two ocean ArtScience-themed major planelies at the American Geophysical Union annual conferences, featuring filmmaker Rebeca Méndez' work The Sea Around Us in 2023 and sculptor Courtney Mattison's coral reef works in 2024. Meanwhile, exposure to the Hunga Tonga volcano explosion seed for Exquisite Corpse Cycle 2 led to Owens' co-creation and delivery of a technical workshop on data access and visualization centered on the Hunga Tonga case study.

For visual artist Diego Narvaez, the experiences lived by collaborating with this group have inspired him to lead collaborative drawing exercises. An example of this type of interaction occurred when a group of youth from Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada, visited Narvaez's studio, where they were able to work on a multistage drawing using the forest as a stimulus to brainstorm about their relationships with the surroundings. Participants were encouraged to use the frottage technique to collect samples of textures found in the forest to then create a landscape by cutting and pasting others' textures into a collective composition. The composition was again revisited and transformed by further drawing. Working toward the unknown, letting go of previous ideas and working over someone else's creation are important outcomes of the Exquisite Corpse process, which inspired the creation of this drawing activity. As with the Exquisite Corpse, the group reflection on both the final drawing and the process was vital for the participants to understand the importance of collective work.

For Jung, the wish to carry the Exquisite Corpse project to deir local communities and the hopeful development of this project led dem to organize more Exquisite Corpse projects in different contexts. Jung organized two Exquisite Corpse projects as preconference networking opportunities for the International Conference for Young Marine Researchers (ICYMARE) based in Germany in 2022 and 2023. These projects led to the establishment of an "ICYMARE Art Project" as a core conference component. This project was continued in 2024 by other members of the ICYMARE team even though Jung has since left the ICYMARE core team, moving abroad to start deir PhD in an interdisciplinary sustainability program. Deir PhD work itself also builds on this project, as it focuses directly on the role of relationships in transdisciplinary collaborations and communities of practice.
**5.1. Gratitudes and undercurrents**

In this final section, we reflect on the undercurrents that brought us to writing this article and express our gratitudes to those who have influenced us. Although we came to this work from several perspectives and with different motivations, there were also shared undercurrents that led to this writing and that in general enable transdisciplinary collaborations like ours. Katherine McKittrick has developed a practice of scrolling a continuous loop of images of ideas, places, people, and objects that have shaped her thinking during public talks. For her (as for us), this approach is a way to acknowledge “how I know what I know, where I know from, who I know from, and what I cannot possibly know. [...] While I feel I know my research fields intimately, how I came to know these fields is fading, so I revisit and recontextualize. At the same time, this history, my memory, is overlaid by newer research questions, texts, images, events, places, people” (McKittrick, 2020, p. 14). We consider these people, places, ideas, and other forms of inspiration as “undercurrents”—elements that you might not see from the paper’s surface, but that have nonetheless influenced every word and shaped every insight, enabling and inspiring us. As a similar form of appreciation and acknowledgement, we offer our gratitude in **Figure 10**. To further illustrate what we mean, we provide the following exemplary vignettes of selected elements from our gratitude ecosystem.

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 10.** Our gratitude ecosystem, where primary elements include textual homage to our sources of inspiration. The Octopus has been enlarged to enable the reader to review textual overlays. Full size image is included as Figures S3–S7. Base image components created using Night Cafe; figure developed by D. Narvaez.</figcaption></figure>

Jung: “I want to extend my deep gratitude to Thomas Sanborn and Julieta Vigliano Relva – Tom was the one who originally introduced me to the Exquisite Corpse project and with whom I did practical exercises that enabled me to take this and my art seriously and to embark on this project. Julieta first introduced me to the ideas of Escobar; conversations with her invited the idea of plurality to resonate deeply with me. Without practice and conversation with Tom and Julieta, I would not have been able to engage with these ideas. Thinking about Northern Gannets for me has meant leaning into an image of contradictions that has enabled me to find a way to write this piece and engage in this project. These sea birds inspire in me a sense of flying around until I see something that strikes me, trusting that intuition and going for the dive, knowing that it might be painful and look silly. Despite such inhibiting factors, the gannets urge me to follow through toward that fishy something underneath the surface, which I might catch. The way of relating to this image is more than something just to acknowledge with thanks. Sharing it reveals an undercurrent for a way of relating to this project and the ocean, which is why I write it here.”

Turning the focus toward our collaboration as co-authors, we offer this collective poem written during our final writing workshop that expresses our shared experience and gratitude for each other:

From different shores,
with different words, different tools
Expressing our inner and scientific journey,
Brightening the perspectives,
Integrating our communities
Rewriting our stories
Dissolving into darkness,
Finding luminescence,
Gathered round fire,
A space is created
for interaction to bloom
Into unexpected discoveries
From creation to destruction,
our own stories
surprised us when summarized
Retrieving and re-collecting memories like seashells -
Colors shifting as the water dries,
new reflections
constantly emerging
Walking
from sea to shore,
ascending
from land to sky;
advancing
and retreating
like the tides,
exploring the liminal
Feeling the sand in my feet, the sea salt in my nose,
hearing the waves in my ears, the turtle turned and
led me on
> Into the ocean, I am entering new worlds, new depths – but suddenly, I realize I am not alone
> Thank you my playmates,
> What fun it is to be the ocean with you.

## Supplemental files

The supplemental files for this article can be found as follows:

Supplemental Material.docx

## Acknowledgments

Ocean Networks Canada and the University of Victoria acknowledge with respect the Ləkwəŋən peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land and the Ocean continue to this day. The authors also would like to thank Dr Andrea Berardi for his support in developing this project and the late Dr. S. Kim Juniper for his support for this and many other ArtScience endeavors and whose inspiring legacy we hope to build upon.

## Funding

Aleksandra Cherkasheva's contribution was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 869383 (ECOTIP) and by the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101136748 (BioEcoOcean). Alison Neilson's work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) CEEC INST 2018, https://doi.org/10.54499/CEECINST/00102/2018/CP1567/CT0030. Dwight Owens' work was supported by Ocean Networks Canada under funding provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network (CANARIE), the University of Victoria, the Digital Research Alliance of Canada and the Government of British Columbia and the Government of Canada. Julia Jung's work was supported by Ocean Networks Canada and the Cobra Collective.

## Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

## Author contributions

* Contributed to conception and design: JJ, DO, JM, AZ

* Contributed to acquisition of data: JJ, DO, ALN, DN, CP, AZ, AC, DJR, CC

* Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: JJ, DO, ALN, DN, CP, AZ, AC, DJR

* Drafted and/or revised the article: JJ, DO, ALN, DN, CP, AZ, AC, DJR, CC, JM

* Approved the submitted version for publication: JJ, DO, ALN, DN, CP, AZ, AC, DJR, CC, JM

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**How to cite this article:** Jung, J, Cherkasheva, A, Corporeau, C, Mistry, J, Narvaez, D, Neilson, AL, Owens, D, Parrain, C, Riddel, DJ, Zivian, A. 2025. Sensing the Ocean through the Exquisite Corpse ArtScience method. *Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene* 13(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2024.00051

**Domain Editor-in-Chief:** Jody W. Deming, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

**Knowledge Domain:** Ocean Science

**Part of an Elementa Special Feature:** The Art-Science Interface Exemplified by Ocean Memory

**Published:** December 16, 2025

**Accepted:** September 27, 2025

**Submitted:** August 2, 2024

**Copyright:** © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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