EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS IN ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

"In rivers, the water you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; So with time present."
-Leonardo da Vinci

THE SPIRIT AND POWER OF WATER A STUDY AT THE CONFLUENCE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

The Spirit and Power of Water is a collaborative project between the French Leonardo group, OLATS, and the River Festival, a project organized by African artists Camel Zekri and Dominique Chevaucher. The Spirit and Power of Water is a multicultural, interdisciplinary three-year project focused on the cultural and scientific contexts of water.

OLATS's Virtual Africa project is the umbrella for The Spirit and Power of Water. Virtual Africa was created to develop exchanges between intellectuals and artists from Africa and from the other continents. Designed as a large patchwork of images and texts, it focuses on several themes including the relations between arts and sciences and the relations between ancient and contemporary arts as well as historic and contemporary relations between Africa and the other continents. Zekri and Chevaucher's River Festival is an artistic dialogue created while traveling the great rivers of Africa.

By focusing on the cultural and scientific contexts of water, The Spirit and Power of Water project is both specific and universal. This project will have its source in the African continent, the site of the oldest human beings, often considered the cradle of the universe, but also a continent which suffers from critical problems of water shortage and purification.

Although The Spirit and Power of water began with artistic and scientific studies proper to the African context, it is now expanding to include select studies involving other geographic regions in order to examine - in the largest possible perspective - the role and signification of water in the artistic and cultural activities of human societies. As the project founders explain, "Water, a linking substance per se, will be used in a symbolic mode to create links between different cultures, and to open up spaces of encounter and reflections between artists and scientists."

FluidArts's consortium of artists, scientists, students and educators is designing projects relating to the Spirit and Power of Water theme. FluidArts is also translating material for the Spirit and Power of Water into numerous languages, and establishing a multicultural space for work on inquiry based projects examining the theme of water and its cultural and scientific ramifications.

Excerpted from The Spirit and Power of Water site:

Water, which appeared on the Earth billions of years ago, is one of the four primordial elements, along with fire, air, and earth. Water remains the pre- condition for the blossoming of all living creatures. Because water is such a precious, integral substance, it has assumed a privileged place in the history of men's imagination and artistic creations. In Africa, as in many other places in the world, water is very often viewed as a living substance. Many cultures believe spirits inhabits water, by supernatural beings (both evil and good) which explain natural phenomena and certain aspects of the human condition. Myths, legends, fairy tales, and ritual religious practices have crystallized around the ambivalent and extraordinary world inherent in water.

Traditions celebrating water can be traced to antiquity both in Africa and elsewhere.

The natives of Mali, Africa, say that water is inhabited by Nommo, a spirit endowed with mysterious and extraordinary powers - at times fearful - to whom human beings owe a total veneration. Nommo may bring the rain and guaranty men's prosperity, but he may also cause drought and misery, if men and women neglect its worship. To this day, in Burkina Faso, Africa, men and women celebrate the return of the rains, by wearing over their faces large colored and butterfly-like masks, because butterflies always swarm out just after the first rains

In Western cultures, myths, legends, and other extraordinary stories related to the life of water are numerous. In the ancient Greek world, water gave birth to the monstrous image of the Hydra, a serpent with seven or nine heads, which can be compared to the deltas of the great rivers. In Shakespeare's Hamlet , as well as the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé water is defined as the motherland of nymphs, and associated with the themes of suicide and death. In the visual arts created during the 19th century, water the favorite subject of J.M.W. Turner's art, and decades later, of Impressionist paintings. In the 20th century, water became one of the treasured themes of the Surrealists, who defined themselves as the water diviners of the unconscious, represented women under the guise of a naiad or siren.

Water related themes in the visual arts, literature and legends include: melancholia and death; water as a linking symbol; music and sounds of water, water and the myth of eternal youth; water and the notion of ephemera; the relationships between liquidity and solidity, water and fire; water and the origin of creation and more.

In addition, the economic power of water, and the natural power of water will be explored in projects here: when water is the cause of natural disasters (floods, droughts, epidemics...) it demonstrates it cruel power over the life and destiny of the Earth. Scientific studies of water - shortages, conservation and other scientific studies as conducted by anthropologists, historians, sociologists, engineers, scientists working on environment issues, biologists, astronomers, chemists, economists, etc., will also be included in this project. This body of studies will present man's various attempts to master the strength of water, to preserve natural resources related to water, to struggle against risks of pollution, and to distribute resources in a more equitable manner on the whole planet.

A seminar on " The Spirit and Power of Water " will be held in Vandoeuvre-les- Nancy, in May 2001. Artists, scientists, and engineers will present their research on how water and water networks structure the cultural, economic and political lives of African peoples and human beings in general. A series of publications and workshops will augment the seminar on the Virtual Africa's web site. Subsequently, a selection of artworks and articles will be published in the American arts and sciences journal LEONARDO (published by MIT Press).

FluidArts is responsible for the Spanish Translation of The Spirit and Power of Water home page.