Art & Science Collaborations: Communicating Climate Change

In this book in the context of climate change, I examine the interaction between science and society, including scepticism and biased assimilation. I look at how art and science collaborate and how information is transferred between the two discourses. I look at how adaption efforts using art and science might either reinforce or lessen the psychological obstacles we confront when thinking about climate change. My methodology consists of primary research resources including statistical data about society’s connection with climate science and the artwork case studies which I use for discussion. I also look for secondary sources, such as scholarly literature on the issue of artworks with a climate change theme, such as books or internet articles. I discovered that there is a communication gap between science and society as a result of the public's lack of scientific understanding and biased assimilation. During my exploration, I come across the theory of ‘boundary objects’ between artists and scientists during collaborations that include syntactic, semantic and pragmatic boundary objects. These collaborations can explore multiple scenarios of a post-climate change world including individual survival methods or community based hypothesises. Concluding this paper, I argue that art and science collaborations about climate change should portray positive, wellbeing focused futures - these will be the most engaging to the public and will break down the psychological barriers including ‘distance’ and ‘doom’.