Los Angeles, USA, October 10, 2025
In a new exhibition, students from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) invite audiences to listen, feel, and reflect on issues facing the ocean.
Blue Echo brings the work of the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy’s knowledge products to new audiences. By fusing together science, storytelling and creativity the work aims to increase understanding of the ocean and inspire global action.
Spanning a wide range of disciplines, from sound and sculpture to performance, film, and graphic design, each project offers a distinct interpretation of the ocean’s rhythms, challenges, and beauty. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to experience how artistic expression can inspire new conversations about ocean health, equity, and stewardship.
The collaboration between CalArts and the WRI Ocean Program, which provides the secretariat to the Ocean Panel, draws from the Transformations Agenda, the Ocean Panel’s roadmap towards a sustainable ocean economy. A key priority is to:
Hacer que el conocimiento sobre los océanos esté disponible para todos e invertir en desarrollar conocimientos y conciencia sobre los océanos entre los ciudadanos, incluso a través de la educación formal.
Starting in 2024, 15 CalArts artists, led by faculty lead Shannon Scrofano, developed a suite of innovative works that include:
- Ebb & Breathe – a 3D motion meditation on the ocean’s past, present, and future.
- Imagining a Seaweed Future – a guided video meditation that combines breath and music to create an internal seaweed story.
- Sea the Future – a poster series integrating AR and 3D elements, that invites the viewer to explore kelp forests, the ocean as a climate solution, and sustainable fishing practices.
- The Blue Box – a curated package linked to the priorities of the WRI Blue Papers that encourages system change.
- I Made a Promise to Coral – an interactive installation merging sensors, projections, and coral reef soundscapes.
- Sounds from Our Climate Future – a participatory sound experience using climate data.
- Blutopia – a fictional podcast envisioning ocean-centered futures.
- Shellphone – a tactile lo-fi experience transforming a shell into a channel for connection.
- Rana Sara Maya – a meditative composition in three movements evoking a deep connection to our ecosystems through sound.
- Ocean Teach-In – a campus-wide teach-in at CalArts that brings ocean health to the forefront using WRI resources.
- Páramo Immersión – inspired by the Páramo ecosystem, a rare and fragile landscape found in only three countries, this immersive work balances serenity with awareness of human impact.
- Drifting Time – an audiovisual environment reflecting on kelp forests and shifting seascapes.
- The Waves We Give – a call-and-response postcard project intended to pose questions that relate to each of the works in Blue Echo. Postcards were handed out by members of Blue Echo and placed on tables during the 2025 United Nations Ocean Decade Forum in Nice, France.
Blue Echo was featured as part of the California Seaweed Festival’s Art and Innovation Showcase, as well as Blue Hour – an event dedicated to blue food, Braid Theory’s Ignite22 – a global tech showcase, and AltaSea’s October Open House: Charting the Course of AI in the Blue Economy.
“As a professor, I have the privilege of working with emerging artists, designers, and musicians who are not just making art about the climate crisis—they are making art within it”. Said Shannon Scrofano, Faculty Lead, CalArts. “Their questions are entangled with ocean policy, ecological grief, multi-species futures, and what I think of as planetary imagination, and metabolized into forms including sound, sculpture, installation, moving image, even gifts. We want to be allies in creating forms of ocean literacy and action rooted not only in knowledge—but in meaning, memory, and mutualism.”
“How the ocean works, how it shapes our climate and livelihoods and how we can protect it are issues that everyone should be aware of, not just scientists and policymakers.” Said Tom Pickerell, Global Director, Ocean Program, WRI. “Blue Echo is the outcome of an important collaboration to advance ocean literacy. The work uses creativity, artistic expression and sensory experiences to reminds us that the ocean connects us all, and that each of us has a role to play in shaping a more resilient, hopeful future.”
