Throughout Leonardo and across the Leosphere, artist-scientists continue to interrogate the most pressing concerns of today and anticipate the emerging issues of tomorrow. Marshaling creative collaboration, insight, and foresight, Leonardo’s network of networks champion new ways to understand powerful forces across the planet, experimenting with interspecies ecosystems, multi-intelligence data innovation, collective knowledge and consciousness, neuroarts, biorobotics, lower Earth orbit, deep space, and deep-sea ocean life.
Many creatives who focus on marine biology and underwater wonders are inspired by the legendary ocean explorer Sylvia Earle. Earle’s indefatigable advocacy lays out an impassioned appeal to restore and conserve ocean health as the planet’s blue heart that sustains life on Earth. Despite catastrophic climate projections and dire consequences of current trajectories, Earle defies despair with irrepressible joy in her conviction that “it is thrilling to be a 21st Century human!” [1]. Earle exclaims how amazing it is to be alive today, to know what’s at stake, and to be able to do something about it. One of the things she does through Mission Blue [2] is advocate for “Hope Spots,” 164 designated protected marine areas that are scientifically identified as critical to ocean health, conservation, and restoration. The indomitable spirit of scientist-activists like Earle presents a kind of human “Hope Spot” embodied by those people and groups who illuminate possibilities and forge pathways to a brighter future. Leonardo seeks to weave these human Hope Spots into a living tapestry of connection and intersection that reinforces the fabric of our creative community.
In this issue’s endnote, “Artistic Creativity, Community, and Well-Being,” authors Sandra Smeltzer, Amala Poli, and Maria Kouznetsova demonstrate the need for human Hope Spots as they share their response to burnout, a sense of “unraveling—of fraying at the edges while desperately trying to keep our core fabric intact.” Their creative practice and research reveal the importance of weaving joy into creative pursuit and the value of process over product.
Other Hope Spots emerge from more equitable creative collaborative processes and projects. In this issue of Leonardo, Einat Amir and Yossi Hasson’s article “Toward Equitable ArtScience Collaborations” also emphasizes the transformative value of the creative process itself. By improving power balance based on more equal roles for artists and scientists working together, hybrid creative projects help synthesize artificially segregated fields and contribute new artscience collaboration methodologies. Exploring more equitable artscience collaborations for positive social change builds on Amir’s work researching how art cultivates increased intergroup empathy [3]. Promoting greater empathy and more equitable collaboration are both critical strategies for transformative prosocial change.
ReWildAR created a digital Hope Spot as an augmented reality (AR) Installation by artists Tamiko Thiel and /p [4]. Depicting the beauty of rewilding Washington D.C. with AR images of selected native plants, ReWildAR conjures imagined futures of reclaimed natural space. The ecological movement for rewilding is neither the abdication nor the abolition of design; rather it is the intentional practice of allowing natural design to emerge and in so doing reactivate healthy ecosystems. Could the movement for rewilding ecosystems inspire strategies to rewild social systems? If so, Hope Spots could play a critical role in inspiring positive transformation. Identifying and cultivating Hope Spots suggests a constellation of guideposts, a kind of celestial chart, connecting the dots to create an oasis of calm in the chaos [5].