Mutual Aid OrchestraMarko Marković (HR), Josipa Vujević (HR)

Research project based on the bio-acoustic interaction between humans and animals, 2023.
*In May, 2023 Marković and Vujević started developing the Mutual Aid Orchestra project during the residency organized by KONTEJNER in collaboration with the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences (MedILS) in Split, within the A Sea Change European project.

Mutual Aid Orchestra is an ongoing research project by Marko Marković investigating interactive communication and empathic bonding transformations as survival strategies between species in extreme living environments. Using bioacoustic methodologies in art and science is based on emotional support and mutual aid with performativity through sound, music and body movement.

In this research project, artist Marko Marković and oceanographic engineer Josipa Vujević explore possibilities in interactive communication with the sea mammals in the Adriatic Sea. They will try to achieve this by creating a DIY Active Acoustic Monitoring System for movement detection and echolocators navigation directed towards intelligent sea creatures such as the bottlenose dolphin, the large whale that occasionally visits us from the Mediterranean, and the Mediterranean monk seal, an endangered species allegedly seen again in the Adriatic Sea. The research focuses on the Adriatic Sea within human-animal relationships and their living conditions influenced by today's environmental challenges.

The project objective is to review the effect of sound/music interaction on animal behavior and its empowering potential in creative communication. It potentially reduces stress levels in noise-polluted environments affected by gas and fuel drilling, underwater construction, global tourism, boat traffic, military activities and war zones. Such extreme environmental conditions are affecting life on the planet and expanding climate change destructions of biodiversity on the land and in the sea.

Marko Marković (HR)

Marko Marković is an artistic researcher on collective engagement in self-organized societies creating autonomous models of coexistence with performative communication strategies. He graduated from the Arts Academy in Split, University of Zadar (Psychology and Pedagogy), and holds an MA in Art & Science from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, the department where he worked as a program coordinator. From 2008 to 2018, he was the artistic director of DOPUST / Days of open performance. He was awarded the Radoslav Putar Young Visual Artist Award in 2011. From 2012 to 2014, he worked in the production of the Matthew Barney Studio in New York. Marković presented his work at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2016, La Biennale di Venezia – Biennale Sessions Giardini in 2019, the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art in 2016, at Kunsthalle Wien in 2023. As a project researcher in the scientific team at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz in 2022/2023, he is exploring robot-human interactions.

Josipa Vujević (HR)

Josipa Vujević (b. 1978, Drniš) graduated from the University of Zagreb in Satellite Physical Geodesy and Geomatics with a focus on research technologies of the sea and the seabed. From 2004 to 2013, she undertook professional scientific studies in the Adriatic Sea and the coast at the Hydrographic Institute Split. From 2013 to 2016, she worked in the Netherlands, focusing on the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Black Sea. She has been working as a freelancer on projects in the Caspian Lake, the Ionian Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean since 2017. She specialized in research on acoustic technologies to collect data on the physical and morphological properties of the sea and the seabed, observing the life of organisms and scientific methods applied in data processing and making studies.