PrésHuMer: listening to the underwater anthropic

Listening to the anthropic underwater

What is the social perception of the human impact on the marine environment? What representation can we make of it? It is around these questions that two teams of researchers and engineers met. On the one hand, a team of anthropologists and filmmakers wished to extend their reflections on the Anthropocene to the marine environment; on the other hand, a team of oceanographers and ecologists wished to approach their expertise in marine pollution from a sensory perspective, and to open their practice to new forms of representation by image and sound of the phenomena they measure by various quantitative tools.

This interdisciplinary project brings together oceanographers and anthropologists around the question of the perception and measurement of human presence in the underwater world. They will conduct an experimental survey on the coastline of Marseille. At the crossroads of social sciences and environmental sciences, and through audiovisual experimental writing, this project aims to act on the societal representation of the anthropic presence in the maritime environment.

Listening to the Marseilles coastline. The maritime metropolis of Marseilles and its coastal area are an excellent terrain to address and illustrate these issues related to the impact of human activities on the marine environment. The city is backed by a large port, highly urbanized, with a significant industrial, economic and tourist activity; the pollution on the sea and the interactions are multiple. Two sites will be explored in particular: the Calanques National Park and the Etang de Berre.

An interdisciplinary project. Winner of the 80/PRIME program of the CNRS, the project associates the Centre Norbert Elias (CNE), the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanology (MIO) and the Observatory of the Universe Institut Pythéas. The interdisciplinarity is based on the collaboration between a team of oceanographers with a very good knowledge of the anthropic impact on the marine environment in the Marseilles area and a team of anthropologists who have acquired a singular experience on how to represent the interactions between humans and non-humans using audio-visual tools.

An initial question. PrésHuMer will start from the postulate that the sea is not only a wild space but a social space where humans interact with other living species. What can we perceive of the human presence under the sea? Behind this initial question, three main axes of reflection constitute the basis of the project.

How to measure the impact of human activity on underwater ecosystems?

How to measure and/or imagine the perception of human activities by the inhabitants of the underwater ecosystems?

How to make visible to the public these first two axes of reflection by relying on sensory devices, or more prosaically: how to put the human in the skin of an underwater inhabitant?

Each of these axes will be the subject of separate developments and cross-views allowing, for example, to compare a scientific measure and a "feeling".

Restore the sound and visual landscapes of the seabed. The exploratory project will be based primarily on video and sound recordings that will make it possible to film and capture sounds from the "bottom up" and highlight the impact of human activities on the surface or underwater and to restore the disturbances generated. The underwater environment will be considered as a social landscape where humans and marine communities interact and this in a context where the underwater environment remains largely represented as an exotic world, foreign to humans.

At a time when ecological issues are major questions, the results of our project aim to make visible the invisible, audible the inaudible and participate in these societal reflections. Our work could be used in the design of immersive sensory devices mobilized in policies and actions of sensitization to civil society.