Ecological Intelligence is the intelligence of nature. It is an autopoetic creativity arising from and guided by the exquisite matrix of relationships on Earth.
Oika is the expression of ecological intelligence through human thought and action.
The Oika Project is a community of scientists, artists and storytellers dedicated to manifesting Ecological Intelligence through work that realigns culture with nature.
We believe Oika can cultivate the capacity to heal and prosper in our problem-riddled world. If we get our Oika right, our most pressing "problems" justly solve themselves.
Any sober analysis of our collective situation reveals systemic dysfunction across personal, social and planetary scales. Oika sees these patterns as originating from an accidental flaw in perception that separates humans from nature. The same thinking that disconnects us from nature, also disconnects us from each other.
The cumulative impact of this fiction has now brought us to our shared moment of crisis and uncertainty. The only certainty now is that we are all in this together.
To restore reciprocal human and planetary flourishing, we need to rediscover and re-inhabit what it means to be Earthlings. To do this, Oika looks to the two great hallmarks of human endeavor; science and art. We call on science to discover and decipher nature, and art to help us heal and feel the nature within us. This is a new, functional paradigm for art-science collaboration.
Oika is a call for art to change the climate of our minds.
Oika has developed a unique framework for integrating science and the arts. Our approach goes beyond employing artists to represent scientific data and more deeply than just communicating the value of science in society.
I'm a scientist, so Oika is based on scientific knowledge. But I'm going to get out of my own way and say that Oika is mostly about love, joy, and gratitude."
- Rich Blundell
Humans have grown homesick. Oika is a set of ecological principles and practices that can help heal the world by reminding us of how good it feels to simply be earthlings.
Social and economic crisis are two sides of the same ecological coin. Humans are injuring the planet and each other needlessly. Culture created this mess and must help clean it up. Oika is an invitation to create art that heals with greater capacity than the injury we cause.
We believe cultural leadership must be ecological leadership. Our science-based, arts-driven programs help early-career optimists and the mid-career disillusioned open co-creative relationships with nature to generate new ecological prosperity.
The story of Oika begins as a fish story when a bluefin tuna somehow communicates a different path in life for a fisherman. The experience triggers an epiphany and a lifelong global quest to understand how such communication happens. The story of Oika today is what the fisherman discovered.