I am something that brings change.

New tools
Andrade’s work exemplifies multidisciplinary expression through music. Reflecting on the traditional tools she used as a musician, she decided to innovate by creating a new instrument with more strings and sensor-based technology. During the session, she performed a musical interpretation of dead zones in the ocean. Listening to it, I was introduced to new and unique ways of experiencing sound—sounds that resonate with the complexities of our increasingly complicated world.
Other speakers recognized this need for new tools. Gao shared that coming to the Netherlands made her practice more versatile. With a background in art history in China, she learned to use machines to design new tools. At the symposium, participants could view a part of her larger work: an installation of terracotta pots, each designed with one day’s worth of weather data. The original piece displays over 92 days in terracotta pots (the countdown to her graduation) compared to historical temperatures (pre-climate change). The more the temperatures differed, the more unstable the pots became, eventually falling apart. It was a powerful representation of how climate change affects the materiality of things and a call to engage audiences more deeply in this critical discussion.
Van Tol, from Wageningen University, emphasized the importance of not just knowing about climate change but also feeling it. She highlighted how design—and all forms of artistic engagement—can facilitate this connection. “As a student, I wanted to save the world,” she said, but she realized that we need actionable change and that people need to understand their relationship with the environment. She decided to put this thought into action in her courses and found that experiencing the world and embedding oneself in their studies helps students understand their surroundings better. Social sciences, in particular, allow more room for questioning than the more conservative and disengaged natural sciences.