GEN Centro de Artes y Ciencias (GEN Center for Arts and Sciences) is a Uruguayan institution designed to produce interdisciplinary projects to build bridges between art, science and technology. The institution is a social connector, a cross-pollinating platform where scientists, technologists, and artists can devise new ways of influencing positive social change. Although it is an independent organization, it collaborates closely with many governmental agencies, cultural institutions, and private companies. GEN Centro de Artes y Ciencias produces films, TV series, documentaries, performing arts, and multimedia projects. One of the main aims of GEN is to stimulate, through widely shared artistic endeavors and large-scale media projects, a new social consideration of the possibilities of education, a proactive discussion on how to change and scale traditional ways of producing goods, and an innovative exploration of how technology can be used in combination with scientific research to protect the natural environment. Some of the projects currently being developed are:
“After Capitalism”: a series that explores the proposals on reconsidering means of production and labor interactions based on the opinions of academics, social thinkers, environmental scientists, and entrepreneurs. The series aims to take the discussion on these issues beyond a polarized argument that places the position of the viewer as either for or against capitalism, introducing a more nuanced and balanced account of contemporary processes that emphasize information rather than merely political statements. This series, created by Academy Award winner Chivo Lubezki, is currently being developed by a team that includes Eduardo Porter, celebrated author and columnist for the New York Times. Budget for the development and research project: USD $550,000
Who is in Charge of You: a TV series devoted to the perceptual and cognitive human characteristics that make people prone to be manipulated by media campaigns and gullible when presented with fake news. The series intends to contribute in a non-apocalyptic way to self-awareness through which audiences can understand that their own ways of interacting with information are part of the problem when dealing with social networks and media. When discourses about a polarized world tend to underline the distance with “the other,” the series proposes a more exploratory approach that involves a better understanding of human nature. This series is in the process of development with the participation of Mariano Sigman, a celebrated neuroscientist and author published all around the world. Budget for the whole series: USD $2,600,000
The Trail of Things: A series aimed mostly at teenagers in which everyday objects are being dismantled, their parts taken apart, and visualized as the result of a history that involves intellectual, material, and social processes. The idea behind the series is to have a less trivial interaction with goods, tools, and devices and to invite the audience on a journey that often entails several distant locations involved in producing a single object. Along that journey, the viewers will hear the testimonies of miners, factory workers, or scientists from many countries, getting to know the human cost and the often unimaginable logistics behind each aspect of everyday life. The series is currently being developed, and the total budget is USD $2,350,000.
Late Bloomers: As life expectancy continues to rise, we will soon see more elderly adults than teenagers. This has ushered in a new era of creativity, change, and empowered choices for people in their golden years. Late Bloomers is a series about mature people who have taken an unexpected turn in their lives at an advanced age. It is an inspiring quest to make the most of the wisest years and to apply experience to regain a sense of meaning. An engaging narrative, full of amazing personal stories and captured with a deep appreciation for life’s unpredictable twists, in which the search for identity coincides with social engagement and collectively significant actions. $2,100,000
I’m All Ears: How often does one find a Grammy and Academy Award winner who is also a scientist? While most pop artists experience sound from a cultural or emotional point of view, Jorge Drexler also sees it from the perspective of a whole career as an otorhinolaryngologist. After devoting many years to sound and hearing both on stage and in the operating room, he embarks on a quest to explore all the wonderful feats that have been built around the simple (and very complex) act of listening. It is a documentary series full of unexpected facts and wonders, told by one of the most contemporary and charismatic global artists. The series aims to introduce a sense of wonder rooted in objective, quantifiable, and evidence-based information and more scientific curiosity in a section of the audience that is generally more attuned to social media, pseudo-information, and opinion-based exchanges. $3,250,000
The Many Meanings of Life: Science-related content generally follows a top-down approach. Episodes usually rely on a voice of authority who knows the subject and hands down the information to the public. This series, contrary to that common approach, is presented by a music pop star with no scientific training, a simple and lovable person that very frontally declares embarrassment about having reached middle age “not knowing much about anything”. The idea, then, is to explore subjects based on the daily experience of an average human being but presented in a very attractive and compelling way, sharing the journey to get the desired information as a whole sensory experience rather than just a web search. The project will involve the personal opinions of a great variety of people worldwide, integrating diverse generations, social origins, ethnicities, and sensibilities. $930,000
Origins: Brazil has one of the world’s most diverse, influential, and recognizable music traditions. It can be found in every record shop on the planet and has influenced all art forms, from poetry to filmmaking. Until now, there has not been a TV series that explored its rich musical influences by visiting the original sources and talking to the creators, popular interpreters, and musicians who keep those traditions alive. This series will revisit villages in Africa, tribal communities in Amazonia, old towns in Portugal and Morocco, Jazz clubs in New Orleans and New York, immigrant neighborhoods in many cities of Brazil, and numerous places in the world in which Brazilian music has acquired a special flavor of its own, like Japan and France. The series uses music to revisit the many colonial tides behind demographic and cultural exchanges and opens audiences’ sensibilities to the unavoidable intermixed cultural backdrop of every global expressive manifestation. $2,130,000
