SHINE (Sciences Humanities Intelligence Nurturing Emotions) is an interdisciplinary University of Florida project that brings together the environmental humanities, environmental research, neuroscience, artistic practice, and digital technologies to foster a clearer public understanding of Florida’s spring ecosystems. The project engages the framework of Environmental Generational Amnesia (EGA), the process through which communities and successive generations gradually lower their ecological expectations and come to accept environmental decline as “normal.” SHINE addresses this challenge by combining sensory experience, cultural mediation, and creative knowledge-making.

At the core of SHINE is a 3D audiovisual experience built from field-based materials (images, soundscapes, and voice narration), designed to make perceptible ecological features and changes that are often difficult to communicate through conventional formats. This component is complemented by ecopoetry as a method of interpretation and engagement: poetry is treated not as ornament or commentary, but as a mode of inquiry that can articulate relationships among place, memory, language, and emotion. SHINE is also multilingual, integrating language learning and translation-oriented practices to broaden access and to highlight how environmental awareness is shaped by—and can be communicated through—different languages and cultural traditions. Through workshops and teaching-oriented activities, SHINE invites students and broader audiences to practice observation, writing, and reflection, demonstrating how interdisciplinary collaboration across media can strengthen environmental communication and ecological awareness.

Alongside its creative and educational components, SHINE includes a research and assessment dimension that examines how immersive environmental media and poetic language influence attention, emotion, and memory. This includes participant questionnaires (for example, on sense of place, perceived environmental change, and pro-environmental orientations) and, when appropriate, noninvasive EEG recordings that measure patterns of brain activity associated with engagement and affective response during the experience. By pairing qualitative reflection with empirical measures, SHINE aims to better understand how environmental communication works across different audiences and to refine future versions of the project for broader educational and public impact.