Desperate times call for creative measures.
To encourage innovative solutions to environmental crises, the arts and activism are teaming up on campus through a series of events titled Environmental Art and New Media Technology: Imagining Sustainable Future.
“It’s a time in history when the old models and ways of doing things are not going to sustain us anymore,” said Cary Peppermint, assistant professor of art and art history. “It’s the perfect time to consider new ways of working.”
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| A website built for the symposium, a section of which is shown here, was designed by students Sam Levine ’10 and Susan Chang ’09. |
Artists working across the boundaries of environmental science, computer science, design, engineering, and eco-criticism will participate in this symposium, exploring global warming and sustainability across digital and networked art and research.
The events begin Friday with an artists’ reception at 5 p.m. in Little Hall for Nature Version 2.0: Ecological Modernities and Digital Environmentalism. This exhibition is a collection of works from various artists who are approaching environmentalism in different ways by re-imagining the relationship between nature and technology.
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“They are thinking about what environmentalism might be on the Internet or what it might be in the city versus the rural areas,” explained Peppermint. “They’re bridging these worlds and having dialogues that challenge and redefine our ideas of environmentalism.”
Following the reception, Natalie Jeremijenko, a 1999 Rockefeller Fellow whose work is included in the Nature Version 2.0 display, will give the keynote address.
Jeremijenko’s mission is “to reclaim technology from the idealized, abstract concept of ‘cyberspace’ and apply it to the messy complexities of the real world.”
Friday’s events continue with 90 Degrees South, a multimedia sound performance by Andrea Polli. This series of sonifications is meant to portray the changes occurring within New York City, especially Central Park, because of global warming.
On Saturday, artists will participate in a series of talks, panels and lectures in Golden Auditorium, beginning at 9 a.m. and continuing until 5 p.m.
“The best thing that could happen [from the symposium] is that we interrupt student’s ideas of what is an environmentalist or an artist,” Peppermint said. “If we interrupt their preconceived ideas, we could instill in students the sense of possibility in imagination and the permission to be creative in ways that they did not previously consider.”