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Raise the Green Roof: Theater for the New City

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Crystal Field, the artistic director of Theater for the New City, is thrilled. Under Field’s direction, TNC has been a pioneer in the environmental movement for over 15 years, and she remembers when environmental issues were taboo. “When we wrote street-theater songs about organic food and rejecting genetically modified foods 10 years ago, people thought we were crazy,” she remembers. Today, her street theater focuses on environmental responsibility and climate change and the fact that here in NYC, “We may all be underwater while not having enough water to drink.”

Field is inspired by the fact that now there is technology accessible to help us address these issues. The issue is at the forefront of our minds, and now city and governments are willing to help, which Field says is “going to change everything. It’s not just going to be little cliques. It’s going to be well into the social fabric.” She adds, “Now we’re going to put some money where our mouth is,” and that’s just what TNC has been doing.

TNC has taken extensive steps to make its facilities and productions more sustainable, and they have ambitious plans to continue their sustainability efforts. TNC has already taken the following steps to green their theater:

  • They have replaced all the incandescent light bulbs in their theater offices and public spaces with compact fluorescents
  • In their lobby, which they use as an exhibition area and art gallery, they have installed a system that senses the availability of natural light and decreases electric lighting accordingly
  • Recycling of paper, plastic, glass, and metal has always been a priority, and they recently initiated a battery recycling program
  • Reusing show programs: TNC asks audiences to return their programs for reuse if they don’t want to keep them as souvenirs
  • Hosting Green Cabarets, which feature a variety of readings, dances, and musical acts, all inspired by green issues

Beyond these initial steps, however, an ambitious green renovation plan is in the works.  TNC is currently seeking funding from the Kresge Foundation, local businesses, and charity events; once a set goal is reached, the city of New York, which has become very active in green issues via its ambitious PlanNYC, will cover the remainder of the costs.  Features of the renovation are set to include:

  • A green roof, the flagship component of the renovation, will feature vegetation and solar panels which will reduce their carbon footprint by gobbling up CO2 and releasing oxygen, insulating the theater (reducing heat/cooling energy needs), and generating power to run the theater from the solar panels.
  • Planting trees and shrubs on the sidewalk in front of the theater to increase visibility of their efforts
  • Installing more efficient stage lighting lamps
  • Complete renovation of the Chino Theater, including green lighting and mobile seats
  • Water-saving measures
  • Rennovating the scenic shop to make it more energy efficient
  • An audio/visual recording studio downstairs
  • All renovations will use sustainable wood and the most environment-friendly products possible, and they plan to reuse or recycle as much of the remaining material as possible

Field says that their emphasis on a green roof came about for three reasons.  Firstly, wanting to create an urban green space but without extra land of their own, they decided to turn to an unused space of their own: the roof.  The space will not only reduce their carbon footprint and improve the air quality in a crowded city, but also provide organic food for the community.  Secondly, they’re hoping that it serves as a model for other local theaters, saying, “If all theaters in New York City followed our example, the reduction of our collective carbon footprint would be extraordinary. “  Lastly, they realized that it would cut down on their long-term energy costs by reducing heating and cooling expenses, and might even help to prolong the operational life of the roof itself.

TNC’s plan is ambitious, and the obstacles to fundraising in today’s economic climate are many, but Field remains positive and determined to keep working towards a greener planet. She urges relentless perseverance and gradual change: “One small step and then another small step that is obtained with blood sweat and tears. But, you know, we don’t have slavery in this country anymore, right?” She believes Americans have the ability to recognize their mistakes and change their ways. She jokes, “We smoked, and then we got cancer. But then we gave it up. We learn.”

When asked what recommendations she would give to other theaters looking to go green, Field suggests that they start with green committees made up of staff and audience members, and that they address how the theaters can save money right away by greening their basic operations, from buying green janitorial products, to switching out lightbulbs, to recycling everything possible.  She advocates going online to learn about the basic ways to green a business and to start applying those practices. Lastly, she suggests that you “start talking about green on your own website. Put your plans on your website and people will start to contact you who want to get involved.”

According to Field, it is the theater’s job to be a part of the solution: “The theater is going to tell us that things can be solved.” She maintains that theater is good at reinforcing the message of going green to people who already support that cause – the converted. “The converted need inspiration to go on and do the work that needs to be done. Theater is of great value in that way.”

Links:

More information on TNC’s green roof via their website

“What is a green roof?” via HowStuffWorks

Greenroofs.com and Liveroof.com

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White Light Green Guide Published

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White Light’s Green Guide promises to be an exceptionally useful guide to theater managers, technicians, and designers looking to reduce their environmental footprint while decreasing energy usage.  Details below.

Reprinted from Lighting & Sound America, April 16, 2009:

The U.K.-based entertainment lighting supplier White Light announces the release of the White Light Green Guide, available now from the company’s website.

Intended as a starter guide for those wanting to make their work in lighting shows have as little impact on the environment as possible, the Green Guide offers suggestions for each phase of the process of show lighting, from initial meetings and planning through rig design, set-up and focus, show running, touring, and final load-out.

“Many of the suggestions in our Green Guide are largely common sense,” comments White Light’s managing director, Bryan Raven, “but it’s often the obvious things that get overlooked when it comes to putting a show together, particularly in the final hectic days of tech when the old mantra of ‘the show must go on’ tends to win out over everything else! We hope that by writing some suggestions down they might be able to be integrated into the planning and production process a little better.”

The White Light Green Guide draws on the experience the company has gained in trying to reduce the environmental impact of its operations and working to introduce newer, more energy-efficient technologies to lighting practitioners. This process has covered everything from installing a waste compactor, moving to filtered tapwater rather than bottled water, investigating hydrogen fuel cells as a power source for outdoor events, and adopting a wide range of LED lighting products — as well as continuing the company’s principal operation of renting lighting, giving equipment as long a working life as possible.

White Light have also been involved with a number of other environmental projects, including working with the Arcola Theatre on their aim to become the world’s first carbon-neutral theatre, and collaborating with the Mayor of London’s Office on its Green Theatre: Taking Action on Climate Change, and with environmental organisation Julie’s Bicycle on its Green Music guide.

The White Light Green Guide compliments these by focusing more specifically on lighting, hints ranging from switching off discharge moving lights when not actually in use, to considering new approaches to attaching cables to lighting bars.

Designed to be easy to read on-screen, the White Light Green Guide is available for download only; it can be found at the link below.

Links:
White Light Green Guide

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On flying to Australia to see the last Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat…

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The extraordinary poetic collaboration Dialogue between the body and the soul by John Kinsella and Melanie Challenger is reaching a kind of crescendo. It’s a work exploring our reluctance to face the consequences of our lifestyles – in particular the consequences of air travel.

The poets are using what turns out to be a very ancient poetic form to explore that modern theme; that of a dialogue between the body and the soul – two elements that are close-cousins but often in direct opposition to each other. So in this work the voice of “Body” can be that element which leads us to consume our planet,while “Soul” is our own spiritual response.

If I haven’t wrecked the depth of these poems through that cack-handed explanation, this is a verse titled “Body” which starts as an apparently well-meaning litany of endangered species – before it twists the knife.

Noisy Scrub Bird; Yangtze River Dolphin; Seychelles
Sheath-tailed Bat; Madagascar Pochard; Northern Hairy-
nosed Wombat; Javan Rhino, Iberian Lynx; Dwarf Blue Sheep;
Hispid Hare; Abington Island Giant Tortoise; Californian Condor;
stretch soul stretch — eco-tourist sales pitch — fly in fly out witness;
short-necked tortoises in ephemeral swamps around Perth.

WordPress seems to have killed the formatting of the poem; read the whole thing as it should be on the RSA Arts & Ecology site.

Illustration: Surrogate (for the Northern Hairynosed Wombat) 2005 by Patricia Piccinini. Piccinini, whose work often concerns bioethics She created this creature as an imagined surrogate for the threatened Northern Hairynosed Wombat as part of her series Nature’s Little Helpers. Piccinini writes:

The sculptures present a series of creatures that I have designed to ‘assist’ a series of the endangered Australian animals. In the photographs, we follow more closely one of these creatures, ‘The Bodyguard (for the Golden Helmeted Honeyeater)’. It is very seductive to think that we could find a simple technological solution to complex ecological problems such as extinction. It is far more exciting to talk about genetic engineering than to designate a large area of habitat/real estate as national park so that dozens or even hundreds of native species might be given a better chance of survival.

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San Francisco Bay Area Exhibitions and Happenings

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There’s been a buzz of eco-art activity out here in the SF Bay Area that I’ve been meaning to shout-out, Matt Merkel-Hess-style. It’s good work, and yes. Here we go.

First off: the amazing ladies at ecoartspace put together an inaugural exhibit for Art at the Cheese Factory, Terrior: A sense of place. Curated by Patricia Watts, the exhibit includes photos, paintings, installations and performances by a breathtaking array of environmental artists. That’s Emily Payne above installing in a lake. Yes. The exhibit continues until June 21st for those of you in the Marin area. Check out the website for a nice cranial buzz.

In San Francisco, New Langton Arts just opened an exhibition from Pae White called In Between the Outside-In. The central piece is a trapezoidal greenhouse/room framing a video screen. The projected image is a series of curling lines and unfolding patterns based on three-dimensional scans of an oak tree, a wild raspberry bush, and a manzanita grove. Those guys were all outside of Nevada City in California. White’s all about blurring the lines between site and non-site, I hear. The exhibit is up until the 18th of July.

Lastly: the Brower Center just opened. It’s a new center for environmental action with its own exhibition space in Berkeley, CA. Currently they’re running a series of photos by Sebastiao Salgado entitled Then and Now. They are big and black and white and stunning. They are people in environments. Upstairs in the space is an exhibit about activist David Brower, the building’s namesake: it’s what greenmuseum.org’s Sam Bower has been spending most of his time on these days.

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What Would Elphaba Do? The Broadway Green Alliance Squeezes Broadway Into Smaller Shoes

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“I wasn’t green, but I’m organized,” says Wicked Company Manager Susan Sampliner.  ”I’m a manager.” When Sampliner signed on to the Stephen Schwartz musical in 2003, little did she know that environmental thinking would become an integral part of her work in the arts. But the term ‘carbon footprint’, alongside terms like ‘places’ and ‘10 out of 12′, quickly became part of her arts management lexicon.

Wicked producer David Stone, like many Americans, saw Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth and began to wonder what he could do to find viable solutions to our planet’s growing environmental crisis. Having facilitated Eve Ensler’s successful V-Day initiative to stop violence against women, Stone began wondering if he could use his new hit musical to educate the Broadway community about its role in the issues of climate change and sustainability.

Stone realized that smaller shows didn’t have the financial resources to invest in greening operations, but that “big shows have big power”.  Knowing that he could commit the upstart capital needed to make energy-saving investments, and with the extremely eco-minded Universal Pictures as a producer, he decided that Wicked would be the first Broadway show to explore green procedures and procurement.  He began by tasking Sampliner with researching ways in which the production could green its operations.  And in the early stages of the show’s run, NBC/Universal provided in-house health and safety experts who ensured that toxic chemicals were stored, labeled, and handled properly.

When the hit show launched multiple companies, Stone encouraged each department in Wicked’s U.S. companies to find more energy efficient and earth-friendly options for carrying out daily duties. Over an 18-month period, Sampliner worked to tabulate each company’s (and each individual department’s) eco-efforts.  To date, the New York company alone has saved over $80,000 by recycling batteries and replacing incandescent front-of-house lighting with compact fluorescents. Additionally, Wicked’s makeup designers were encouraged to work with actors to adjust their makeup palettes to account for CFL lights, as opposed to traditional incandescent dressing room bulbs. These actions were not only good for the environment, but allowed Stone to invest financial resources in additional backstage eco-efforts.

In addition to environmental thinking in Wicked’s backstage areas, Stone and his staff wanted to integrate environmental education with their community engagement and marketing efforts. After being approached by Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project, Stone funded the Wicked Friendship Garden in Upper Manhattan, which opened on the fourth anniversary of “Wicked Day” in October 28, 2007. The Wicked producing team made the decision to use all subsequent Wicked Day events around the globe to educate the show’s fans about environmental action they can take in their daily lives. Local environmental organizations and eco-minded companies have been invited to provide information to Wicked Day participants in London, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities worldwide.

Wicked’s producers and marketing team decided to curtail the show’s traditional billboard campaign andfocus on media outlets that would help spread Stone’s vision for a greener Broadway. Marketing firm Serino Coyne suggested a new marketing campaign that highlighted Wicked’s green efforts. Using the portion of the show’s marketing funding earmarked for taxi and bus advertising, Serino Coyne developed the “This is a Wicked green bus/taxi” campaign, advertising the musical on the sides of hybrid buses and tops of hybrid taxis throughout the city. Additionally, ads at commuter stations, including Penn and Grand Central Stations, encourage patrons to utilize mass transit when making their way to the Gershwin.

In Spring 2008, Stone contacted the Broadway League regarding Wicked’s newfound environmental ethos, only to find that the League was discovering the importance of inserting environmental considerations into Broadway productions. The League encouraged Stone to host a town-hall style meeting in June 2008 to inform the Broadway community about Wicked’s eco-efforts and source additional interest from theatre owners, producers, general managers, and industry members. After hiring an outside marketing consulting firm, the League was paired with Allen Hershkowitz, PhD, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Hershkowitz was brought on board to help the New York theatrical community realize its impact on the local and global ecosystems. After learning of the efforts of the Wicked companies to date, Hershkowitz was quick to admit that Stone and Co. had taken more environmental action than a major US soft drink company!

Hershkowitz, who has worked to green the Oscars and Grammy Awards, used NRDC’s Major League Baseball Team Greening Program to show theatre owners and producers how the Broadway community could take similar action. “We’re using the audience’s passion to educate them,” says Sampliner. “A baseball fan’s favorite players are heroes just as our favorite theatre stars or characters are our heroes.” Stone concurred, saying that if Wicked’s Elphaba were living in the present day, the environmental crisis would be her raison d’être just as animal rights influence her thoughts and actions in the musical.

The town-hall meeting proved that going green was on the radar at many New York producing offices and non-profit theatre companies. Due to the overwhelming concern and commitment voiced at the meeting, the League began to work with Stone to gather an ad hoc committee that would decide on further research and action. August 2008 marked the first meeting of the “Broadway Goes Green” Committee. Broadway League President Nina Lannan appointed Sampliner and Charlie Deull (of Clark Transfer) as co-chairs. Upon realizing the scope of the new initiative, the committee agreed to divide their research into three subcommittees: Pre-/Post-Production, Production and Venues.

The Venues Subcommittee, headed by Jujamcyn Theaters Head of Operations Jennifer Hershey, was the first subcommittee to analyze their piece of the puzzle. Because most Broadway theatres had already received energy audits as first steps toward potentially receiving state funding for energy-efficiency upgrades, baseline measurements already existed for the energy-intensive act of housing a Broadway production. Thanks to these numbers, the Venues Subcommittee had a clear vision of the work ahead; but shops and shows had a bit more research to conduct before disseminating findings among program participants. Jujamcyn Theatres has moved to add recycling bins to dressing rooms, with other theatres soon to follow.

The Pre-/Post-Production Subcommittee, headed by Showman Fabricators owner (and LEED AP) Bob Usdin, is analyzing the building of sets with a focus on end-of-life cycle recycling or reuse. The Production Subcommittee, headed by Stage Manager Spook Testani, began researching green practices for the running of shows from rehearsal through their runs. The Production Subcommittee distributes a monthly publication, called The Green Sheet, which features the eco-efforts of different departments across various productions.

Two more subcommittees were recently added to the Ad Hoc Committee: Touring and Education & Outreach. The Touring Subcommittee, headed by Kirk Wingerson of Broadway Across America, is working to gather green practices being implemented across the country and see if they can work in New York. Additionally, this subcommittee will address the issues of trucking and travel associated with touring productions. Finally, the Education & Outreach Subcommittee, headed by 9 to 5 Producer Seth Greenleaf, will explore ways to inform audiences about Broadway’s green efforts and establish partnerships with other members of the entertainment industry.

Having worked to challenge local colleges, universities, and hospitals to explore sustainable options, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg quickly set his sights to other major industries, including the commercial theatre sector. The Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability began working with the League to examine commercial Broadway’s carbon footprint. On November 25th, 2008, Mayor Bloomberg was joined by representatives from various Broadway productions at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre to launch “Broadway Goes Green”. Since the press conference, the newly-named Broadway Green Alliance has worked hand-in-hand with the Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability to establish set recycling data tracking, retrofit marquee lights for energy efficiency, and develop various sustainable strategies for productions and theatres. The Broadway Green Alliance will reexamine Broadway’s eco-efforts in November 2009 to assess efforts to date and make industry-wide recommendations. Additionally, the Alliance hopes to hold discipline-specific seminars highlighting “better” eco practices, including workshops with costume, set, and lighting designers in theatre and film.

Disney Theatricals, who has been a leader in sustainability, has also joined the Alliance and appointed a representative to each of the subcommittees. Disney was the first show to appoint a “Green Captain” at each of their shows. Since then, other productions have elected Green Captains who will receive regular briefings on actions that can be implemented at their own shows. The Alliance is also exploring levels of green certification that will enable venues and productions of various sizes and means to participate in the initiative. In the near future, participants that join the Alliance may post signage in their theatre’s lobby area to educate the public about the initiative. The Alliance is also working to obtain an energy baseline for the Tony Awards to green aspects of the awards ceremony is the near future.

In March, 2009, Broadway theatres turned off their marquee lights from 8:30 to 9:30 pm to “cast their vote for Earth” during Earth Hour. The folks at Wicked took the challenge one step further, encouraging cast and crew to turn off as much electrical equipment as possible during the hour. Sampliner plans to encourage the Wicked company to have their own “off the grid show” once a month. (For productions in which cast members spend the majority of the show away from their dressing rooms, exploring the off switch might be a good route for one hour a month, or even one show a week.)

Sampliner refers to Broadway’s recent green awakening as a grassroots movement. “We’re helping the different departments talk to their colleagues at other shows to figure out what works and what doesn’t.  I was around when Broadway Cares started and this is the first initiative I’ve seen since that one that affects everyone in the community,” she adds. “That’s what’s so interesting to me. Everybody can do something. You might not be able to do it all but you can make a difference.”

Links:

Wicked’s Green for Good page

The Broadway Green Alliance

9 to 5’s Green from 9 to 5 page

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Icebergs vs. art: the photographs of Frank Hurley

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Caleb Klaces writes:

Frank Hurley, official photographer of Shackleton’s 1914-16 Antarctic expedition, went to great lengths to get the photographs he wanted. After the rescue and return home of the expedition members, Hurley went back to try and follow the route Shackleton and two other men had taken on foot across South Georgia to get help for those stranded on Elephant Island, as the first time around Hurley had been one of those left behind.

A selection of Hurley’s black-and-white photographs were on show last month at the Royal Geographical Society in London. They included humbling shots of the frozen-solid Endurance vessel looking tiny and brittle, a black stick insect sticking out of the shades of white which fill the frame. One desperate image was of the men harnessed to a boat, dragging it across pure white ground, taken from a precarious vantage point; the companionship in a portrait of a man-sized dog leaping up to hug one of the crew also captures a sense of loneliness.

But to me there’s something curiously incomplete, and unaffecting, in the portrait of the landscape itself. This could be because in my imagination the Antarctic exists on a scale too large ever to capture – dooming the photographs in my mind to fail; it could be that these older photographs suffer because images of polar regions are so familiar to us now, and often trite.

I now wonder if capturing the landscape is the wrong way to think about it. In a video post while on a recent Cape Farewelltrip to the Arctic, the singer Jarvis Cocker said that “People have made a lot of great art over the centuries…but an iceberg basically pisses on it”. For Cocker, the landscape is a kind of artwork already, to which we can only respond, not capture. This might be truer to Frank Hurley’s experience, too, who never did make it across South Georgia to get those photographs.

Caleb Klaces is a poet,and founder and Editor-in-chief of www.likestarlings.com, a website which pairs up established and new poets to create new poetic conversations.

Read Caleb Klace’s interview with Leo Murray on RSA Arts & Ecology.

Read Tony White’s essay Antarctic Scenarios on RSA Arts & Ecology.

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The Unsustainable Art Market Bubble

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“The contemporary art bubble will surely go down as the vanity and folly of our age” was the concluding claim on Ben Lewis’ charming BBC4 documentary about the notoriously secretive artworld market. 

But before writing about last nights TV, I want to say that the inflated bubble refers to the private international contemporary art market, not the whole of contemporary art. It is a good thing that gallery attendance is at an all time high and more people are making and creating things in their spare time. But as Lewis said, ‘Billionaires are effectively hijacking art history’, or at least they were…

He explained that the art market has increased 800% in the last 5 years, it is largely unregulated, which allows collectors to monopolise certain artists’ work and price hiking is driven by a small number of dealers. So when the rest of the economy crashed ‘one bubble kept growing because billionaires turned it into a game that only they could play’. Last night’s TV show was a welcome addition to the small amount of material that introduces the private art market to the public. If you’re completely unfamiliar with the international artworld market, and would like to hear the sound of your jaw hitting the floor, it is worth reading anthropologist Sarah Thorton’s Seven Days in the Artworld or get a taste of the hard-edge glamour of the auction rooms in her recent posting on the Artforum’s scene and herd (the artworlds favorite gossip column).

Art professionals rarely talk about this publically, so it is left to anthropologists and occasionally critics to report on these dealings.  Although a mischievous artist made a promotional postcard for London’s 2006 Frieze Art Fair, that stated: ‘Art fairs are good places to meet retired arms dealers’.

So while government ministers expenses are eclipsing more rational discussions of democratic accountability, it is worth stating explicitly that media sensationalism is one of the reasons that arts professionals (a majority of whom don’t profit from this bubble) don’t point out the follies of the uber-rich in the art market –  because to flag up how bizarre the system is substantially distorts what people think art is for.*

The beliefs around the social value and economic value of the arts are messily intertwined. To put it simply(ish): focus on the artworld market portrays art as primarily existing to grant social status with unique art objects regarded as tangible assets. The counter position is that contemporary artists’ create provocative works that are of aesthetic and social value for whoever engages with them. However, to dismiss the arts because of distaste for one or other of those apparently contradictory understandings of art – social well-being verses objects as social status – throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Personally, my frustration with the art market, in its current form, is that it keeps the art system deliberately elite. The current system does not enable art to fulfill it’s potential role of being a fully engaging site that celebrates human creativity in the broadest terms. I am not making a purist anti-market point, I am making an anti-mega-elitism point. Like many others who work in this field, I am passionate about the arts and celebrating creativity (in all fields), which is why I think there needs to be more rational and open discussion of how art systems operate. 

Lewis’ programme concluded by reporting that the contemporary art bubble burst over the last few months and the artworld market is falling faster than any other, including loses of $60million by Sotheby’s. But as with the other major crisis and crashes at this time  – this dramatic shift also has the potential for transforming how the art system functions and opens up timely questions about what responsibilities artists and art professionals have in setting the arts agenda.

For a substanial account of the character of economic bubbles, check out the RSA event with Kevin Doogan , or read his article Not All that is Solid.

*Addressing Ben Lewis’ early criticisms of the art market in 2008, Jennifier Higgie, co-editor of Frieze magazine said: ‘Lewis seems to think that the art world is a single glitzy, corrupt entity inhabited solely by Damien Hirst, a few lucrative galleries and the auction houses. He doesn’t mention the hundreds of artists who work hard every day, often for many years, and barely manage to scrape a living. He doesn’t mention the myriad non-profit art spaces, run by sincere, informed people, whose only aim is to expand and explore art’s remit in contemporary society. He doesn’t mention the countless talented writers who work tirelessly, and often for little reward, simply because writing and thinking about art are integral to who they are… Lewis is simply perpetuating the kind of anti-intellectual resentment against art that is usually to be found in the tabloids.’ Discuss. 

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SEEDS Festival

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SEEDS Festival is a unique interdisciplinary summer festival dedicated to arts and ecology. SEEDS features workshops, collaborative design projects, live performances, films, panel discussions, interdisciplinary investigations, and an archiving project. SEEDS cultivates innovative practices, by researching the connections between green, embodiment, justice, interconnectivity, reflection, investigation, art, science, and sacred.

SEEDS 2009 will focus on potentiality . Potential for new growth is generated in places where diverse organisms meet. In this year of potential political change, we invite this phenomenon into our interdisciplinary investigations .

2009 Format: Week One consists of workshops and a weekend mini-festival. Week Two is comprised of multiple interdisciplinary investigations. The Festival will culminate in a community day presenting research findings and offerings for the public.

You are welcome to attend the full two weeks of SEEDS , to experience the integrative nature of this project. Attend the whole event or a portion – either way, you will be a part of this creative thread. To read about last year’s research, join the seeds network: www.seedsfestival.ning.com .

via SEEDS Festival.

Short Darwin films online

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while-darwin-sleepsI’ve just been watching a series of short films exhibited online by the artist-moving-image agency Lux in honor of the 200th year of Darwin’s birth. They’ve put up four short films that consider, in their words, “Darwin’s complex legacy”.

There are a couple of real gems there; go have a look. In particular:

Paul Bush’s While Darwin Sleeps 2004 (illustrated) is a four-minute film that animates 3,000 dead long-dead insect specimens, cunningly using their very diversity to bring them alive again.

And Ben River’s wonderfully slow and measured Origin of the Species 2008 is a portrait of an unnamed auto-didact hermit, fascinated by the big questions of life and nature. In occasional moments of voice-over reflects on them from the solitude of his woodland hut. Among the gems of wisdom he dispenses is this one, which I particularly love:

“Man’s brain. It evolved real quick. And it’s trouble. It’s just trouble.”

Go to the Lux collection of Darwin-related films.

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