Human Interaction

Ecopsychology: Science, Totems, and the Technological Species?

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Human Interaction with Nature and Technological Systems Laboratory at the University of Washington, and Patricia H. Hasbach, Licensed Professional Counselor and clinical psychotherapist with a private practice in Eugene, Oregon, and a faculty member at Lewis & Clark College and Antioch University Seattle, have brought together and edited the publication Ecopsychology: Science, Totems, and the Technological Species, a collection of essays giving insight on the rather new discipline of Ecopschology.

We need nature for our physical and psychological well-being. Our actions reflect this when we turn to beloved pets for companionship, vacation in spots of natural splendor, or spend time working in the garden. Yet we are also a technological species, and have been since we fashioned tools out of stone. Thus one of the world’s central challenges is to embrace our kinship with a more-than-human world – “our totemic self” – and integrate that kinship with our scientific culture and technological selves.

This book takes on that challenge and proposes a revisioned ecopsychology. Contributors consider such topics as the innate tendency for people to bond with local place; a meaningful nature language; the epidemiological evidence for the health benefits of nature interaction; the theory and practice of ecotherapy; Gaia theory; ecovillages; the neuroscience of perceiving natural beauty; and sacred geography. Taken together, the chapters integrate our totemic sensibilities with science and technology, and offer a vision for human flourishing.

The book can be bought here.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Powered by WPeMatico

A breath of life by Fraser Ross

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_05vlfm_gTs

A breath of life 2010 [Laboratory Report]

This is an expedition involving the artificial study of plant life.

Materials – Flexinol (shape changing wire), recycled electronic components, specimen jars.

Ten propagated flowers from a living plant. Each flower has a ‘death state’, until human interaction triggers its ‘life state’ and just for a brief moment, you may recapture the flowers in full bloom. When the viewer blows into the specimen jars, each flower begins a shape change. Blowing is the appropriate interaction as trees and plants grow on carbon dioxide.

Every living thing needs a home, plants change themselves to survive in their habitat.

www.fraser-ross.com

YouTube – A breath of life by Fraser Ross.

Independent Curators International – Experimental Geography

Experimental Geography

Curated by Nato Thompson

The manifestations of “experimental geography” (a term coined by geographer Trevor Paglen in 2002) run the gamut of contemporary art practice today: sewn cloth cities that spill out of suitcases, bus tours through water treatment centers, performers climbing up the sides of buildings, and sound works capturing the buzz of electric waves on the power grid. In the hands of contemporary artists, the study of humanity’s engagement with the earth’s surface becomes a riddle best solved in experimental fashion. The exhibition presents a panoptic view of this new practice, through a wide range of mediums including sound and video installations, photography, sculpture, and experimental cartography.

The approaches used by the artists featured in Experimental Geography range from the poetic to the empirical. The more pragmatic techniques include those used by the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) in projects made with students and other non-art groups that aim to strengthen peoples’ roles as agents of change in their own environments. See, for example, their map intended to help longshoremen and truckers identify chokepoints in the cargo trade network. In their similarly empirical projects, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a research organization, examines the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface. CLUI embraces a multidisciplinary approach that forces a reading of the American landscape (such as the disfiguring effects of culling natural resources from the picturesque banks of the Hudson River), thereby refamiliarizing viewers with the overlooked details of their everyday experience.

Experimental Geography is curated by Nato Thompson, curator at Creative Time in New York. It is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, co-published by ICI and Melville House, that includes essays by Thompson, Jeffrey Kastner, and Trevor Paglen.

ARTISTS

Francis Alÿs, AREA Chicago, The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), e-Xplo, Ilana Halperin, kanarinka (Catherine D’lgnazio), Julia Meltzer and David Thorne, Lize Mogel, Multiplicity, Trevor Paglen, Raqs Media Collective, Ellen Rothenberg, Spurse, Deborah Stratman, Daniel Tucker, Alex Villar, Yin Xiuzhen

TOURING SCHEDULE

AVAILABLE

Contact us to book this exhibition
April 22, 2011 – December 31, 2011

Freeman Art Gallery, Bishop’s University

Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada
January 21, 2011 – April 1, 2011

Museum London

London, Ontario, Canada
October 9, 2010 – January 2, 2011

The James Gallery, The Graduate Center at CUNY

New York, New York
June 24, 2010 – August 27, 2010

The Colby College Museum of Art

Waterville, Maine
February 21, 2010 – May 30, 2010

Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
October 10, 2009 – January 30, 2010

The Albuquerque Museum

Albuquerque, New Mexico
June 28, 2009 – September 20, 2009

Rochester Art Center

Rochester, Minnesota
February 7, 2009 – April 18, 2009

Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University

Greencastle, Indiana
September 19, 2008 – December 2, 2008

TECHNICAL SPECS

via Independent Curators International – Experimental Geography.