National Science Foundation

SEAD Call for White Papers on Science Engineering Art and Design Collaboration

Conferences, Open Calls, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SEAD CALL FOR WHITE PAPERS on ISSUES FACING THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY SEEKING to ENHANCE COLLABORATION AMONG THE SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, ARTS and DESIGN

The US National Science Foundation -funded Network for Sciences, Engineering, Arts and Design (SEAD: http://sead.viz.tamu.edu/) is issuing an open International Call for White Papers from the community. The Principal Investigator is Carol LaFayette of Texas A&M University.

We are seeking to survey concerns, roadblocks and opportunities, and solicit recommendations for enhancing collaboration among sciences, engineering, arts and design. These position papers will be submitted as part of a report to NSF and the community from the SEAD network in the summer of 2013. With grateful appreciation for US funding, we recognize that activity connecting the sciences, engineering, arts, and design is international and, furthermore, that global involvements are essential in today’s economy. Therefore we are interested both in what US collaborators can learn from experiences in other countries, and vice versa, and also in how to foster collaborations that bridge beyond regions to nations. Cultural cross-fertilization via the SEAD network – whether from disciplinary, organizational or ethnic perspectives – is a vital component of our purpose and goals.

A SEAD White Paper Steering Committee has been assembled (http://seadnetwork.wordpress.com/sead-white-papers-steering-committee/), co-chaired by Roger Malina (ATEC, UT Dallas and IMERA, Aix Marseille University) and Carol Strohecker (Center for Design Innovation, University of North Carolina system). Submitted White Papers will be reviewed by the steering committee and posted on the open SEAD White Paper Web Site <http://sead.viz.tamu.edu/white_papers.html>. Authors of white papers will be invited to join the SEAD White Paper Working Group.

White Papers must address one significant roadblock or opportunity, in terms of the SEAD focus areas or a relevant topic of the authors’ choosing. SEAD focuses include: research and creative work, learning and education, productive partnerships across disciplines and organizations, and culture and economic development. Although a White Paper may be submitted by a sole author, we encourage collective authorship and group submissions. White Papers must include recommendations for actions to move the community forward. We welcome submission of already existing advocacy papers or reports. White Papers should be short: text up to 10 pages total, including all materials and type size no smaller than 12; video no longer than 10 minutes.

The Deadline for initial one-page Abstracts is August 15, 2012.
Submissions invited on the basis of the Abstracts will be October 15, 2012.

You may submit a White Paper via email to PI Carol LaFayette. If your submission is a video, email the link to its location in an open archive (such as uTube, vimeo, etc.) Note that White Papers in both text and video formats must include explicit recommendations addressed to specific stakeholders.

b) We welcome links to existing reports, which will be added to our compilation of precedent sources internationally <http://seadnetwork.wordpress.com/bibliography/>.

If you wish to be kept informed of the activities of the SEAD network, please email Carol LaFayette.

For further information or questions about White Papers in text or video format, contact Carol Strohecker.

Additional Guidelines for White Papers are available at http://seadnetwork.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/white-paper-guidelines . We welcome innovative ways of using online media to articulate the arguments of the White Papers. If you wish to explore experimental publishing approaches, contact Roger Malina.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.1142510, Collaborative Research: EAGER: Network for Science, Engineering, Arts and Design (NSEAD) IIS, Human Centered Computing. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

‘The Great Immensity’ does a ‘Greenland’

Ashden Directory, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

pic: from left: Rebecca Hart, Dan Domingues, Meghan McGeary and Todd Cerveris in 'The Great Immensity'

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

In the last couple of years a number of plays about climate change have been staged in London from Steve Waters’ The Contingency Plan to the multi-authored Greenland at the National Theatre and Richard Bean’s The Heretic. The Contingency Plan was funny, dramatic and accurate; Greenland was not very dramatic, not very funny and accurate; and The Hereticwas very funny, quite dramatic and fairly inaccurate.

Meanwhile, this blog has been waiting since 2010 for the results of the substantial grant of $750,000 (£470,000) from the US National Science Foundation for a new play about climate change by The Civilians theatre company. The reviews for The Great Immensity are now in. It sounds as if it has made some of the same mistakes as Greenland.

So what happens in The Great Immensity? The set-up is that a character called Phyllis arrives at Barro Colorado Island, a rainforest and research reserve in the middle of the Panama Canal, in search of her twin sister Polly, a filmmaker who has suddenly disappeared. The researchers on the island help Phyllis reconstruct her sister’s last days through flashbacks, video interviews from Polly’s hard drive, and vaudeville musical sketches. Phyllis learns that Polly was engaged in a project to do with the upcoming Auckland Climate Summit. The action then moves to Churchill, Manitoba, where Earth Ambassadors and others disclose what happened to Polly.

Robert Trussell in the Kansas City Star calls it a “risk-taking show”and an “unwieldy cargo container of theatrical virtues and deficiencies”.

“Integrated into the narrative is alarming information about the plight of the planet. I’m not questioning the scientific information that forms this play’s foundation. My concern is how the show works as theatrical entertainment.”

Victor Wishna, in the KCMetropolis, an online journal of the performing arts, takes the viewthat what theatre does best is provoke, rather than educate or entertain. Although well-performed, he finds it a single-issue, educational show, with no subplots or diversions from the message of the irreversible damage that humans have done to the planet.

“Theatre-goers may very well leave The Great Immensity more frustrated and agitated than inspired. Unlike a lecture or even a documentary film, theatre isn’t expected to offer answers but to raise—to provoke—questions, to challenge assumptions, to take us from ‘There’s nothing to be done’ to ‘Isn’t there something we can do?’”

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

Science Foundation Backs Climate-Change Play – NYTimes.com

Announcements, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $700,000 grant to the Civilians, a New York theater company, to finance the production of a show about climate change. “The Great Immensity,” with a book by Steven Cosson “This Beautiful City” and music and lyrics by Michael Friedman “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”, tells the story of Polly, a photojournalist who disappears while working in the rain forests of Panama.

via Arts, Briefly – Science Foundation Backs Climate-Change Play – NYTimes.com.