Scientist

Osomocene

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This post comes to you from Chantal Bilodeau’s Artists and Climate Change Blog

By guest contributors Seth Baum and Inés Garcia

Greetings. We are Seth Baum and Inés Garcia. We are a scientist and an artist. And we both care about climate change. Seth cares about climate change because of the threat it poses to humanity, to other happy living things, and to their future in the universe. Inés cares about climate change because it affects every person and living being on the planet and we, as a civilization, are far too intelligent to continue contributing to the destruction of the endless resources on this planet.

We made Osomocene Productions because we believe that humanity can make a world that has a healthy environment and is still enjoyable for us humans. Indeed, we coined the word Osomocene to mean the Age of Awesome – awesome for humans and awesome for the environment. We intend the Osomocene as the successor to the current era, the Anthropocene, which is defined by human disruption of the environment. With Osomocene Productions, we want to envision this age of awesome and communicate the vision to other people so that together we can make the vision a reality.

Osomocene Productions articulates its vision for a better world through short-form online videos. Short form videos are fun and easy to watch, and they offer us the chance to talk about a variety of subjects. By putting them online, anyone can watch them, and who knows, they may even ‘go viral’ and get seen by many. (Click here to share our videos!) But most importantly, short-form videos let us create everyday scenarios that depict positive ways to help with climate change that everyone can take part in.

Our collaboration brings together Seth’s research and Ines’s artistry. Seth’s research covers two important areas. First is the science of climate change, and in particular the science of what people can do to help with climate change. Second is the science of communication, and the psychology of how communication can translate into action. Ines’s artistic sense for aesthetic quality helps us identify key themes from the research and convert them, through dramatic interpretation, into compelling story and character. Ines also manages the logistics of how to produce a film, coordinating with actors, directors, editors, and crew.

So far, we have produced one video (titled Vegetarian Cookbook) and have a second video scheduled for filming in April. Many more ideas are in the works. These videos have given us the chance to explore and refine our artistic and collaborative styles. Working together has been a tremendous growth process for both of us. We’re constantly trying out new ideas in our ongoing effort to promote a better world.

Filed under: Featured Artist, Multimedia, Video

Artists and Climate Change is a blog by playwright Chantal Bilodeau that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

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‘Ten Billion’ from another side

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This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Wallace Heim writes:

Michael Billington, in his nomination of Ten Billion as the best theatre event of 2012, claims that all the people he knows who saw the production found it life-changing. From my unscientific poll of the dozen people I know who saw the production, including myself, it’s possible we were in a different theatre. The lecture was well-crafted, the production tight, but the event was neither moving, informative or motivating. It was ‘old news’, a ‘first-year introductory lecture’, ‘Al Gore without the cherry picker’.

Billington’s lauding of the production is encouraging. That he, and others, were deeply affected is even more so, although one wonders what he has avoided reading or seeing for the past 20 years if the information presented was shocking. But Billington finds that it is not merely the accumulation of statistics, but the presence – the performance - of Stephen Emmott, the verifiable scientist, the speaker with a creditable reputation outside the theatre, that gave the production its urgency.

For this audience, the fluid realm of belief and disbelief that makes theatre work had to break down for the shock of climate instability to be heard. At the same time, the very theatrical occasion of sitting in that darkened room redolent of emotions of past productions, listening to another human speak, heightened any effect.

Asking again of those who found the production lacking, I found in each person’s experience at least one, if not many moments when the numbers add up, when the terror hits, when someone trusted speaks about a future irreconcilable with what one could bear. These events can be motivating and if Ten Billion provided that for some, then theatre’s role as educator has been met.

But if you’ve already had that experience, theatre is where you want to go to understand it, and a collocation of facts will not do that. This is a far more confused territory, requiring human imagination and many avenues of intelligence, deliberation, conflict and consent. It requires doing something like the processes of science, itself – its questioning and cross-questioning, experimentation, doubt and informed agreement.

Theatre may not be the place to present firm courses of action; Emmott’s advice to get a gun falls especially short. Conventional forms of theatre may, or may not, be adequate to the combination of reality and fiction that understanding climate change demands. But theatre, or something like it, continues to be a place where collectively, humans find a way through. There will continue to be many kinds of productions for many kinds of audiences. The hunger for a theatre by the audience that gets the facts but wants more continues to be strong.

“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

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Ten Billion – review | Stage | The Guardian

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From the Guardian review of Ten Billion:

Stephen Emmott, an acclaimed scientist, stands in a re-creation of his cluttered Cambridge office and delivers, under Katie Mitchell’s astute direction, an illustrated 60-minute talk on the consequences of over-population. He tells us that we are facing “an unprecedented planetary emergency” and, under his calm exterior, you sense a concealed fury at our failure to address the crisis.

via Ten Billion – review | Stage | The Guardian.

Partnering for the Climate: An Artist/Scientist Mixer

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This post comes to you from Cultura21

New York, The Noguchi Museum

Sunday, February 12, 2012, 3 pm

In times of climate change and global warming individuals as well as communities are confronted with fragmented, confusing and often overwhelming news and data about these themes. In order to make sense of these facts the largely disconnected linking between art, research and the public has to find a way to spark new relationships and thus make a difference.

Artists and scientists need to partner up and combine science with interpretive media. In a Noguchi Museum event co-sponsored by positive Feedback, artists as well as scientists are invited to initiate new and meaningful relationships regarding climate change.

The event will provide stimulating discussion and time for exchanging with fellow artists, scientists, and community members active in climate change issues in New York City.

For further information see http://www.positivefeedbackusa.org/schedule-of-events/

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

Artists and Scientists

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This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Artist Lisa Roberts worked with scientists investigating the life of Krill deep in the ocean.  Lisa Roberts’ drawings, based on a very blurry video from the bottom of the ocean, articulates what she could see.  She focused on understanding the ‘dance’ to the point that she could draw and then animate it.  Lisa was not illustrating something scientists already knew.  Rather by working with scientists, her drawing and animation skills enabled everyone to understand something no-one hitherto knew.  She ended up as co-author of a paper in the Journal of Plankton Research.  The web site Antarctic Animation also demonstrates the to-and-fro of dialogue between artist and scientist working out what’s going on.

 

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.

Go to EcoArtScotland