Finnish
makers Mikko Laajola and Niko Punin have been working in collaboration
with artist-producers Andrew Gryf Paterson and Ulla Taipale/Capsula to
create a new localised manifestation of the
Windowfarms Project in Finland, using local specialist (hydroponic and
LED growing technologies) and recycled materials. They were joined by a
group of local enthusiasts in the construction and documenting process.
The plants grown will be used in participatory Herbologies workshops
during Pixelache Festival.
"The
initial impetus to use animation to describe Antarctica was a heightened
sense of being that I had experienced there. Because I had used gestures
and lines to describe feelings about other places, I imagined it was
possible to do this for Antarctica.
The second, and far stronger impetus, was a desire to articulate
scientific knowledge of Antarctica. Our ship had arrived in Antarctica on
the day that George Bush had refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol
(February 2002). After witnessing expressions of disbelief in the faces of
scientists on board, I felt compelled to find ways to convey what they
know.
What could be done? If animation could be used to combine a heightened
sense of being, with scientific data from Antarctica, perhaps awareness of
our connection to global warming could be raised.
To describe Antarctica's changing environment seemed at first an
impossible task. However, understandings and skills grew from conducting
interviews and workshops; drawing, painting, making and animating;
establishing and maintaining a website and a blog.
Antarctic Animation describes Antarctica through gestures and lines
that combine my experience of Antarctica with my understandings of
insights shared by other Antarctic observers."
The website Antarctic Animation contains material for a doctoral
thesis being prepared by Lisa Roberts for submission to the College
of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, in March 2010.
Dan Ladd has been grafting living trees into architectural and geometric
forms for 30 years. When he was young he was always intrigued with strange
tree self-grafting he would find in woods and orchards.
Art that inspires science: how a modern sculpture inspired a major
breakthrough in biology
Photo: Kimberly Faye
Don Ingber is a cell biologist from Harvard Medical School, Children's
Hospital. One day he saw a piece of modern sculpture and -- Eureka! -- he
was inspired to make a major breakthrough in biology.
The first time Don Ingber saw Needle Tower, the monumental sculpture by
Keneth Snelson, it was almost 30 years ago: "It's like kind of an old
friend."
A collaboration of artist Terike
Haapoja and software developer Simosol, titled Tree's Day. The work
creates a carbon flow animation of a Scots pine tree in real time from a
field station in Finland.
Strandbeest
Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who builds walking kinetic sculptures that he
calls a new form of life. His "Strandbeests" walk the coastline of Holland,
feeding on wind and fleeing from water.
Snow
Video installation made by Pat van Boeckel (Netherlands) for I-Park Environmental Art
Biennale, September 2009, Connecticut, USA.
As it is in Heaven Art work by Karin van der Molen (Netherlands) for I-Park Environmental Art Biennale,
September 2009, Connecticut, USA.
Objects in the mirror
Video installation made by Pat van Boeckel for I-Park Environmental Art
Biennale, September 2009, Connecticut, USA.
Netherlands
How Art
Catches a Rabbit
50 minute (English subtitles) documentary on the Kunstbroedplaats ("Art
breeding place") project in the Dutch wetlands of the Weerribben, 2005
By ReRun Producties
The Rain Choir - Sound
of Rain
Ethiopia
The Painted People. The Surma and Mursi peoples
use their bodies as canvases, working with whatever materials they find in
nature
For six
years, photographer Hans Silvester travelled to the remote Omo Valley in
Ethiopia to capture the striking body art of the local Surma and Mursi
peoples. Traditionally nomadic, these indigenous people decorate the
territory of their naked bodies with whatever nature offers, such as
leaves, flowers, grasses, butterfly wings and snail shells. Their bodies are their canvases.
Straddling Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya, the Great Rift Valley slowly tears
open the planet, exposing a vast array of pigments.
The earth offers red ochre, white kaolin, green copper, yellow sulphur and
gray ash.
In minutes, with their fingers, a crushed reed, the tips of their nails,
they transform themselves into works of great beauty.
Picasso once said: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain
an artist once we grow up."
Picasso also said it takes a long time to become young. The people of the Omo
never forgot what every child once knew.
A new media artist has worked with LTER scientists in the UK to create a unique
web-based art work exploring climate-driven environmental change.
The UK's LTER network, the Environmental Change Network was a founding member of
a project called Climate Change Explorer, which aimed to combine the arts and
science to raise awareness of climate change. As part of the project, ECN
commissioned a new media artist - Lorraine Berry - to produce a web-based
creative work which drew upon ECN data and knowledge concerning climate change.
Lorraine's
work - launched earlier this year - and entitled 'As Seasons Change', takes
the form of an interactive 'book'. 'As Seasons Change' combines fractal
images and 'sonifications' of real datasets to explore the impact of climate
change on the natural world.
An image from 'As Seasons Change' by
Lorraine Berry
For example, the piece contains long-term
global temperature data from the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, converted to
sound, creating an emotional 'sound of climate change'. There are similar
sonifications of data from the ECN network. The piece was launched last year,
and has been visited by people around the world.
Reverse Graffiti Project
One person's dirty wall is another's canvas. Paul "Moose" Curtis uses the
dirt of the urban landscape as a backdrop for creating art. In a downtown
San Francisco tunnel, for instance, the accumulated soot on the walls is a
perfect backdrop for him to selectively spray away the black using wooden
stencils. The result is the appearance of large botanical murals. He calls
his process "reverse graffiti."
Germany
Integral Ecoawareness Training and
Practice Integral Ecoawareness Training and Practice is a holistic,
bodymind-based method to enhance awareness of self and our
interconnectedness with nature. Weaving together exploratory research in
dance, somatics and deep ecological thinking.
Developed by three international art and sustainability educators, IEA
includes Laban/Bartenieff, contact-improvisation, somatics/bodywork,
acting, permaculture and nature awareness methodologies.
The
Mollestad Oak in southern Norway is at least a thousand years old. It is
to be found near Grimstad. The winter sun causes its bark to release a
mist. "Being alive, this oak, the elder of elders, vibrating energy!"
Camera: Jan van Boeckel.
Sweden
Sunrise concert at lake Grängen by
visualsoundartist Martien Groeneveld
On his giant xylophone, Dutch
visualsoundartist Martien Groeneveld
welcomes the sun and the echoes at lake Grängen in Hjulsjö, Sweden.
With his crystal glasses and violin string he produces sounds
for the forest creatures. Camera: Jan van Boeckel.
9000 Solar Circles was a project organized by Hämeenlinna School of Fine
Arts where history together with art environmental education provided the
camps with a rich source for various activities.
A number of craftsman, artists and teachers studied with the children
humankind's relationship with nature and time. The frame for activities
was a prehistoric village community, its cultural life, industries, tools
and items.
An experience based on participation was the bridge across the layers of
time. Ancient techniques and work processes were a concrete tool used by
the children to discover the significance of the cultural heritage and
for forming themselves an understanding of the development of culture. People of the old times looked
for materials in nature and they lived in accordance with the seasonal changes
of climate. Imagining their lives and identifying with it helped the modern
children to see themselves as a link in the circle of nature, and hence,
gave them skills and prepared them for a life and actions of sustainable
development where nature is respected and valued.
This
environmental art project was carried out in November 2007 by students in
environmental art at the University of Art and Design (TaiK) in Helsinki. The
project involved reading texts on the old mythology about the moose and the importance of
fire and offerings. Then a common story was created of offering a wooden moose
to the gods. The students traveled to a spot far in the wilderness in the middle
of Finland where the moose was built and then put to fire, as part of a costumed
drama act. Local people collaborated and attended the final event.
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