Yearly Archives: 2010

The Schuylkill Center – Elemental Energy: Art Powered by Nature

Elemental Energy: Art Powered by Nature
May 1 – September 26, 2010

Joe Chirchirillo
Jason Krugman & Christian Cerrito
Mark Malmberg
Patrick Marold
Moto Ohtake
Tim Prentice

Opening Reception
Saturday June 5, 2010
The trails will be open all afternoon for self-guided tours

6 pm
Refreshments available in the Gallery and at the Widener Trail Bird Blind
6:30 pm
Exhibition Introduction in the Gallery

7 pm
Artist Talk and Tour on the Trails

8 pm
Miro Dance Theatre performance of generate.degenerate in Founder’s Grove
tickets $5

Elemental Energy: Art Powered by Nature is The Schuylkill Center’s 2010 On The Trails exhibition. Six artists or artist teams from around the country will present outdoor sculptural installations that engage a natural element – wind, water, sun – to create a dynamic or kinetic artwork. Each piece creates sound, movement, or both, using only the energy they harness from nature. These exciting works will be installed for visitors to The Schuylkill Center to discover along Widener, Woodcock, and Grey Fox Loop trails.

Rain Machine by Joe Chirchirillo Sun Birds by Mark Malmberg
Rain Machine by Joe Chirchirillo Sun Birds by Mark Malmberg
Solar Drone by Patrick Marold Aero 2010 by Moto Ohtake
Solar Drone by Patrick Marold Aero 2010 by Moto Ohtake
Solar Thumpers by Jason Krugman and Christian Cerrito
Yellow Zinger by Tim Prentice Solar Thumpers by Jason Krugman and Christian Cerrito

Solar Bugbots workshop by Elemental Energy artists Jason Krugman and Christian Cerrito
May 12 at 6 pm
Hosted by Art in the Age
116 North 3rd St, Old City Philadelphia

Solar Bugbots Workshop
In this workshop, participants will learn how to construct a circuit that gathers solar energy and releases it in bursts, and then use it in the creation of a small, light-powered, vibro-bot. TheseBugbots will respond directly to the intensity of the light that they are exposed to, using solar energy to power two vibrating pager motors. On a sunny day they will skitter about frantically…On cloudy days they will move intermittently as they build up energy.

During the course of this workshop, participants will be introduced the basics of solar electronics and circuit construction. Each participant will solder their own circuit board and build a Bugbot of their own to take home. Participants need no prior experience in this field. Just come with a willingness to learn!

Astronaut combines art and science to awesome effect – The Irish Times

The Irish Times’ SHANE HEGARTY shows us what Soichi Noguchi sees.

On Wednesday he posted a picture of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, its black tendrils looked eerily beautiful as it stretched through miles of ocean. It is a unique image, giving a sense of its scale previously unseen and with a touch of humanity that a satellite cannot. The picture looks as if it was taken by an interested photographer rather than a disinterested automaton.

What Noguchi does is to bring science and art together in a way that appeals to 250,000 people each day. He is one of the best things NASA has right now; up there at least with the rovers still toddling across Mars or the Voyager and Pioneer spacecrafts on lonely, perhaps eternal journeys into deep space. And if you want, you can talk to him and he may even talk back. If you need any proof of how wonderful modern technology can be, it’s that you can send a message to a man floating 400km above your head, and that he might reply with a holiday snap of your entire country.

He is not the only tweeting astronaut, but he is a reminder of just how awesome science can be. Not “awesome” in the modern way in which it is used merely as an everyday replacement for a nod, but “awesome” in a way that leaves your mind breathless from trying to appreciate the scale of it. And of how much fun it can be.

We’re fans of the macro view of planet. Check out there previous posts:

California City

STUNNING VIEWS OF GLACIERS SEEN FROM SPACE | WIRED.COM

via Astronaut combines art and science to awesome effect – The Irish Times – Sat, May 08, 2010.

Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú | Current Exhibitions | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú
April 27, 2010–October 31, 2010 (weather permitting)
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden

Go to Flickr for behind-the-scenes photos and installation views. flickr
Read the Guided-Tour Guidelines.
Curator Anne Strauss talks to Doug and Mike Starn about the exhibition.
Download the audio file. MP3 (7.97 MB)

Invited by The Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a site-specific installation for The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, the twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn (born in New Jersey in 1961) will present their new work, Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, opening on April 27. The monumental bamboo structure, ultimately measuring 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 50 feet high, will take the form of a cresting wave that bridges realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance. Visitors will witness the continuing creation and evolving incarnations ofBig Bambú as it is constructed throughout the spring, summer, and fall by the artists and a team of rock climbers. Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, Big Bambúwill suggest the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism. It will be the thirteenth-consecutive single-artist installation on the Roof Garden.

Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú

Above: Installation in progress, March 2010. Photo by Doug and Mike Starn. © 2010 Mike and Doug Starn / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

More about the Exhibition
Big Bambú is a growing and changing sculpture―a vast network of 5,000 interlocking 30- and 40-foot-long fresh-cut bamboo poles, lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope. It will continue to be constructed throughout the duration of the exhibition. The first phase of the structure―measuring about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 30 feet high―will be completed by opening day, April 27. Subsequently, the artists and rock climbers will build up the eastern portion of the sculpture to an elevation of 50 feet. By summer, the western portion of the sculpture will be about 40 feet high. An internal footpath artery system will grow along with the structure, facilitating its progress. The evolving state of the work will be documented by the artists in photographs and videos.

Visiting the Exhibition
Visitors will be able to experience Big Bambú from the Roof Garden level, open to everyone during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, and to walk among a forest of bamboo poles that serves as the base of the sculpture. Alternatively, visitors will be able to explore the artwork on brief tours led by Museum-trained guides. On the guided tours, held during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, small groups of visitors will be able to walk along the elevated interior network of pathways roughly 20 to 40 feet above the Roof Garden. Tickets will be required for the guided tours, and specific guidelines will apply to those interested in participating. Please read them for details and requirements.

Tickets for guided tours will be able to be obtained only in person and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis with Museum admission at the Big Bambú Registration Desk, in the Uris Center for Education, located at the 81st Street ground-level entrance. Tickets will be available twice a day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Sundays, andHoliday Mondays, when the Museum is open to the public, and three times a day on Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets for morning tours will be released at 9:30 a.m. Tickets for afternoon tours will be released at noon. On Fridays and Saturdays, tickets for evening tours will be released at 3:30 p.m. There will be a limit of one ticket per person, and tickets will be nontransferable. All tour participants (other than children without identification) will be required to present photo identification to obtain a ticket.

About the Artists
Born in New Jersey in 1961, the identical twins Doug and Mike Starn work collaboratively and defy categorization, combining traditionally separate disciplines such as sculpture, photography, painting, video, and installation. In spring 2009, the Arts for Transitprogram of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York City unveiled See it split, see it change, the Starns’ first public commission. The work, which is installed permanently at the South Ferry subway station, won the Brendan Gill Prize. Their work has been exhibited internationally and is included in public and private collections worldwide. Their solo exhibitions include Gravity of Light (2004, 2008), Absorption + Transmission (2005, 2006), Behind Your Eye (2004), Sphere of Influence (1994), Mike and Doug Starn: Selected Works 1985-87 (1988), and The Christ Series (1988). The artists live and work in the New York area.

Exhibition Organization and Credits
The exhibition is organized by Anne L. Strauss, Associate Curator of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum.

The exhibition is made possible by Bloomberg logo
Additional support is provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky.
The exhibition is also made possible in part by the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund.
Rope is provided by Mammut Sports Group, Inc.

Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú | Current Exhibitions | The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Why Eco Products

Rather than just removing non eco products in the theatre, I thought it would be useful to provide a bit of info about why this is important.

“Many products we use in everyday life, from shower gel to T-shirts and even children’s toys, contain harmful artificial chemicals, which contaminate our air, food and drinking water before finding their way into our bodies. Most of the time we use them without even realising, or stopping to think about the long-lasting effects they are having on our health, and the health of the natural world. If you were to analyse the fat in your own body, you would be likely to find harmful chemicals such as brominated flame retardants, DDT, dioxins and many other persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are chemicals that your body cannot get rid of, so they gradually build up over our lifetimes. Worryingly, POPs are even found in babies still in the womb.”
www.greenpeace.org.uk/toxics/problems

and

“Here at the health-report site we cannot condone the use of potentially toxic synthetic chemicals on the skin. It may be safer to eat the toxic chemicals rather than apply them to the skin. At least through the digestive system the body can produce specific enzymes to break down the toxic chemicals in the gut and excrete them. No such mechanism exists when chemicals are absorbed through the skin into the body. It is a well proven fact that chemicals applied to the skin are readily absorbed into the bloodstream where they can lodge in any part of the body or organ.”
www.health-report.co.uk/Dr_Samuel_Epstein.html

Rachel.

Go to Arcola Energy

ashdenizen: is climate change a zombie concept?

Kellie Payne reports on the Tipping Point event, held earlier this month, where Mike Hulme suggested climate change was a zombie concept:

as a metaphor it has done its work. As a concept, it connects a large swathe of issues combined through the scientific narrative and perhaps there are other ways to make progress.

Much less the as-billed scientific update, the Tipping Point event held on Wednesday 13th April at Kings College, London was a philosophical exploration of the status of our current conceptualisation of climate change.

Hosted by Tipping Point, the arts organisation that seeks to build bridges between artists and climate scientists, the afternoon featured Mike Hulme, UEA climate scientist and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, climate change adaptation specialist Emma Tompkins and Greenpeace’s Senior Climate Advisor Charlie Kronick . In attendance were past Tipping Point conference attendees, a mix of artists, academics and a few scientists.

Hulme is a veteran climate scientist whose career has included serving as the founder-director of the Tyndall centre and contributing scientist to UK climate change scenarios and reports for the IPCC. However, writing his recent book led Hulme to take a more philosophical perspective: his interest being more in the positioning of our larger conceptualisations of climate change and interrogating different epistemological constructions of climate change. Moving beyond the merely scientific understanding of climate change, he investigates how climate change is understood in disciplines varying from economics, ethics, politics and humanities. In particular, he argues that climate change is a value laden concept that reflects our views of the world, nature, the economy and ethical frameworks.

Hulme’s presentation was largely an explanation of the four myths he explores in his book: lamenting Eden which draws on a sense of nostalgia, presaging apocalypse based on a sense of fear, constructing Babel (hubris) and celebrating jubilee which builds upon our sense of justice. In essence, what Hulme argues is that every individual brings their own agenda, applying the challenge of climate change to their own problems, that is, climate change is the raw material that is used to work on our individual projects. Hulme suggested we ask ourselves whether stabilising the climate was indeed our ultimate goal or whether stabilising climate was instead a means to an end, and we were using climate change to achieve our other goals.

Emma Tomkins on the other hand bases her work on a belief that climate change is happening and asserts that the government is leading the way on adaptation. Based at Leeds and the Government’s Department for International Development, Tomkins outlined types of adaptation currently being implemented including risk management policies and attempts to build resilience. When Tomkins asked the audience how many were currently taking adaptive measures, it became clear that the line between what constitutes mitigation activities and adaption is often blurred in the minds of many. The government makes a clear distinction between mitigation measures (limiting ones emissions) and adaption (preparing for the impacts of climate change). For instance when asked about what types of adaptation individuals were taking, some audience members mentioned the work of the Transition Town movements, but from the government perspective Transition Town activities would constitute mitigation measures as their main focus is reducing emissions.

Tomkins conducted an exercise to see how we as an audience would allocate adaptation funds, whether we would base our decisions on: equitable distribution of resources, reward mitigators, help those facing the most exposure, help the most vulnerable, or offer developmental assistance. At the moment, current government policy (Adaptation Policy Framework) is based on risk mapping and awareness and therefore has its focus on those who face the most exposure to risk. Tomkins stressed the need to be aware that in any adaptation policy there are a number of decisions to be made about the type of losses we are willing to take and warned that there is a potential to make serious mistakes unless we seriously consider the issues.

Charlie Kronick weighed in with the activist viewpoint, reminding the audience that in the past adaptation wasn’t even considered because to do so would be to accept defeat. Further, he didn’t see the need to separate out adaptation and mitigation as he sees them as one and the same. For Charlie, climate change isn’t about science, or art, but about power politics, ‘the deal makers and takers’ and inequality is a major driver.

Hulme agreed that it’s about politics and our ambitions about what type of society we want to inherit. Hulme suggested that perhaps climate change was indeed a zombie concept, and as a metaphor it has done its work. As a concept, it connects a large swathe of issues combined through the scientific narrative and perhaps there are other ways to make progress.

Kellie Payne is a PhD student in the Geography department at the Open University researching culture and climate change