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.

CLICK IMAGE TO GO TO ARTICLE BY ABIGAIL DOAN

ECO ART: New York Times’ Dot Earth and Ecoartspace Ask ‘What Matters Most?’ 05/01/10

Go to EcoArtSpace

But I am happy to announce a new project I’m working on at the 18th Streets Arts Center in Santa Monica, California. It’s called Fine Art 626-394-3963, and I’m inviting you to call or email me to talk about art and what you want from artists and the institutions that show art work.

The project really needs your participation, so I hope you’ll call or email. For more, visit the project blog at fineart6263943963.blogspot.com.

Go to Eco Art Blog

We are accepting proposals for three sections of the 3rd BBIEAF 2010 to be held in Daet, Camarines Norte, Philippines from May 30 till June 6, 2010. On its third iteration, the BBIEAF is still a community-based art festival that links up Art, Environment and Sustainability. The three main divisions are Installation Art, Video Art and Public Furniture. Artists are immersed in their respective adoptive communities, and together with the members of those communities, construct large-scale bamboo installations on the beach. Video artists will have their works shown in and around the town of Daet.

Interested artists can send a sketch of their installation proposal as well as their CV, or in the case of video art, a clip of their videos and a CV, and in case of the public furniture, a sketch  and a CV.

Please email all submissions to bbieaf@yahoo.com. Follow us @bbieaf at Twitter and bbieaf camnorte on Facebook.

WOOLOO.ORG – 3RD BAGASBAS BEACH INTERNATIONAL ECO-ARTS FESTIVAL 2010.

1. Rock Stackers. Your skills are amazing. You can stack rocks higher and prettier than I ever could. You’re even kinda like Andy Goldsworthy, yes, of course. And I’m sure the process is amazing for you, and that the stones talk to you, and you get that beautiful in-tune-with-nature hum.  But I’ve see so many rock stacks at this point they blur together. My eyes glaze over.

2. Tr-art. This is a combination of terms: “trite trash art.” Thank you for rescuing all of those bottle caps, six pack rings, and other crap from the landfill. Thanks for making them into portraits, blankets, sculptures and people. Trash is now a viable medium. But you are not always making eco-art:  sometimes you just happen to make art with trash. Conversely: just because you made it with trash doesn’t mean it is powerful art.

3. Statistic-a-thon. Recycling one can saves enough power to watch 6 episodes of Law and Order. At this rate all of our children will be dead in 20 years. We need 16 more planets if we want to keep watching Comedy Central. Etcetera, etcetera.  I am so inundated with guilt-soaked statistics. Stop finding new ways to slap me in the face with them. If it’s powerful to you then help me understand why. See: Chris Jordan, who does an excellent job of making numbers real.

4. Eco-Snobbery. As a recovering eco-snob myself, I understand how hard it is to stop calling everyone out on their perpetual green sins. It sucks. There are to-go containers everywhere, and everyone drives, and not everyone composts, and what the hell?!?! The icebergs, people! The icebergs! But just because you make eco-art does not mean you have license to aggrandize. We’re a population of pots and kettles. Don’t mistake your good work for a kind of personal superiority. This is true of green culture in general, but it’s especially apparent in accusatory or guilt-trippy art.

via Inhabitat » GREEN RANT: Lame Eco-Art .

The Arcola Theatre in Hackney aims to relocate to a 2,000sq m site next to Dalston Junction station and create a 350-seat theatre built of sustainable materials including straw bales and doors salvaged from skips.

Engineer Arup has given 18 months worth of pro bono work for the proposal while the London Development Agency has awarded a £60,000 for a feasibility study subject to Hackney Council approving the site.

The overall concept, which can be scaled up or down according to how much money is raised, includes an expanded main theatre with two smaller studios, an eco café, gym, learning centre and park.

A key element is an enterprise centre with offices and laboratories for entrepreneurs and technology and product design firms.

Arcola chief executive Ben Todd said the feasibility study could be completed by December, with work on the new theatre starting in 2010 and completing in 2012.

Todd, who trained as an engineer, said: “The theatre will literally be built from straw bales, rendered to pass fire regs and be weather-proof.

“Doors from old schools and hospitals that don’t match are a nice example of the reuse, recycle attitude and are important to the texture. If we end up using steel and if most of the project comes after 2012, it would be a nice idea to recycle some of the Olympic stadia.”

Hackney Council is due to discuss the plans next week.

Go to the Green Theater Initiative

• PowerUp the Game by IBM teaches kids how to save the world by bring clean energy to communities.
• CO2FX is a web based multi-user educational game which explores the relationship of global warming to economic, political and science policy decisions.
• Majesco Entertainment’s “Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest” promote awareness of the perils of “…over-industrialization, deforestation, pollution, extinction and global warming.”

Post your favorite environmental video game below.

Go to Eco-Catalysts

What Cape Farewell does brilliantly, Delingpole fulminates, is breed wave after wave of high profile propagandists for the authorised Al Gore/James Hansen version of man made climate doom.

Um… yes. And? Delingpole (Ed. public school & Oxon), however, clearly thinks using culture to demonstrate things he doesn’t believe in is wrong.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Designing artwork from junked objects is nothing new for eco-minded artist Katherine Harvey, and she has thrilled one and all with the stunning pieces of art that promote recycling and environmental conservation. 

via Eco Arts: Plastic Bottle Chandelier – Recycling On A Grand Scale – Ecofriend.

via Eco Arts: Nail Bench – Recycled Sting For Comfort! – Ecofriend.

We fully support Dot Eco LLC in its efforts to secure the .eco top level domain through the ICANN application process and look forward to working with Dot Eco LLC to promote .eco. This is a truly exciting opportunity for the environmental movement and for the internet as a whole.

Exciting? Really? Really?

Like Matthias Merkel Hess, who occasionally wrings his hands with regret at calling his admirable site, Eco Art Blog, I inwardly cringe at the word. Here at Arts & Ecology we are always pleased that we never fell for the single-syllable option, keeping the subtler, more powerful term “ecology”, with its implicit sense of connectedness. Why having it as a suffix creates anything more than an internet ghetto, I don’t understand.

Anyway, to the point. Meaghan O’Neill, the woman behind Treehugger.com and Planetgreen.com is perkily bullish about the future of green blogs in general, writing in an article in last week’s Guardian. In an age in which conventional media are shedding staff as fast as they can, she believes that blogs can and should take over the role of reporting on environmental issues:

Anecdotally speaking, the audience for green content appears to still be growing, even as budgets for green media outlets are cut.

If you look at what she says with web2.0 spectacles on, things look rosy. Green bloggers have formed a community which educates and reinvigorates itself. As Abi Silvester of hippyshopper.com says in a comment on O’Neill’s article:

One element of blogging that’s particularly relevant here is that as bloggers we treat the issues as a basis for dialogue rather than presenting them as facts in the way that mainstream media tends to do… I do understand why some are uncomfortable with the idea of unqualified bloggers spurious scientific “facts”on the environment or any other topic, but so is any blogger worth his or her salt. In my experience, the blogs that gain credibility and respect are those that don’t set themselves up as “experts” but as interested parties that want to get involved and explore solutions creatively. There’s really no better place to do that than online at the moment.

Which is why green blogs are failing to change minds. Web2.0 is a great thing. But it’s not an end in itself. .

O’Neill says her faith that growing green audiences is “anecdotal”. Silvester too is a fan of the anectotal: “In my experience, the blogs that gain crediblity are those that don’t set themselves up as ‘experts’,” she says .

We don’t really have to prove ourselves right because we have the moral highground. A community that talks hihg-mindedly to itself is of value, but not when faced by an opposing community of sceptics which is, frankly, making all the running. In fact, as the barbed comments below O’Neill’s article show, climate deniers retain a much more powerful voice on the internet given their relatively small numbers, and green bloggers don’t appear to be able to do anything to dent that. Last month, to the horror of green bloggers everywhere, the climate-sceptic blog wattsupwiththat.com was nominated Best Science Blog of 2008 by the Best Blog Awards, to the delight of denier-trolls everhwhere.

The thing is, if blogs are going to replace the mainstream media, they must start assuming their authority. And that means finding more ways to do old-fashioned research and reporting – what the old mainstream media regarded as its central role. Moral highground is cheap. A reputation for accuracy is much harder to come by. That’s happening, but still so slowly.

The web is, as we are so often told, only 5,000 days old.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog

Recycled art is nothing new on Ecofriend, but we just can’t let our eyes off objects reincarnated from things we usually throw in our trash bags. Yuken Teryua is another artist from Japan who knows the value of trashed objects and has the skill to make them a part of your living room in a stylish way.

via Eco Arts: Japanese Artist Creates Stunning Pieces Of Art From Toilet Paper Rolls – Ecofriend.