StrangeWeather.info

Nature Version 2.0: Ecological Modernities and Digital Environmentalism
Jan. 21 ­ Feb. 16,  2008 @ Colgate Universityis Clifford Gallery, Hamilton,
New York.

http://www.ecoarttech.net/sustainablefutures

Featuring works by Natalie Jeremijenko, Brooke Singer, Joline Blais, Jane
Marsching, Colin Ives, Alex Galloway, Amy Franceschini, Tom Sherman, Michael
Alstad, Don Miller (aka no carrier), and Andrea Polli. Curated by EcoArtTech
(Cary Peppermint & Christine Nadir)

---------------
Nature Version 2.0 is a survey of artists who reinvent environmentalism for
a digital age in a number of ways: by examining how digital technologies can
make ecological problems more salient, by reusing and recycling obsolete
technologies for new uses, and by exploring how digital spaces and the
public domain may require environmental protection much like nature.
Re-imagining the relationship between nature and technology, Nature Version
2.0 suggests an ethics of the network and an environmentalism of natural,
built, and digital spaces.

This exhibition is in conjunction with Environmental Art and New Media
Technologies: Imagining Sustainable Futures, a two-day symposium on
interdisciplinary, digital, and networked art and research that draws upon
environmental science, computer science, design, hacking, gameplay,
engineering, and ecocriticism. Following the Nature Version 2.0 artists¹
reception on February 8, keynote speaker Natalie Jeremijenko will launch the
two-day Environmental Art and New Media Technologies symposium in Golden
Auditorium, Little Hall, at 7pm. ³90 Degrees South,² a multimedia
performance by Andrea Polli will follow at 9pm in the Clifford Gallery. The
symposium will resume in Golden Auditorium on February 9 for a day of talks
and presentations by critics and exhibiting artists, 9am-5pm.

Hosted by Colgate University¹s Clifford Art Gallery, the Department of Art
and Art History, and the Environmental Studies Program, these events were
made possible through funding provided by the Institute for the Creative and
Performing Arts, the Film and Media Studies Program, the Environmental
Studies Program, and the Center for Ethics and World Societies at Colgate
University. All events are free and open to the public.

---------------
Exhibition & Symposium Events for Friday February 8th, 2008:

Artists' reception
5­7pm, at Little Hall, Clifford Gallery

Environmental Art and New Media Technologies Symposium, Keynote Presentation
Natalie Jeremijenko
7-9pm, at Little Hall, Golden Auditorium

'90 Degrees South,' a multimedia performance by Andrea Polli
9pm, at Little Hall, Clifford Gallery

----------------
Located on the first floor of Little Hall, the Clifford Art Gallery presents
approximately six exhibitions a year. A teaching gallery, all exhibitions
are selected by Colgate¹s art and art history faculty to provide examples of
work executed in a variety of media that demonstrate issues originating in
the academic curriculum. Another focus of the gallery is the display of
professional work by contemporary artists, who are often featured in the
weekly public lecture series.

The Clifford is free and open to the public from 10:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.
on weekdays and from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. on weekends.

Posted by 1stpulse at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pathetic Fallacy: Weather and Imagination

January 7 - February 27, 2008

Works by Richard Bosman, Peter Brooke, Fernando Ferreira de Araujo, Malcolm Fenton, Joy Garnett

@

Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of the Imagination

247 East 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028

Artist's Reception: Saturday, January 12, 5:30-7:00pm.

In his five-volume work Modern Painters (1843-60), John Ruskin wrote of the poetic practice of ascribing human characteristics, such as emotions, feelings and sensations, to inanimate objects or to nature, thereby coining the term pathetic fallacy. The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination is pleased to present the exhibition, Pathetic Fallacy: Weather and Imagination, which examines diverse ways in which artists and scientists record, capture and analyze the phenomenology of weather. From the roiling background in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” to Shakespeare’s tempests, weather forms an underlying context across artistic disciplines. How do actual weather conditions affect the sensibility of an artist? How does the climate influence his or her representations, and what of the impact on the viewer? A concurrent display in the Annex will address how scientists, track, quantify, and forecast—via meteorology—the processes and phenomena of the atmosphere.

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." -Mark Twain

Artists Richard Bosman, Peter Brooke, Fernando Ferreira de Araujo, Malcolm Fenton, and Joy Garnett, through painting, photography and printmaking, consider the implications and consequences of weather on human activity, and vice-versa.

Hallie Cohen, Curator

Posted by 1stpulse at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 via e-flux:

Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art

Hong Kong Island (Chinese),(detail),1998 Carved marble 65 x 120 x 80 cm (25 5/8 x 47 x 31 in)

Secret for Snow Leopard:
Yutaka Sone
19 September - 16 December, 2007

Preview 18 September, 6 - 8pm
7:00 pm: Performance by
Benjamin Weissman
Phenomenolgy of Snow,
a fiction reading

Parasol unit
foundation for contemporary art
14 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW
T +44 (0)20 7490 7373
F +44 (0)20 7490 7373
E info@parasol-unit.org

http://www.parasol-unit.org

---

Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art is pleased to present Secret for Snow Leopard: Yutaka Sone, the first solo exhibition of Sone�s works in a UK institution.

Sone's great love and fascination for nature, combined with a wholly open approach to life and art galvanizes a highly unconventional art. Working in various media, Sone makes installations, performance art, and films; he paints; and like a traditional sculptor carves hard marble and crystal. A common thread recognisable throughout Sone's work is his willingness to take risks and experiment, which at times can make some works appear to be unfinished or in a state of flux.

Sone's work is deeply influenced by his experiences, particularly those he has had during various expeditions in the Himalayas and in the jungle -- two very different environments which for him represent extremes of life. In his work Sone fuses art with life, his vision informed by their infinite possibilities and a genuine desire to give tangible form to that which is quintessential in all things. This constant seeking for perfection is evident in all of his work.

In this exhibition, Sone shows several of his exquisitely carved marble pieces, some of which have never been shown before; a recreation of the jungle, a maquette-like architectural landscape that includes snow-capped mountains, rivers and tropical plants, all within the same self-contained world; and some twenty crystal snowflakes.

Yutaka Sone was born in 1965 in Shizuoka, Japan. He studied architecture at Tokyo Geijutsu University, but opted to become an artist. His work is held in public collections worldwide including: Art Institute of Chicago; Daros Collection, Z�rich; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Kanazawa City Museum of Art, Kanazawa; Kunstmuseum Bern, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art. In 2003 the Tate acquired Highway Junction 110-105 (2002) with funds provided by the 2003 Outset Frieze Acquisitions Fund. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.

Secret for Snow Leopard: Yutaka Sone is accompanied by the publication of a full-colour catalogue

 

Posted by 1stpulse at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 

via Rhizome.org:

While scientists calculate the long-term prognostics for the health of the planet, artists continue to take the natural world–and its fate–as both a medium and a subject in their work. The Natural World Museum and the United Nations Environment Programme have gathered a group of 79 such examples in the volume Art in Action: Nature, Creativity, and Our Collective Future. Representative projects range from the crowd-pleasing site-specific work of Christo and Jeanne Claude to Olafur Eliasson’s immersive provocations–just in time for a recently-opened mid-career survey of his work at SFMOMA–and the book is separated into sections that track artists rendering nature as everything from a fantasy Eden to a fallen wasteland of unchecked human development. The title makes the book’s overall purpose clear. As much as it documents individual projects that engage with and manipulate ecology, the intent is a cumulative attempt to draw awareness to the ever-more fragile state of the planet.

[Link]

This entry was posted by William Hanley on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 12:45 pm.

Posted by 1stpulse at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Grand Unification Theory, Agnes Denes, 2002

Background
SEPTEMBER 14 - DECEMBER 21, 2007 -- "Weather Report: Art and Climate Change" is an exhibition curated by internationally renowned critic, art historian, and writer Lucy R. Lippard. It is presented in collaboration with EcoArts.

This exhibit partners the art and scientific communities to create a visual dialogue surrounding climate change. Historically, visual arts play a central role in attracting, inspiring, educating and motivating audiences. "Weather Report: Art and Climate Change" will exhibit artwork, in the museum and our partnering venues, and in outdoor site specific locations throughout Boulder, that will activate personal and public change.

Our collaborating partner EcoArts is a new effort bringing together scientists, environmentalists, and performing and visual artists - along with producers, presenters, scholars, spiritual leaders, policy makers, educators, businesses, and people from all walks of life - to use the arts to inspire new awareness of, discussion about, and action on environmental issues, with new possibilities for envisioning a sustainable future. Its programming principles are artistic excellence, scientific accuracy, environmental effectiveness, ethical practice, and whenever possible, presenting activities that strive to follow "the middle way" of being either non-partisan or bi-partisan to reach the widest audience possible.

Participating Artists:
Kim Abeles, Lillian Ball, Subhankar Banerjee, Iain Baxter&, Bobbe Besold, Cape Farewell, Mary Ellen Carroll (Precipice Alliance), CLUI (Center for Land Use Interpretation), Brian Collier, Xavier Cortada, Gayle Crites, Agnes Denes, Steven Deo, Rebecca DiDomenico, Future Farmers (Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine), Bill Gilbert, Isabella Gonzales, Green Fabrication (via Rick Sommerfeld, University of Colorado, College of Architecture and Planning), Newton & Helen Harrison, Judit Hersko, Lynne Hull, Pierre Huyghe, Basia Irland, Patricia Johanson, Chris Jordan, Marguerite Kahrl, Janet Koenig & Greg Sholette, Eve Andree Laramee, Learning Site (Cecilia Wendt and Rikke Luther), Ellen Levy, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Patrick Marold, Natasha Mayers, Jane McMahan, Mary Miss, Joan Myers, Beverly Naidus, Chrissie Orr, Melanie Walker & George Peters, Andrea Polli, Marjetica Potrc, Aviva Rahmani, Rapid Response, Buster Simpson, Kristine Smock, Joel Sternfeld, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Ruth Wallen, Sherry Wiggins, The Yes Men, Shai Zakai

PRIMARY EXHIBITION SITE:
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th Street, Boulder, 80302
http://bmoca.org
Tuesday-Friday, 11am to 5pm
Saturday during the Boulder County Farmers' Market (through October), 9am to 4pm
Saturday (beginning November), 11am to 5pm
Sunday, 12noon to 3pm

ADDITIONAL INDOOR GALLERY SITES:
Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Blvd.
University of Colorado, Norlin Library Galleries, 1720 Pleasant St.
University of Colorado, ATLAS (exhibit Sept. 13?Oct. 6, 10am to 2pm), 125 Regents Dr.
National Center for Atmospheric Research, (NCAR) Mesa Lab, 1850 Table Mesa Dr.

OUTDOOR SITES:
Boulder Municipal Campus (Along the Boulder Creek to Boulder Public Library)
Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Blvd.
Central Park (park directly west from the museum)
Eben G. Fine Park, 101 Arapahoe Ave.
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab, 1850 Table Mesa Dr.
Twenty Ninth Street (Canyon St. and Broadway)
17th and the Boulder Creek Path

Posted by 1stpulse at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Agnes Denes

Uprooted & Deified - The Golden Tree
February 16— March 17, 2007
 
BravinLee programs
526 West 26th Street, Suite 211
New York, New York 10001
phone 212 462 4404
fax 212 462 4406
inquiry@bravinlee.com

MANIFESTO

working with a paradox

defining the elusive

visualizing the invisible

communicating the incommunicable

not accepting the limitations society has accepted

seeing in new ways

living for a fraction of a second and penetrating light years

using intellect and instinct to achieve intuition

achieving total self-consciousness and self-awareness

being creatively obsessive

questioning, reasoning, analyzing, dissecting and re-examining

understanding the finitude of human existence and still striving to create beauty and provocative reasoning

finding new concepts, recognizing new patterns

desiring to know the importance or insignificance of existence

seeing reality and still being able to dream

persisting in the eternal search

© l970 Agnes Denes

Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule:
11,000 Trees, 11,000 people, 400 years
1992-1996

Posted by 1stpulse at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 via NEWSgrist:

SILENT MIGRATION
Brandon Ballengée
The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park
5th Avenue at 64th Street, 3rd Floor

Please join us for the opening of artist Brandon Ballengée's Silent Migration exhibition at the Central Park Arsenal Gallery on Weds March 7th at 6pm. This exhibition is the fourth event of the Human/Nature series, a joint partnership of the organizations Ecoartspace, The Nature Conservancy and New York City Audubon in conjunction with the New York City Department of Parks.
 
Ballengée explores local issues threatening New York City’s bird populations. Over 300 species of birds visit New York City each year. Birds fly from as far away as Patagonia and Greenland to visit our metropolis. NYC is located along the Atlantic Migratory Bird Flyway and during the spring and fall thousands of birds pass through the city. Many species of birds migrate at night, and can be disoriented by illuminated structures—particularly when weather conditions force them to fly at lower altitudes. 

In this exhibition, Ballengée explores to local issues threatening our bird populations. Using actual historic prints by John James Audubon, Ballengée has cut and removed extinct and declining birds. In a photographic series titled Electric Stars at Dawn, the artist will demonstrate the light pollution problem that New York City buildings create for birds. The Great Atlantic Fly-way is a large collaborative artwork generated from hundreds of migratory bird photographs taken by the public throughout the Americas and placed along a painted mural of the Atlantic coastline. In addition the artist has created three tropical dioramas contrasted by video footage of exotic birds attempting to survive in the concrete jungle of New York City.
 
A panel discussion with Brandon Ballengée, Mike Feller, NYC Park's Chief Naturalist; Denise Markonish, Curator, ArtSpace, New Haven and Rebekah Creshkoff, the founder of NYC Audubon's Project SafeFlight program will take place on Tuesday, March 20th at 6pm. The panel discussion will be moderated by Ecoartspace curator, Amy Lipton. 
 
This lecture is free, reservations are not necessary. For additional information, please contact 212-381-2195 or nycevents@tnc.org

more info on Brandon Ballengée:

www.greenmuseum.org/ballengee
www.wavehill.org/arts/brandon_ballengee.html
www.scicult.com/artists/brandonballengee
www.disk-o.com/malamp
http://media.nyas.org/content/podcasts/snc/ballengee.m4b

Posted by 1stpulse at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Queens Museum of Art
New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY 11368-3398
718.592.9700
www.queensmuseum.org

Lillian Ball: GO ECO

February 4 - May 27, 2007

GO ECO is an interactive installation that illuminates the different perspectives of several participants involved in a wetland preservation project. The concept is metaphorically based on the ancient Asian game of Go, (originally, one of the Four Arts of China along with music, painting, and poetry) which uses strategies to capture territory through balancing tactics. GO ECO also functions as an informational “serious game” installation of video vignettes. Digitally manipulated images with sound are projected in quadrants on the screen to lead players through to the next move. The final outcome of the game is determined by the teamwork of players making their way toward a solution that enables all sides to win or to lose together. GO ECO allows players of many ages to be empowered and to learn about the issues through an art experience that maps paths of action.

Posted by 1stpulse at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Flood 5, 2006, oil on canvas, 60 x 78 inches

Strange Weather
New Paintings
By Joy Garnett

in two parts:

Part I:
January 15 - April 30, 2007
by appointment,
call (202) 334-2436 
National Academies' Keck Center
550 Fifth Street NW, First Floor Gallery
Washington, DC

Artist's Talk : Thursday Feb 8, 2007, 6 - 8pm

PRESS RELEASE  [PDF]  

An artist's multiple with essays by Lucy R. Lippard and  Andrew C. Revkin is available upon request. 

Part II:
Opens to the Public
May 5 - July 30, 2007
OPENING RECEPTION
Sunday, May 27, 2007, 1 - 3 pm
National Academy of Sciences
2100 C Street NW, Upstairs Gallery
Washington, DC 
Open  weekdays,  9am - 5pm
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NAS Announces 'Strange Weather: New Paintings by Joy Garnett'

Washington - "Strange Weather," an exhibition of paintings by Joy Garnett depicting environmental and social catastrophes, will be on view by appointment from Jan.15 through April 30 at the National Academies' Keck Center, 500 Fifth St., N.W., Washington, D.C. It will then be placed on public view from May 5 through July 30 at the National Academy of Sciences' headquarters, located at 2100 C St., N.W., Washington, D.C.

Joy Garnett gathers photographs of man-made and natural disasters from the Internet and renders the images as richly textured oil paintings. In the process, she locates tensions between the visceral power of paint and the fleeting nature of images in the mass media, addressing the evolving role of art in an information-saturated society.

Curated for the National Academy of Sciences, the exhibition focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In Strange Weather, Garnett takes widely distributed news images of a devastated New Orleans and recasts them as paintings in which geological, political, and sociological weather are inextricably intertwined.

Based in New York City, Joy Garnett studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and received her MFA from the City College of New York. Her paintings were recently exhibited in "Image War," organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art , New York City, and "Run for Your Lives!" at DiverseWorks, Houston. In 2004, she received a grant from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation. In 2000, she received a commission from the Wellcome Trust to participate along with her father, biochemist Merrill Garnett, in "N01se," a multi-site exhibition about information and transformation at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, and the Wellcome Trust's Two10 Gallery, London. The exhibition was organized by artist Adam Lowe and historian of science Simon Schaffer.

For more than 20 years, the Office of Exhibitions and Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences has sponsored exhibitions, concerts, and other events that explore relationships among the arts and sciences.

Add to del.icio.us 

Posted by 1stpulse at 02:00 PM | Permalink

Portia Munson, "Green," Jan. 5-Feb. 3, 2007, at P.P.O.W., 555 West 25th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001

Portia Munson’s photographic flower mandalas, though contemporary, fulfill a mystical ideal -- their concentric structure reflects the shape of the outside universe while striving for a celebration of perfection within. Each petal in Munson’s mandalas has been gathered from her own upstate garden or surrounding field or forest. "In another life, I’d like to be a scientist," Munson said, a few hours before the opening of her show at P.P.O.W. The careful dissection and arrangement of the blossoms reflects a craftsperson’s care as much as the luminous hues represent a master colorist.

Munson, a painter, began working directly with flowers in 2002. "I’ve always been a painter, but I also give myself freedom to work in other ways. I can’t express every idea in a painting." Each limited-edition photo, done in pigmented ink on rag watercolor paper (the flowers are arranged directly on a digital scanner, and not subjected to digital enhancement), is the result of one day’s peak harvest, and reflects "what’s in bloom from that day."

Plucked only shortly before being photographed, the four-leaf clovers or marigolds are damp with dew -- Munson’s delicately sensual blooms bare little resemblance to the hothouse bouquets sold on city corners. The flora is so intense in hue and freshness that it suggests a psychedelic influence. Munson laughingly explained, "What immediately comes to mind is that I’m very allergic in the spring. So I am  physically intoxicated in terms of psychedelic visuals. I do love color, but I’m trying to make more than pretty colors."

Munson studied with Vito Acconi, Leon Golub, Barbara Kruger, Joan Semel, Martha Rosler and Harriet Shorr. She acknowledges that "my esthetic doesn’t follow theirs, but my approach has certainly been influenced." She also cites Kiki Smith and Fred Tomaselli as artists she finds kinship with.

In Bulbs, the symmetrical arrangement of flowers is marked by grape hyacinths, whose graceful tendrils end in the coda of the hairy hued bulb. "I wanted to show the whole thing," Munson explains. Interspersed with the purple flowers are dissected daffodils, with one perfect daffodil specimen in the center. Green Aftermath is a paean to spring. Adolescent milkweed bulbs, immature berries and weeds form a verdant rainbow, displayed as an artful cornucopia.

Continue reading "Portia Munson: "Green"" »

Posted by 1stpulse at 10:54 AM | Permalink

[Image: From At This Rate, by Giles Revell and Matt Wiley].

Logging roads in tropical rainforests expose whole landscapes to disease, fire, drought, longterm human settlement, and uncontrolled future deforestation.
"Every second we lose an area the size of a football pitch," Giles Revell and Matt Wiley write, describing the ecological motivation behind their new photographic series, At This Rate. "Every day we lose an area larger than all five boroughs of New York City... Every year we lose an area three times the size of Sri Lanka."

[Image: From At This Rate, by Giles Revell and Matt Wiley].

Revell and Wiley produced At This Rate for a publication by the Rainforest Action Network; the project is "aimed at increasing awareness of the rapid destruction of our rainforests. If this destruction continues, half our remaining rainforests will be gone by 2025 and by 2060 there will be absolutely nothing left."

Posted by 1stpulse at 03:03 PM | Permalink

reblogged via BLGD BLOG, Thursday, December 21, 2006:

Architectural Sci-Fi

 

[Image: Steve Pike].

I picked up a few books yesterday at Hennessey + Ingalls, including a collection of student work from Unit 20 of the increasingly exciting Bartlett School of Architecture in London. The book is edited by Marcos Cruz and Salvador Pérez Arroyo, and its projects date from 1999-2002.
It's also amazingly interesting.
I can't find any links to it online, however, so I'll just give you a random walk-through of the book's contents...

 

[Image: James Foster].

There's James Foster's "Inhabitable Growthscape," a "series of incubators" which he constructed from vacuum-formed perspex and electronic circuitry; the system's larger architectural applications are pictured above: it's part boatyard, part aeroponic farm for the cultivation of "disease free cloned plants."
There's then a ten-page spread by Kevin Chu illustrating the industrial use of "clustering robots." Chu describes a colony of "mining robots breeding on a lake in Helsinki," as well as a cluster of similar robots "forming a silicon mining factory in Tenerife." These are "small-scale insect-like robots which form a tactile and transformable surface," although "the overall form alters according to the relocation of individual entities." In other words, it's an Artificially Intelligent swarm of robots transforming the surface of the earth into a quarry...
In fact, if I can interject something here, the book is a little preoccupied with insect shapes and machinery – to the point of looking like a deleted scene from Minority Report 2 – so I will say that architectural studios should be wary of turning themselves into machine-development classes; but that's a minor complaint, and a larger discussion.

 

[Image: Lisa Silver].

We then turn to RIBA Award-winner Lisa Silver, whose architecture consists of "alien objects... fused, subverted and juxtaposed to form a unified whole."
Specifically, Silver presents a space defined by "surfaces and meshes of varied transparency," made from roof suspension systems and ramps. The result is a bricolage of car chassis and old farm implements, assembled on the banks of the Mississippi River.

 

[Image: Lisa Silver].

Tom Foster, then, proposes a "swarm of hyper crystallisation submersible robots" that will spend an entire winter underwater in the Gulf of Helsinki, "artificially enhancing the ice sheet from underneath." This – referred to as "ice periphery management" – is done in the service of an "ice suburb" that "will exist [out on the ice] for 5 months of each year." The ice sheet can be strengthened with "coolant filled reinforcement bars," and the ice suburb will generate its own energy "from high winter winds and sea/ice movements."
So you've got an entire sci-fi trilogy, economically compressed into a few renderings and photo captions.

 

[Image: Annika Schollin].

Returning to land, Annika Schollin writes about urban decay, abandoned buildings, and the formation of "micro-jungles within the urban structure."
Concentrating specifically on London's Brick Lane, Schollin describes how the unmaintained city is soon "reeking of rot and humidity." Her project is a way of "[c]elebrating decay," she explains, "as the organic inhabitants of the site begin to take over, weaving through, ambivalently undermining and reinforcing the built structure." The actual architectural proposal appears to involve constructing a kind of permanent exoskeleton around the ruined markets of Brick Lane, complete with "water dispensing ducts" and a "hydro percolating roof."
So – almost literally to repeat myself – architectural design becomes more and more like science fiction.

 

[Image: Annika Schollin].

Other projects have a distinctly biological theme – including open bacteriological collaboration with the microbiology lab at University College London. Steve Pike, for instance, outlines an "algaetecture" of blown glass and high transparency acrylic. Inspired by the industrial manufacture of car windshields, these glass structures look simultaneously deformed, alchemic, and bio-anatomical.

 

[Images: Steve Pike's "vitreous occupational chambers" and "monitor vessel support infrastructure"].

Pike explains how he built glass Interaction Vessels, Monitor Vessels, and Transformer Vessels, studying so-called algaetectural "parallels to human occupation." He has an essay later in the book about contamination, the London Underground, and "non-sterile environments," in which he proposes a catchment mechanism for airborne particles (the illustrations of which look like a scene from Alphaville).
I could go on and on here. I just think the ideas are great (excuse the enthusiasm, if this isn't your thing).
For instance, there's a project by Mark Mueckenheim called "London Urban Farming." Mueckhenheim points out that the decline of farmland throughout the EU will necessitate "bring[ing] farming into the urban fabric." He thus proposes a food processing plant "with a fish hatchery attached to its façade."

 

[Image: One of Mark Mueckenheim's urban farms; again, note the insectile nature of student work produced for this unit].

The rest of the book confronts us with acoustic wind membranes; the city of Chicago as a kind of machine made out of retractable bridges; health clinics and sports research institutes; a hydroponic farm, by Stephen Clements, apparently modeled after the human nervous system; and even a Finnish fish farm, by Natalia Traverso Caruana, where "research labs and fish nets creat[e] a new luminous landscape" in the sea.

 

[Image: Natalia Traverso Caruana's cultural HQ for Texaco].

Caruana's next project is a "cultural branch" for the headquarters of Texaco – it's magnificently colored and practically leaps off the page.
There are strange photographic labs, and elevators that appear to analyze their passengers' DNA. There's even a plastic surgery lounge, or "Body Transformation" complex, proposed for Heathrow Airport, by Jia Lu (something tells me this will actually be constructed). Andy Shaw jumps in at the very end of the book with some robotic machine-space studies for "technical appliances based on the work of Eduardo Paolozzi."
Etc. etc. etc.
In other words, I like the book. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to exist anywhere online, so you'll just have to take my word for it – or you can visit the Bartlett's various Unit 20 homepages.
Finally, my larger point in citing and describing so many of these projects is to demonstrate, in perhaps exhaustive detail, that some of today's most imaginative artistic, technological, and even literary work is being produced in architectural studios. Whether you like their projects or not, in other words, architecture students are out-thinking, out-structuring, and out-performing novelists, hands down.
It is now architecture that lets us rethink the world anew.

by Geoff Manaugh • permalink

Posted by 1stpulse at 10:34 AM | Permalink

eft image: ”No Way Back?” poster. Design by César Sesio.
Right image: “Land, Art: A Cultural Ecology Handbook” book cover. Design by SMITH. 

via e-flux:

Arts & Ecology announces forthcoming conference and book launch

For more information on these events and the Arts & Ecology programme visit
http://www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk

No Way Back?
A two day international conference at the LSE, London
11 & 12 December 2006
Tickets available here
Book before 10 Nov for a discounted ticket.

Speakers include Maria Thereza Alves, Lara Almárcegui, Jeremy Deller, Andrew Freear, Tue Greenfort, Peter Head, Peter Hewitt, Patrick Holden, Professor Zou Ji, John Jordan, David Lammy MP, Heather & Ivan Morison, Ruth Padel, Marjetica Potrc, Claudio Prado, Ralph Rugoff, Tomás Saraceno, Professor John Schellnhuber, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Matthew Taylor, Klaus Weber, Dr Ken Yeang

No Way Back? is a two day international enquiry organised by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, London, in partnership with Arts Council England and the London School of Economics and Political Science. As part of the Arts & Ecology programme, the conference aims to provide different perspectives on ecological issues from major thinkers of our time. Bringing together artists, geographers, ecologists, economists, sociologists, architects, philosophers, anthropologists and others, it will focus on real places and issues. The exploration will include keynote presentations, workshops, panel discussions, walks, readings, screenings, artists’ interventions and will encourage dialogue with and among the delegates.

LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook
Edited by Max Andrews

Published by the RSA in partnership with Arts Council England.
Designed by SMITH. Distributed worldwide by Cornerhouse Publications and available from http://www.cornerhouse.org/publications
ISBN 0 901469 57 2 / 280pp / Full colour throughout

Publication date: 12 December 2006

Contributions by Lara Almárcegui, Francis Alÿs, Amy Balkin, James Boyle, Fernando Bryce, Susan Canney, Chu Yun, Donna Conlon, Jimmie Durham & Maria Thereza Alves, Feng Yuan, Futurefarmers & Free Soil, Tue Greenfort, Henrik Håkansson, Thomas Hirschhorn, Katie Holten, Marine Hugonnier, Alfredo Jaar, Jiang Jun, Brian Jungen, Jeffrey Kastner, Winona LaDuke, Learning Group, Lucy R. Lippard, Wangari Maathai, Jonathan Meuser, Jason Middlebrook, Aleksandra Mir, Nils Norman, David Naguib Pellow & Lisa Sun-Hee Park, PLATFORM, Richard Prince, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Tomás Saraceno, Paul Schmelzer, Peter Schmelzer, Michael Shellenberger & Ted Nordhaus, Cameron Sinclair, Stephanie Smith, Simon Starling, Bruce Sterling, Kirstine Roepstorff, Rirkrit Tiravanija, David Toop, Vitamin Creative Space, Insa Winkler, the Worldwatch Institute and Zheng Guogu.

The RSA and Arts Council England are pleased to announce the publication of LAND, ART: A Cultural Ecology Handbook. Edited by writer and curator Max Andrews, the book presents a compendium of essays, dialogues and commissioned projects by artists, ecologists, cultural theorists, activists and curators exploring art’s varied modes of response to notions of territory, cultural production and the emergencies of the 21st century. Original contributions from international practitioners as well as reproductions of existing artworks will accompany artists’ on-the-page ‘studio visits’.

In part a genealogy of ‘land’ and what has been understood by ‘the environment’ since the 1960s—with the activities of ‘Land artists’ and the emergence of a popular ‘eco’-consciousness—LAND, ART… proposes and tests if and how our conceptions of art and artists are relevant to a global debate about the future of the planet, and where, how and why art might operate—at the grass roots, at a tangent, as propaganda, activism or as resistance, for example.

About RSA Arts & Ecology
Arts & Ecology was launched by the RSA and Arts Council England in April 2005 to support the work the work of the arts in examining and addressing social and environmental concerns in an interdisciplinary and international arena.

Arts & Ecology consists of a series of initiatives including conferences, networking, ongoing discourse, international research trips, education pilots, artists’ projects and commissions, a website and a publication. Information can be found at http://www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk

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TAVARES STRACHAN
The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project), 2004-06
Preview Date: Dec. 5th, 5–8pm
Dec. 6–10, 2006
(11am–8pm, except Sun, 11am–4pm)
2010 North Miami Ave (between 20th / 21st St)

http://www.distancebetween.org
http://www.pierogi2000.com
http://www.feldmangallery.com
 

via art-agenda:

Pierogi Gallery and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts are pleased to present the exhibition of Tavares Strachan's The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project) in the Wynnwood section of Miami, FL, opening December 5th, 2006 (5-8pm).

In March 2005 Strachan traveled to the Alaskan Arctic in search of a frozen river. Within several days he located one under the Arctic Circle. With the help of a skilled team, he cut into the frozen water to extract a 4.5 ton portion. This block of ice was shipped to Nassau, Bahamas for exhibition in July 2006, an extremely hot summer month in the Bahamas. While on exhibition, the ice sits in a glass freezer, which derives its power from a solar energy system. In effect, the power of the sun keeps this remnant of the Arctic intact, stable, and on view. After the exhibition in Miami the work will travel for further exhibitions.

Strachan's work in general, and the Arctic Ice Project in particular, touches on many different issues: environmental, geographical, social, cultural, and historical. Perhaps the most obvious reference is environmental, relating to global warming and the recent recognition (or denial) of current and potential climactic changes—the reality and the politics of global warming. Geographically and culturally, the work references multiple levels of displacement that draw on human experience. Socially, Strachan has been working to involve communities of school children in the Bahamas through lectures, the tradition of oral story telling, and performances. The act of retracing this expedition is a way of imbedding this arctic experience into the imagination of the community. Using phenomena as a vehicle, this project involves systems of myth, and the products of these experiences are the basis for Strachan’s new works that will be incorporated into later exhibitions.

Continue reading "Tavares Strachan's Arctic Ice Project" »

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Alexis Rockman
Carol Selter
Christy Rupp
Free Soil
Free Fruit/Fruta Gratis
JohnKo Systems Unlimited/Old World Productions
Laura Parker
Matthew Moore
Rachel Major
Shada/Jahn
Susan Leibovitz Steinman
Temescal Amity Works
Wowhaus

 

Hybrid Fields is a group exhibition of contemporary artists creating socially engaged art that explores philosophies for growing food, distributing food, and consuming food. Their art inhabits a hybrid space where art and life, art and agriculture, converge. Sonoma County is a unique agricultural community supporting small farmers who have raised livestock and a multitude of crops through the years, including apples, hops, prunes, and increasingly, grapes. As new technologies expand our capacity for producing more food, faster, through mechanization, hybridization, and genetic engineering, questions are being raised as to the environmental and social impact of such practices.

For more information CLICK HERE

Contemporary Project Space

In conjunction with Hybrid Fields, artists Marisa Jahn and Steve Shada of Shada/Jahn present Swan Song, a lyrical contemporary art installation with a live fruit tree and constructed xylophone that renders the sound of falling fruit as a metaphor for the disquieting loss of un-harvested foods.

The Mezzanine: Selections From the Permanent Collection

Fields of Change
Agricultural Highlights from the Permanent Collection

Fields of Change will highlight the objects, stories, and images of Sonoma County’s agricultural past from the Museum’s collection, and provide an opportunity to consider important transitions.

CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE: THE LAND
Selections from the Tom Golden Collection
April 22 - December 2006

Sonoma County Museum is home to one of the largest collections in the nation of works by environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The Land features the preparatory drawings for their large-scale, temporary works envisioned to interact with the land and its inhabitants. Projects include Running Fence, Umbrellas, Surrounded Islands, Valley Curtain, and The Gates.

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C5 Landscape Database API 2.0
An Open Source GIS API for Digital Elevation Model processing and performance
http://www.c5corp.com/research/demtool/index.shtml

C5, in association with Futuresonic 2006, is proud to release the C5
Landscape Database 2.0 API to the public, in celebration of ten years of
Futuresonic!
http://www.futuresonic.com/

*New Release*
C5 Landscape Database API 2.0

New Features in version 2.0:

   * Virtual Hikers
   * Support for GPS data such as track logs and waypoints
   * Ability to image GPS data onto dem data
   * Java3d support
   * Ability to read land use data (CTG files)
   * New analytic capabilities for landscape searching

 Version 1.0.3 features:

   * DEM input packages
   * RDBMS packages for DEM data
   * Support for processing DEM data dynamically
   * Analytic table support for landscape searching
   * Simple GUI (demtool) for viewing DEMs
   * Support for data export and management

(c) C5 corporation 2002-2006, under the GNU Lesser Public License (pre-2.0
libraries) and C5/UCSD AESTHETIC USE LICENCE (2.0 libraries: see source
code for details)

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Check out Andrea Polli's weblog (recently added to the blogroll).

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