Toolbox Dialogue Initiative

"The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative provides a philosophical yet practical enhancement to cross-disciplinary, collaborative science. This enhancement comes primarily in the form of a dialogue-based “Toolbox workshop”, and it is intended for interdisciplinary and interprofessional teams of collaborators. Rooted in philosophical analysis, Toolbox workshops enable cross-disciplinary collaborators to engage in a structured dialogue about their research assumptions. This yields both self-awareness and mutual understanding, supplying cross-disciplinary research (CDR) collaborators with the robust foundation needed for effective collaborative research and practice."

Art, Science and Democracy...and FSMLs

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage." -- H. L. Mencken

 

  Democracy and Science...

"The relation of science and democracy is an ancient conundrum that continues to generate public controversy. Whenever science produces an “inconvenient truth”—as Al Gore famously calls the science of climate change—democratic governments may be tempted to ignore or suppress it. And as scientists like to remind us, 'You can’t vote on the laws of physics!'

Natural scientists and their advocates often argue that the power of science in democracy depends on it remaining insulated from politics. Seen in this light, it is no wonder that many believe science and democracy tend to undermine each other. But another long tradition sees science and democracy as mutually reinforcing. Democracies depend on science for effectively addressing public problems, and many argue that science provides a model of rational democratic deliberation.

These two conflicting interpretations each capture part of the story, but they neglect some of the most interesting questions, which concern changes in the meaning and purpose of science and democracy and how they shape each other in particular contexts. With regard to science, most scholars who study science and democracy now reject the long dominant “positivist” view of science as a formal, logical, socially insulated method for producing value-free knowledge. The ideal of value-free science remains popular in public life, but extensive research in the social sciences and humanities has shown how science is intertwined with social values, commercial pressures, and political decisions.

That does not mean science merely reflects dominant interests, as caricatures of “social constructivism” assert, but it does open up difficult questions about how democratic citizens might shape the science that shapes their lives. With regard to democracy, mid-20th-century political scientists tended to conceive democracy narrowly in terms of popular elections and formal state institutions. Recent scholarship, in contrast, shows how social institutions and material practices of all kinds may become sites of democratic politics. Indeed, as democracy has increased in global popularity, its meaning has become increasingly diffuse and ambiguous; democracy offers both a rallying cry for social justice movements and a marketing slogan for global corporations.

Picasso's Guernica

The relation of science and democracy involves a wide range of disparate phenomena, including science advice, science policy, public engagement in sociotechnical controversies, lay-expert relations, and the technical constitution of democratic citizens, not to mention the many specific concerns associated with issues like climate change, genetic engineering, or nanotechnology."

If science is not value-neutral, who decides how it is politicized?

Democracy and Art...

"Our leaders and institutions appear to be ill-equipped to deal with the most pressing global challenges because of particular interests that make global governance institutions weak [despite clear science]. There is a mismatch between the fragmentation of specialized institutions and the interconnectedness and complexity of today’s world.

Arts and culture have a direct bearing on our capacity to face today’s complex issues. Art safeguards a long-term view; not only does it provide a counterweight to the fast evolving world of technology, but it also helps to make sense of this world. Art invites participation and thus transcends the division between observation and activism. Art inspires insights that resonate across disciplines. Art helps to situate science and technology in public space by symbolically and reflexively representing their roles in society. Art fosters imagination and creativity, capacities that are crucial in its impact on the individual and the community."

Science, Art and Social Change...

Schubel 2015.

We need artists to bridge the gap between science's data and knowledge, to the policy that leads to cultural change. For FSMLs, this typically swirls around the Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences.

"...unlike political consensus--once scientific consensus is reached and knowledge has been created from data, that doesn't mean there has actually been any connection made to public opinion, nor to the mechanisms of social change. Art can fill this disconnect, and has frequently been used by politicians as a tool to effect change in the working of the world."

What's really wrong with Facebook?

Apologies for diverging toward politics, but recent events illuminate how desperately we need to re-engage the arts with science, and how few of the people running things are clued into this need. So get out there and explain it to them, people!



Mark Zuckerberg's performance before Congress this week makes me want to punch him right in the forehead. Again and again, he crashes through our culture like a bull in a china shop, offering nothing but tepid apologies and weak, floral pronouncements about how all he really wants to do is Buy The World A Coke (TM). He has literally nothing else to offer every time his company finds itself at the center of yet another unprecedented cultural calamity. He has proven himself utterly incompetent to deal with the forces he is messing with, but won't get out of the way, either.

Unfortunately, Congress isn't much better and doesn't seem to know what to think about the whole mess, either. They weakly wring their hands and tell Zuckerberg he needs to do better, hoping the willful infant somehow figures out a way to control himself and his company, in spite of zero incentive to stop the wrecking ball swinging.

You know what I desperately wanted to hear someone ask during these hearings?

"Mr. Zuckerberg, how many humanists and philosophers does your company employ? Is there anyone on your staff even remotely qualified to explore the moral issues surrounding the technology you continue to fling out into the world without apparent thought or consideration? 

And, aside from that benefit, wouldn't hiring some people from the arts and humanities go a long way toward addressing the Silicon Valley diversity crisis you acknowledge, but refuse to actually address?"

/soapbox 

Helicon report on Socially Engaged Artistic Practice

 "A working definition of “socially engaged art” is artistic or creative practice that aims to improve conditions in a particular community or in the world at large"

Strangely, socially engaged art generally doesn't refer to art that addresses environmental issues from an ecological perspective. This kind of art can change policy and effect cultural change around the grand environmental challenges of the 21st century. Environmental issues are at the root of much social injustice.

Nevertheless, this recent report may offer useful insight into artistic practices that could complement and extend the science occurring at field stations and marine labs. More info about the report here:

"Mapping the Landscape of Socially Engaged Artistic Practice" 

Alexis Frasz & Holly Sidford
Helicon Collaborative
#artmakingchange

Communicating music

The idea of transcribing music is really interesting if you think about it. It is a translation of the products of one of our senses to another, like trying to translate the visual experience of, say, color into the tactile experience of touch.

But there's more than one way to interpret this task:

"It all started around 840 C.E. when a former monk named Aurelian of Réôme created one of the first examples of Western musical notation."

Read the entire article here.

Beautiful abstractions of complex physics concepts

This work is so interesting: Tufte's ideas and observations at the link are stunning!

"Edward Tufte's wall-mounted sculptures, All Possible Photons,generate an enormous multiplicity of three-dimensional opticalexperiences of line, light, airspace, color, shadow, form.Made from stainless steel and air, the artworks grow outof Richard Feynman's famous diagrams describing Nature'ssubatomic behavior. Feynman diagrams depict the space-timepatterns of particles and waves of quantum electrodynamics.These mathematically derived and empirically verifiedvisualizations represent the space-time paths taken by allsubatomic particles in the universe.The resulting conceptual and cognitive art is both beautifuland true. Along with their art, the stainless steel elementsof All Possible Photons actually represent something: the preciseactivities of Nature at her highest resolution."

Art That Raises Awareness of Forest Ecology Issues

LaynaJoy Rivas and Eva Reiska’s “Sysimetsä”, a memorial

for those affected by the fires that destroyed Lake County, as

well as for a beloved art space by the name of

Ravens Landing back in 2015.

1. Trees (and/or forests) are iconic symbols in virtually every culture;
2. Western US forests are in crisis.

Combining or juxtaposing previously unrelated ideas is how humans create new knowledge, whether with art or science. So, how are artists combining these two ideas at Burning Man, one of the country's most controversial art events?

"Ursa Mator," by Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson: a gorgeous
sculpture covered in shimmering, edge-wise pennies takes 
on additional meaning as the Man burns in the background. 
Large wildfire destroys forest ecosystems, including 
iconic wildlife.

Black Rock City--the temporary Nevada city of 70,000 people (including an airport that is the busiest one in Nevada while it lasts!)--displayed numerous tree &/or forest issue themed artworks in 2017.

The most significant of these conceptual artworks was undoubtedly The Temple. Each year, a Temple is constructed as a locus of communal and personal release. People post photos, stories, keepsakes, mementos and messages relating to loved ones they have lost, or issues they are struggling with. The entire Temple is then burned to the ground on the last evening of the weeklong event in a solemn, silent ritual of cleansing and renewal that counters the rowdy, Saturnalian burning of the Man structure on the previous evening.

This year, the Temple architects chose to highlight western forest health problems by using lumber milled from dead salvage logs. This forest health theme is aligned nicely with the purpose and function of both the Temple, and the entire Burning Man ethos, which aims to alter attitudes of citizens in order to address systemic dysfunction in western culture.

More info about the Temple philosophy this year.

* * *

Burning Man is not the only group of artists working on forest issues, of course. Some artists are actively trying to change social policy.

Saving The West (STW) is a UC Santa Cruz-based, artist-led group working to create a new kind of timber industry that can use the small, torchy material that needs to come off of dry western forests in order to restore ecological function and resiliency. Without industry, there is no way to pay for the work that everyone, including loggers and environmentalists, now knows needs to be done. Meanwhile, our precious forests will continue to die off and/or burn. The current timber industry has retracted so far, and is still so focused on large trees--and lucrative salvage logging of the standing dead--that it is not useful at all in addressing this problem. Unfortunately, it's good business to let the forests continue to die.

STW recently received a grant from the US Forest Service to start a bi-state Wood Utilization Team working in California and Nevada in the Central Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Saving the West: A Whole Systems Proposal in Brief from Helen and Newton Harrison on Vimeo.

First Poet in Residence at CCI

"The Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) is a unique collaboration between the University of Cambridge and leading internationally-focused biodiversity conservation organisations clustered in and around Cambridge, UK.  

CCI seeks to transform the global understanding and conservation of biodiversity and the natural capital it represents and, through this, secure a sustainable future for all life on Earth. The CCI partners together combine and integrate research, education, policy and practice to create innovative solutions for society and to foster conservation learning and leadership."

Matt Howard from RSPB on sabbatical at CCI as our first Poet in Residence.

Matt works in Fundraising for the RSPB Eastern England team. He will be spending his month of sabbatical time at CCI as our first poet in residence, starting on Monday 14 August.

Part of Matt’s role with RSPB is to explore engagement with the arts and he is the lead on the RSPB / The Rialto Nature and Place poetry competition which now additionally partners with CCI and BirdLife.

Matt’s poetry has been published in leading international magazines and journals such as The Poetry Review, New Statesman and The Dark Horse. His debut pamphlet, The Organ Box, was published in 2014.

Throughout his sabbatical, Matt will be based in the Artist in Residence studio (floor 2M of the East Tower). He will break his time up into one week a month, and he will also be at CCI some Fridays over the next few months.

In addition to providing Matt with time to write and network at CCI, the residency has a number of ambitions, all with the aim to gain a deeper understanding of how creative writing can help provide public engagement opportunities and deliver conservation objectives. Matt will be working to:

• Host poetry events at CCI with leading poets
• Develop the Nature and Place competition to increase its fundraising potential
• Work with Modern Poetry in Translation magazine on an issue of international environmental poetry
• Facilitate opportunities for other early career poets to engage with CCI to produce new work for publication and performance.

Matt will also offer colleagues from CCI member organisations opportunities to engage with the residency. Opportunities include:

• One to ones with people interested in developing their own writing and reading
• Establish a workshop group for those interested in writing new poems
• Joining a mailing list to receive a fortnightly poem from the existing canon on a nature / conservation theme, with an explanatory note by him.

Matt is contactable on matt.howard@rspb.org.uk, please do get in touch if you are interested in getting involved. Information on the intranet can be found here.

The Art of Exoplanets

"...Hurt and Pyle, who render vibrant visualizations based on data from Spitzer and other missions, are hybrids of sorts, blending expertise in both science and art. From squiggles on charts and columns of numbers, they conjure red, blue and green worlds, with half-frozen oceans or bubbling lava...Visualizations based on data can also inform science, leading to genuine scientific insights...For Hurt, the real goal of scientific illustration is to excite the public, engage them in the science, and provide a snapshot of scientific knowledge."

"We kind of cover each other's blind spots a bit"

"...art is as much a historical record of our changing understanding of the universe as the textbooks we write." -- Robert Hurt, IPAC Center

Read article here.

Science Needs Story

A recent article in Medium has some good advice:

"Scientists need to tell their stories — stories about why they became scientists and what science has done and is doing for humanity. Remember, science is an abstract, intellectual process for most people. It is very hard for people to gain an emotional connection to science. That’s what narrative is for."

"Top GOP messaging strategist Frank Luntz gave this advice in his infamous 2002 memo to conservatives and team Bush about how to pretend you care about the climate while opposing serious action: 'A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.' ...scientists have been trained to depersonalize their speeches, to speak literally, not figuratively. As a result, it has been easy for the Luntz-Trump crowd to create stories in which scientists are the villains."

The article recommends this book for advice on crafting stories: Houston, We Have A Narrative: Why Science Needs Story, by marine biologist turned filmmaker, Randy Olson:

"Olson first diagnoses the problem: When scientists tell us about their work, they pile one moment and one detail atop another moment and another detail—a stultifying procession of “and, and, and.” What we need instead is an understanding of the basic elements of story, the narrative structures that our brains are all but hardwired to look for—which Olson boils down, brilliantly, to “And, But, Therefore,” or ABT. At a stroke, the ABT approach introduces momentum (“And”), conflict (“But”), and resolution (“Therefore”)—the fundamental building blocks of story."

Field Notes of a Terranaut

Artist Alan MacDonald was inspired by the notebooks of DaVinci and Michelangelo to create his recent work, Field Notes of a Terranaut. MacDonald has some lucid ideas about the creative process:

"Our senses filter out vast amounts of information unessential for survival of the body-organism. Yet still, a trickle of information enters the mind experienced as intuition, a creative spark. Aha moments. Truly creative artists are in a sense mystics, 'receiving' non local information in order to co-create local objects that inspire and extend consciousness."

I would argue that this statement applies to truly creative scientists, as well: they notice things that the rest of us filter out. Perhaps we lack a term for the truly creative perception that distinguishes transformative art and science from the merely pedestrian?

Request for Journal Submissions

Dear Community:

Mapping Meaning is pleased to announce that submissions are being accepted for the first issue of Mapping Meaning, the Journal. 

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Submission Deadline: August 31, 2017
Notification Date: January 1, 2018
Publication: May, 2018
Website: http://www.mappingmeaning.org/journal
E-mail: editors@mappingmeaning.org

ISSUE SCOPE

How might interdisciplinary practices promote a reconsideration of the role that humanity plays in a more-than-human world?

In a deeply fragmented and disciplined-based world, Mapping Meaning creates a space to encounter divergent approaches toward “surveying” landscapes in the face of radical global change and ecological and social crises.

Inspired by a photograph from 1918 depicting an all-female survey crew, Mapping Meaning supports the creative work and scholarship of all those working at the margins and ecotones.

In its inaugural issue, Mapping Meaning, the Journal, seeks submissions that cross and/or challenge traditional boundaries between social, psychological and environmental ecologies with the greatest potential to revitalize dialogue and foster alternative narratives. We solicit work from scientists, humanists, and artists from within or outside the academy and are especially interested in field-based research and learning. Work will be reviewed by issue editors and the editorial board (please see website for details).

AREAS OF PARTICULAR INTEREST:

• Experimental Knowledge Practices that utilize divergent approaches to address issues of ecological complexity in our physical, social, and spiritual worlds.
• Collaborative Methodologies showing examples across discipline, distance, and generation.
• (Re)Surveying Scholarship and Creative Work that uncovers unrecognized histories.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION INCLUDING SUBMISSION GUIDELINES,
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE.
www.mappingmeaning.org/journal

Einstein was an Artist

Einstein was an Artist? Zat Rana wrote a recent article in Medium that makes some interesting points:

"Einstein inspired a paradigm shift in physics not as a scientist but as an artist...English distinguishes a scientist as someone who systematically learns about a part of the natural world and uses that knowledge to describe and predict it. An artist, on the other hand, is defined as someone who creatively produces."

"When it comes to categories like science and art, we have a tendency to presume [incorrectly] mutual exclusivity."

"There are many smart and knowledgeable scientists. Rarely, however, are they capable of producing work that shifts our entire understanding of the world. That requires an entirely new way of looking at things... At its core, creativity is just a new and useful way of combining old ideas. It isn’t imagined out of thin air, and it isn’t completely abstract. It’s a fresh way of making sense of the existing components of reality that have yet to merge."

Rana goes on to identify several key ways of nurturing creativity:

1. Be willing to produce subpar work
2. Compromise today for tomorrow
3. Don’t wait for inspiration to get moving
4. Seek relationships between existing ideas
5. Produce a large volume of work

Read the full article here.

Work by the Root-Bernsteins establishes that practicing art as an adult is 15-25x more likely in Nobel Prize-winning scientists than in their non-winning peers. Einstein was an accomplished violinist.

Einstein famously claimed to have conceptualized the notions behind the work that became Special Relativity while imagining what the world would look like if you could ride along on a beam of light.

This video by Eugene Khutoryansky does the best job I have ever seen of visualizing and explaining that conceit:

Call for submission of evidence

From Roger Malina...
-------------------------------

Dear Colleague,

We are seeking your input on a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study that is examining the evidence behind the assertion that educational experiences that integrate the humanities and arts with science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine lead to improved educational and career outcomes for undergraduate and graduate students.

http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/bhew/humanitiesandstem/index.htm

The committee undertaking this study began its work in July of 2016 and the final product of our deliberations will be the publication of a detailed, evidence-based report in the spring of 2018 that will describe the known impact of integrative approaches to teaching and learning in higher education on students' academic performance and career readiness. We are currently in the information gathering stage of the study process and we would like to ask whether you, or others at your institution, have data and information to share that could inform this study.

Are there programs or courses at your institution that integrate the arts and humanities with science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and/or medicine? If so, what is known about the impact of these educational experiences on the students at your institution?

Has your institution ever evaluated or assessed these educational experiences formally or informally? If so, what data can you share?

Are there factors at your institutions that make integration across disciplines difficult to achieve? If so, what are they? Have any educational experiences or programs at your institution that integrated the arts and humanities with sciences, technology, engineering, math, and/or medicine ended or been discontinued? If so, why did the experience or program end?

We would greatly appreciate your input as we work to meet the charge of this study. The data and information you share will not only contribute to the evidence base the committee will examine, but will also aid us in our effort to gather sufficiently broad input to ensure that we consider all important perspectives and information pertinent to this topic. In addition to your input, please also forward this request for content to those colleagues and thought leaders, as well as affiliated partners in higher education, who you think might make a unique contribution to this study. Please note that any information you or your colleagues share with the committee will be made public, consistent with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

If you have information to share, please submit it using this link:

http://nas.integration-questionnaire.sgizmo.com/s3/

It would be very helpful to us if you could contribute your input by May 1, 2017 to allow ample time for the committee to consider your contribution before the drafting and publication of the report. If we have follow-up questions regarding your letter, we may contact you by phone or e-mail, or we may request that you present more details directly to our committee at a future meeting. For further information on the study, you may emailAshley Bear.

Your efforts and input will be greatly appreciated.

On Behalf of the Committee,

David Skorton
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution

STEM to STEAM discussion on YASMIN

Yasminers

Announcing a YASMIN discussion beginning Dec 19

What does STEM to STEAM mean: New Ideas or Hot Moist Air ?

Moderator: Roger Malina
Discussants: Dimitris Charitos ( Greece), Guillermo Munoz ( Spain,
currently a nanoscience postdoc in Japan)

if you want to participate as an invited respondent- contact
rmalina@alum.mit.edu

As you know there is an international discussion on "stem to steam"
concepts and approaches for new art/sci/tech teaching and research
methods.  There is much debate and discussion on whether the ideas
behind STEM to STEAM are new in anyway, or whether the phrase is a
repacking of current work in a way to attract new funding ( for an
understanding the social and cultural processes at work in 'selling'
programs like stem to steam - on  a larger scale- see for instance
Patrick McCray's detailed book called The Visioneers: How a Group of
Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a
Limitless Future  http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9822.html   )

The US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine are
currently conducting a two year study to address  the higher education
part of the question:

Integrating Higher Education in the
Arts, Humanities, Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/bhew/humanitiesandstem/index.htm

The European Union has initiated the STARTS (science technology and
the arts ) funding program:

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/ict-art-starts-platform

which seeks to address the innovation argument:

STARTS encourages synergies between the Arts and innovation for
technology and society by promoting the inclusion of artists in
Horizon 2020 projects.An increasing number of high-tech companies
assert that scientific and technological skills alone are not
sufficient anymore. In this context, the Arts are gaining prominence
as catalysts for an efficient conversion of science and technology
knowledge into novel products, services, and processes.

We are proposing a discussion on the YASMIN discussion list on
this topic on Drec 19-2016-all members of the yasmin community
welcome to participate



in our own School at the University of Texas at Dallas faculty members are
learning how to teach science and engineering differently using STEAM
approaches: eg http://www.utdallas.edu/atec/

eg:

Karen Doore:
Curriculum Re-Design: Computer Science for ATEC Students
Karen Doore will present an overview of curriculum for CS
programming-sequence courses for ATEC and will include student
projects showcasing top student works. There are significant
challenges and difficulties in attempting to teach complex technical
material to a diverse student groups, particularly when many students
question the premise that these CS courses provide value for the
effort that is required to learn the course content. There are
current efforts to re-design curriculum for these courses. She is
looking for feedback and suggestions that can further guide the
curriculum re-design efforts.

About Karen Doore

Karen Doore is a Senior Lecturer and PhD Candidate in the Computer
Science Department at UT Dallas. Her research focus is Computer
Science Education, with an emphasis on curriculum design for
Non-Majors. She earned her BS in Material Science and Engineering from
the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN and an MS in Computer
Science with a focus on Intelligent Systems from UT Dallas. She
currently teaches required CS programming-sequence courses for ATEC
students, and has been working for several years as part of the
re-design effort for the curriculum of these courses. Her new
curriculum has an enhanced focus on computational modeling, so that,
in addition to learning fundamental programming concepts, students
learn how to model dynamic, interactive systems. One goal of this
modeling focus is to provide students with skills to design,
communicate about, and implement dynamic interactive programs, such as
games, animations, and design tools

Our school of Art Tecnology and Emerging Communication has also
announced 6 full PhD scholarships including STEM to STEAM creative
work and research.

for the YASMIN discusson we are interested in STEM to STEAM topics
in artistic work, art-sci-tech research, education and personal behaviour !!

Hopefully STEM to STEAM is not just vapor ware !

Roger Malina
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Patterns of narrative

More and more, it seems clear that human thought naturally organizes itself along patterns of narrative.

Story is how we process and understand our world, then encode that information to pass along to others. There is an argument that information passed down through aboriginal Australian songs may encode verifiable geological events from 8,000 years ago. Their visual art tradition appears to do something similar. And--at its best--what is the Judeo-Christian bible if not distilled wisdom about how to be a human from about 10,000 years ago to 100 a.d.?

Business theory accepts this idea. The "knowledge transfer cycle" states that:

"Knowledge can be stored in databases, documentation, process tables, decision trees, wikis and quick reference guides. But one of the most powerful ways to store knowledge is through stories. Much knowledge, especially tacit knowledge, exists in the minds of the experts and can be made accessible through mentoring or through connections using social media tools."

In the 1960's, Philosopher Roland Barthes worked to understand in narrative, "a principle of classification and a basis of description," pointing out that "there is a deep gulf between the most complex product of chance, and the most simple conscious construction..." He looked for the rules governing narrative construction in narrative itself: all narrative.

More recently, story narrative has been getting attention from science.

"...mathematicians at the University of Vermont have now looked at more than 1,000 texts to see if they could automatically extract their emotional arcs. And their results show something interesting, not just about narratives, but also about using this approach to study literature."

Using digitized texts from Project Gutenberg, the study found 6 consistent patterns of story. And--startlingly--these patterns hold not just in fiction but in non-fiction as well. We impose these patterns on all communication.

So what does that mean to FSMLs? Only that if we are not creating our own narrative, someone else will do it for us (and we may not be happy with the results). Understanding narrative may be a scientific process, but creating it is not: it is an artistic one.

Social Sculpture and Climate Change

Like politics, science supports a position. They both have an opinion, though arising out of very different sources.

Politics is a reflection and harnessing of public opinion: the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by a population for whatever reason. Scientific opinion, on the other hand, "harnesses the opinions of many different scientific organizations and entities and individual scientists in the relevant field, and is ultimately based on observation": that is, what is empirically demonstrable. The thing to note here, is that--unlike political consensus--once scientific consensus is reached and knowledge has been created from data, that doesn't mean there has actually been any connection made to public opinion, nor to the mechanisms of social change. Art can fill this disconnect, and has frequently been used by politicians as a tool to effect change in the working of the world.

As an example,  Soviet communist party leaders "depicted the United States as a cultural black hole and cited their own significant culture as evidence that they were the inheritors of the European Enlightenment". The Congress for Cultural Freedoms was organized, operated and funded by the CIA to promote American Abstract Expressionism to Europeans in the 1950's as a superior counterpoint to Soviet agitprop art. This covert operation was enthusiastically supported by New York's MOMA and the Ford Foundation. The CIA, acting secretly due to public and Congressional hostility to modern art, funded numerous traveling European exhibitions, symphonies, and many magazines that provided a platform for favorable art criticism. The aftermath of WWII was a not just a military Cold War, but also a cultural one, fought for the hearts and minds of the European intelligentsia. The fascinating and unsettling full story of the CIA and modern art is told in at least two books and a documentary, Hidden Hands (watch Episode 2 here), by Frances Stonor Saunders. Read Chapter 1 of The Cultural Cold War here.

In fact, the CIA still maintains a collection of important modern art used for agent training.

"We’ll have some of our guys and gals come down here and do a critical analysis of the paintings. Say you’ve got to analyze this big, heavy duty ISIL problem over here — maybe if you come look at the painting, it’ll help you think about how to solve the ISIL problem creatively."

* * *

With climate change emerging as the primary global social problem of the Anthropocene geological era, and a massive obsession of the scientific world, it is startling and alarming that politics is not bending art to address this unprecedented challenge. As Bill McKibbon said, "...though we know about it, we don’t know about it. It hasn’t registered in our gut; it isn’t part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?" Science can't offer this.

In the absence of political support (and funding), artists often seek to make cultural change on their own.

"There are experts in little things, but there are no experts in big things. All of us, no matter what we do, have the right to make moral decisions about the world....Everyone must be involved. -- Rachel Schragis 

The historian says [of war], "It's not my business." The lawyer says, "It's not my business." The businessman says, "It's not my business." And the artist says, "It's not my business." Then whose business is it? Does that mean you are going to leave the business of the most important issues in the world to the people who run the country? How stupid can we be? Haven't we had enough experience historically with leaving the important decisions to the people in the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, and those who dominate the economy?...It is the job of the artist to...think outside the boundaries of permissible thought and dare to say things that no one else will say. " -- Howard Zinn

“Art was supposed to change things … after studying art history, you realize that’s not always the case, but I love that spirit about what art is supposed to be. Art is part of our larger world so it’s not just by itself trying to do that … yeah, so art does change things.” -- Kellie Jones, Curator and Art Historian

Operating, as we do, on the front-lines of climate change, field stations and marine labs do well to engage with and support artists who are interested in the same things we are.

Mary Beth Leigh | TEDxFairbanks

Seeing the Elephant: Reintegrating Arts, Humanities & Sciences

"Collaborations between the arts, humanities and sciences can strengthen our connection to the ecosystems in which we live. This TEDx talk highlights work done by Mary Beth Leigh combining ecology, dance, visual art, and other media to advance the arts, sciences, and public understanding of social-ecological issues. 

Mary Beth Leigh is an Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and is an organizer of state and national efforts to integrate the arts and humanities with ecological science. She directs the Alaska-based program, In a Time of Change, and co-organizes the nationwide networks, Ecological Reflections and ArtSciConverge. 

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx"

"Art in a Changing Climate"

Here's a great blog post by Christina Catanese at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, in Pennsylvania:

Bill McKibben wrote, in a 2005 essay on climate change and art, “But oddly, though we know about it, we don’t know about it. It hasn’t registered in our gut; it isn’t part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?”

Climate change is abstract, cognitively complex, with no clear single villain; dialogue around climate change often induces self-defensiveness, the steps needed to respond require long time horizons, and many of the victims are distant, in either space or time. More so than many other environmental issues, climate change is a social as well as scientific challenge, making it even harder to wrap our minds around. For decades, climate scientists have tried to make their work resonate, but too often, the result is either data overload, or fear and warning of dire and disastrous consequences, which people tune out. Mounting evidence shows that our brains are simply not wired for this kind of abstraction – we respond subconsciously based on emotion, not data.

Luckily, artists are good at appealing to these parts of ourselves, with the ability to activate our imaginations, catalyze mindshifts, motivate change and action, and develop outside-the-box solutions...

Read the entire post here. 

Turning graphical data into artworks

From Fred Swanson:

Artist Jill Pelto "creates paintings based on graphs of data on the environmental effects of climate change."

Read article here.