Map of FSMLs and Artist-Residencies

Finding an artist-residency program to work with on ArtSciConverge at your field station or marine lab (FSML) can really help. They can refer good artists to you, and act as partners in art/sci projects, grant applications and other programs. Some of these residencies are even looking for scientists to enrich their residencies, and you can help them find some.

Many artist residencies are already focused on ecology. I've worked with the Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS) and the Alliance of Artist Communities (AAC) to produce a map to help you find each other. I'd like to keep developing the map with more residencies, since many FSMLs also produce research in the social sciences and humanities, as well as the hard sciences.

Let us know if you use the map to make a connection.


View Potential Partners in ArtSciConverge in a full screen map

Article from Conservation Biology, and book from Oxford Press

Here's an interesting 2007 article by Jacobson, McDuff and Monroe from the journal Conservation Biology, titled Promoting Conservation through the Arts: Outreach for Hearts and Minds:

Emotions play a central role in the decisions we make. For example, we often make poor investment choices because we are driven by our emotions rather than rational judgment (Tversky & Kahneman 1991). On the positive side, when emotional input is added to learning experiences, it makes them more memorable and exciting. The brain deems the information more important and enhances memory of the event. Presenting facts alone is less likely to result in long-term changes in feelings and behaviors (Sylwester 1994; Weiss 2000; Cable & Ernst 2003). 

The arts offer a way to make an emotional connection to people, and the visual and performing arts can help conservation practitioners reach new audiences. Art can provoke reactions that typical education and outreach methods do not. Art has the potential to inform audiences or participants in a new way about conservation topics, and it can stimulate new dialogues and actions...

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The essay was based in part on the planning, implementation, and evaluation guidelines for using the arts in conservation, published as a meaty and thought-provoking chapter in Conservation Education and Outreach Techniques, Susan K. Jacobson, Mallory D. McDuff, and Martha C. Monroe.

Art program archive guidelines

The Nevada Museum of Art - Center for Art + Environment is a cutting edge operation that is the only permanent art and environment center in the world. NMA-CA+E works closely with UC Berkeley's Sagehen Creek Field Station to develop their artist-in-residency program.

As part of that relationship, the Center permanently archives the process of art production at the field station. In 2017, they produced guidelines for artists and archivists who wish to do the same. You are free to download and use these guidelines for your own program. Please credit the Nevada Museum of Art - Center for Art + Environment in any publications.

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.

Report on University Artist-in-Residence Programs

Stephen Tonsor at the Carnegie Natural History Museum directed us to this 2013 document produced by The Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

It's a set of recommendations for artist in residence programs at universities, based on a survey of 14 universities, and paying special attention to the IP issues. The recommendations could also be very helpful to FSML art programs, as well.

Partnership for Community Engagement Pilot

This WESTAF program seems like a great, ready-made model for some types of FSML art (Partnership for Community Engagement Pilot).

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WESTAF--the Western States Arts Federation--is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to the creative advancement and preservation of the arts. To accomplish this, WESTAF works in cultural policy, research, and technology.

WESTAF provides other services that may be useful to FSML art programs:

• "Since its launch in 2005, CallforEntry.org (CaFÉ) has grown to become the nation’s leading online call-for-entry application and jury management system. Thanks to a series of significant improvements and an expanding team, CaFÉ now has over 150,000 registered artists and is the only system with an active marketplace of artists who regularly search for and apply to calls through the site. The CaFÉ site consistently hosts more than 120 active calls, with over 60 new calls added each month. Each call receives an average of 220 submissions for juried exhibitions, art competitions, and public art commissions."
• "The Public Art Archive (PAA) database is quickly approaching 10,000 records from almost 1,000 collections around the nation and abroad. As the database grows, the PAA team continues to work on ways to help more of the public discover and learn about public art collections. One big step towards this goal is the Collection Showcase Page feature, which allows administrators with collections in the PAA to develop their own home page as an access point to their collection. Using the showcase page in this way is far less expensive than designing a stand-alone public art site. In addition, because the PAA is heavily used, the public is better able to search for a collection in a locality rather than seeking one out that is often buried in state and local government sites."
• "WESTAF has underwritten Barry’s Blog for 10 years now. The blog was initiated by Barry Hessenius, who, at the time of the blog’s founding, was the recent past executive director of the California Arts Council. WESTAF...invites our Update Notes subscribers to read Barry’s thoughts on 10 years of blogging about the arts by visiting: http://bit.ly/barry10."
• See more services on the WESTAF website.

Innovative public outreach at Sanibel Captiva

Hi, Thought this might be of interest for the blog on a collaboration with the Rauschenberg foundation.

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Xavier Cortada

Caloosahatchee CLEER (create, learn, exchange, entertain and restore) is a multi modal event to open conversations with the public about the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation's science and policy initiatives while creating community art pieces and listening to three professional singer/songwriters. 

The event includes the opportunity to paint wooden message fish to be delivered to Tallahassee, make personal pledges to help clean the water, and enjoy the creation of four iconic art pieces commissioned for the project by Xavier Cortada, an environmental restoration artist. 

It has been demonstrated by similar past events, discussing science and policy with residents and visitors in more informal one-on-one festive setting, people delve deeper into the subject of water quality around Sanibel and Captiva. It has also gives SCCF an opportunity to gauge the knowledge people already have and where educational needs may exist.

Musicians for the two November events are J Robert Houghtaling of Marco, Austin Church of Cocoa Beach and Brent Moyer of Nashville TN and Jackson WY.

We have done 3 events like this in the past and people have been great. It is the first time I am putting all the components together after a Communicating Science workshop. 

Eric

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Eric C. Milbrandt, Ph.D.

Director

Marine Laboratory

Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation

900A Tarpon Bay Rd.

Sanibel, FL 33957

(ph): (239) 395-4617

(fax): (239 395-4616

Check out the ML website:

http://marinelab.sccf.org

RECON Observing Network

http://recon.sccf.org/

Follow me on Twitter:

@SCCF_Marine_Lab

Envisioning the future of work

Rather than just do yet another dry study or report for their Intelligence & Autonomy project on the future of intelligent systems, the Data & Society Research Institute, a New York think tank, commissioned four writers earlier this year to produce science-fictional stories to uncover and explore potential issues with this transformational technology.

"The stories looked at how the rise of machine intelligence and automation might transform warfare, disaster management, medicine, and labor."

Read one of the stories here.

What can art do?

"Watershed Sculpture" that acts to restore a floodplain.

Art can "have a job to do".

Bill Fox talks about and promotes, "art that walks in the world" to address real issues; and there is "a growing trend that seeks to blend art with environmental restoration." Artist residencies are "striving to not only be positively impacted by their environment, but also improve and become active participants in their environment."

An interesting conversation started around the recent #ArtSciConverge workshop in Reno, NV. Here are some highlights:

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... in considering [the] notion that artists who do this work, "fall into two categories: interpreter or translator. Many of the scientists were, in fact, seeking interpreters for their work. These are artists who can give the analysis of data collection empathetic meaning. The word “empathy” for scientific discovery was used frequently." 

We would like to suggest another category, it is the category of "creator" where the artists, like the scientists, create something that did not pre-exist them. For instance, in the Sagehen work, we created the experiment, hired the scientists to help us work it out, thereafter the whole experience will find its way into the scientific literature in one way and the artistic domain in another; or look at the piece for the Greenheart of Holland, where, like mining four different disciplines, we literally put on the table the partial creation of the whole landscape.  

Many other artists also fit in this category, in one way or the other, in the art-science domain. For instance, look at the work of Brandon Ballengee, who was at our meeting, or Betsy Damon's, "The Keeper of the Waters" or for that matter Lauren Bon who makes the astonishing and radical discovery that is was not the railroads but the mule that built the west, and manifests this by supporting a hundred mule train moving from the desert to the center of LA. Maya Lin’s recent work is also of this category. These are all creative acts and neither interpret nor translate but rather transform how one might think and therefore respond to the world differently, perhaps more empathically.

Helen Mayer Harrison/Newton Harrison
Co-Directors - Center for the Study of the Force Majeure; Professors Emeritus, UCSD; Research Professors, UC Santa Cruz; Principals - Harrison Studio

[More here]

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Apologies for taking so long to reply to this, but we wanted to add the Center’s support to the Harrisons’ delineation of this third category of artistic endeavor as it relates to science. Many of the art projects that we archive are works where artists use what they have learned from science to create not only new works, but new line of inquiry within their careers. The data and information become the raw grist from which they eventually bake something quite different. In turn, those works help people see the world from a new perspective—one that may, in fact, lead them back to science.

This is not an act of interpretation, but another use of data and information, one where perhaps science inspires creativity. I say that provisionally as much to test out the idea among us all.

Thanks, Helen and Newton, for such an elegant reply.

William L. Fox
Director, Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art 

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Very well said, Helen and Newton. It is this category, creator, that is most transformative to our thinking and therefore most valuable.

Stephen J Tonsor, Ph.D.
Director of Science and Research
Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Great meeting tool

This probably looks like spam, but I thought it would be a useful thing to pass along.

We just tried this service--Free Conference Calling. It turned out to be a great tool for staying connected. It is very easy to use and reliable. You can record and archive your meetings, too, for folks who can't be there.