Annual International Conference 2011 Session and …



RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2011The Geographical ImaginationSession proposal formPlease fill in all the details below and return to AC2011@ by 25 February 2011. Session summarySession Title:Art, Science and Geographical ImaginariesResearch Group sponsor (if applicable):HGRGSession Convenor(s):Mrill Ingram, University of Arizona; Harriet Hawkins, Libby Straughan, Aberystwyth University.Session Convenor(s) Email:mrilli@email.arizona.edu; hah7@aber.ac.uk; ers06@aber.ac.ukSession Abstract:The tragedy of modern institutional compartmentalization has been its dissolution of the epistemological linkages between the arts (and broader humanities) and the natural sciences. Yet, however disparate their imaginaries, science and art have shared histories that inaugurate many key geographical modes of enquiry. Geographical knowledges and practices today retain a lively sense of the connectedness of the arts and sciences, characterized by negotiation, mutual learning and symbiosis, and explorations of relational difference. In the context of thinking about the geographical imagination, this session poses broad questions about the discipline’s historic and ongoing relationships with art and science, their consequences for our ways of knowing and imagining the world, and for our understandings of the discipline and practice of geography. ?Contributions in these sessions address: ?1) ????Art/Science and the Making of a Modern-Day Geography ?The co-mingling of art and science -- in the form of, for example, collaborations onboard ships in the Age of Exploration; the empirical and imaginary filling in of the blank spaces of ‘terra incognita’, celestial and subterranean worlds; and the 19th century rendering of nature and landscape in Von Humboldt’s cosmographies -- has been key to the emergence of a modern day geography. Indeed, the geographical project is often figured as one of synthesis. This may be worked through an imaginary of a disciplinary site where artistic and scientific endeavors engage around questions of bodies and environments, nature and society; or, it may be realized as part of a disciplinary genealogy that revolves, both pre and post Enlightenment, around the continuous working over of aesthetic and rational concerns. ??How did this co-mingling of art/science emerge within particular political, economic and cultural contexts??What imaginaries and practices animated and sustained such a geography??How were relations between the empirical, the speculative and the imaginary articulated??And, how, where and with what import did such a geography become institutionalized???2) Today, in the spaces of the lab, the studio, and in the field we find collaborations between artists and sciences that articulate new ways of geographical knowing, but which also interrogate the history of geographical ways of knowing. For instance, geographers bring science and art together in the production of a range of outputs that have contributed to our world views, from visualizations, maps, GIS, data modeling and the graphics of field sketching and spatial science, to paintings and other art works. ??How, where, and with what desires and anxieties have such collaborations emerged??How has a history of geography been posited and re-negotiated??What particular elements of the geographical imagination, and which concepts/techniques/figurations, are the focus of attention and why??What modes of articulation are being used, and with what import???3) Imagining Geographies/Disciplinary Imaginaries?Despite a history that combines art/science in a myriad of conceptual, methodological and presentational ways, there is nevertheless a marked compartmentalization of the discipline of geography. In consequence, a contemporary ‘drawing together’ of disparate areas of humanities, social and physical sciences combines elements that have considerable baggage accompanying them, such that they are identified variously as ‘factual,’ ‘measureable’ and ‘practical’, as well as ?‘creative,’ ‘innovative,’ and ‘speculative’. ??How is this baggage negotiated as both a challenge and an opportunity in contemporary geographical accounts??How does such work open up questions around the meaning and status of ‘data,’ the methods and practices of research and the status and value of outputs, both within and beyond the academy. ??What expressive resources can be put to use in such efforts? ?What are the implications of this contemporary co-mingling of art/science in the context of the rise of STEM and the threat to Arts and Humanities? ?Keywords (max 5): Art, Science, Creativity, Experiment, Imaginaries Session RequirementsNumber of timeslots required in the conference programme4Session slots will be approximately 1hr 40minutes long, which accommodates 5 papers of 20min each including questions, or 7-10 shorter papers depending on format.Type of session proposed e.g. papers, papers with discussant, posters, panel discussion, workshop…papersThe session organisers welcome innovative session formats. If you’d like to discuss a session format, please contact the organisers at AC2011@. Special audio visual requirements- video capabilities on laptop pleaseLaptop with audio speakers, data projector and screen will be provided in each room. Most rooms should also have internet access (either wired or wireless). Speakers should bring their own laser pointers etc.Any other special requests to be considerede.g. mobility requirements, room request, timetabling request.Session detailsSession 1Art, Science and Geographical Imaginaries 1: Questioning KnowledgeSession 1 ChairDr Harriet Hawkins (University of Aberystwyth) Session 1 Chair emailHah7@aber.ac.ukPaper 1 Title:THE OTHER VOLCANO Paper 1 Abstract:This paper explores the challenges and experiences of a collaborative interdisciplinary project that engaged us in examining the intersections of our practices as an artist/designer and a scientist. The focus of our discussion is the art work ‘ The Other Volcano’. In this paper we explore the ways in which art and science come together to think about communication and public engagement in relation to the practices of hazard forecasting.‘In order to make myself recognised by the Other, I must risk my own life’ said Sartre. ‘The Other Volcano’ is a project that domesticates the most violent of natural processes, addressing and reinterpreting different natures; a project that questions the subjugation of nature for entertainment purposes The Other Volcano relates to the juxtaposition of the epic with banal details, the extreme with domestic (see ).In the same year as The Other Volcano was shown the minor eruption of the Eyjafjallaj?kull volcano (14-20 April 2010) caused chaos, affecting people globally in ways they had not imagined. The power of a volcano to cause such social, economic, and political disruption raised a number of issues that ‘The Other Volcano’ explored; principally the complexities of managing unpredictable forces of nature. The erupting volcano at London Design Week (2010) generated an emotive response from its’ audience who could not help but ask, ‘when will the volcano erupt?’ Drawing on contemporary understandings of hazard and risk we explore how the process of forecasting natural hazards, in particular volcanoes, is often described by scientists as ‘an art’; a subjective process of obtaining a gut feel about a volcano’s behavior. Further we examine how this brings into question not just how can art and science work together to explore our perception and understanding of science that is often inaccessible, or how science is adapted to fulfil poetic and creative needs, but also the boundaries that we use to define what is science and art. Paper 1 Author(s):Dr.Carina Fearnley (Aberystwyth University) Nelly Ben Hayoun (Royal School of Art) Paper 1 Presenter(s):Dr.Carina Fearnley (Aberystwyth University) Nelly Ben Hayoun (Royal School of Art)Paper 1 Author(s) email address:cjf9@aber.ac.uk ; nelly.ben-hayoun@network.rca.ac.ukPaper 2 Title:Inspirational Landscapes: Intercalating Art, Science and GeographyPaper 2 Abstract:In the summer of 2008 Peter Knight, a physical geographer in Staffordshire, looks out of his office window and imagines ways in which his students can be helped to see more, to notice more, as they explore the world around them. Miriam Burke, a sculptor in London working in a crypt studio without windows, imagines ways to use art as a catalyst to engage the imagination of the public in exploring climate change, and ways to use scientific research as a stimulus in her creative practice. Miriam wrote: “My work is the care and maintenance of the web of our noticing”. Peter wrote: “Geography is all about exploring; noticing things in the world around us”. About a century earlier Marcel Proust had written “the only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes; in seeing the universe through the eyes of another”. This paper is a record of how Peter and Miriam embarked upon a voyage of discovery that enabled the artist to see through the eyes of the geographer, the geographer to see through the eyes of the artist, a group of undergraduate geography students see through the eyes of both and the public to witness an art-geography gallery exhibition inspired by the journey.Paper 2 Author(s):Peter G. Knight (Keele University), Miriam Burke (Independent Artist), Peter Adey (Keele University)Paper 2 Presenter(s):Peter G. Knight (Keele University), Miriam Burke (Independent Artist), Peter Adey (Keele University) Paper 2 Author(s) email address:p.g.knight@esci.keele.ac.uk; mimburke@yahoo.co.ukPaper 3 Title:Re-Placement in Natural History: A Visual Experiment in Reinvesting Natural Entities and Natural Kinds with their Geographical Significance Paper 3 Abstract:"Natural history" is a timeworn umbrella for scientific practices that center on the description of natural entities. In natural history, description has generally included an aspect of geographic specificity, and in some cases natural historians have ventured into geographical theorizing. C. Hart Merriam’s life zones concepts is just one example of this. But the geographic aspects of natural history practices have grown increasingly thin over the past century, as though geography plays no active role in the origins, evolution, or functions/processes of natural entities. This attitude is not entirely new – Pliny the Elder was content to describe natural entities somewhat disconnected from the places in which they were found – but it has grown quite a bit worse as natural history practice has combined with the practices of natural philosophy to produce modern scientific disciplines.Atoms and molecules do not have return addresses, but plants and rocks do. And while return addresses – on labels in museum drawers, for instance – are thoroughly conventional, the explanatory power of geographical entailment is often ignored, or dissolved into nongeographical explanatory components. There is plenty of non-epistemic justification for doing this: the history of European colonialism and imperialism over the past 500 has depended on an easy displacement of natural things from their places of origin.In this paper I review the facts that I have stated above through reference to visual representations in the natural history sciences and argue, on epistemic grounds, for the re-placement of nature. I also present a model of representation (an experiment, one might say) for natural history, in which representations of natural entities, especially visual representations, emplace those things in their geographical context.Paper 3 Author(s):Mark L. Hineline (University of California, San Diego)Paper 3 Presenter(s):Mark L. Hineline (University of California, San Diego)Paper 3 Author(s) email address:mhineline@mail.ucsd.eduPaper 4 Title:On Geographical Imagination, Scientific Knowledge and Art Practice : Navigating the Sea and the Sky Paper 4 Abstract:The twenty-first century enters new dimensions in navigating, while satellite technology and its Global Positioning System introduce new spectra of space and time to the speculation of the contemporary era. On one hand, cosmos is no more perceived as a pre-existent substance or as an acquired ontological identity but rather as a performative continuum, being as doing, a world in becoming. On the other, the former obsession for both scientific objectivity and the nominal/real essence of things leaves nowadays more room for empirical and art-based research as an equally, if not more important means to knowledge. For art is neither prettifying nor merely depicting our mundus: contemporary artists question the world, disrupt its order so that they reveal its structure – or take it to the limits in order to reveal its potential. “The artists are inventing at the moment this new modernity, which is global from scratch”, to quote Bourriaud. “On one side, you have artists who are really trying to explore the planet in a different way and artists who try to explore time as if it were a jungle or a desert in a way”. By juxtaposing Charles Avery’s project The Islanders with Ioannis Michalous’ Aer( )sculptures, this paper oscillates between art practices of enquiring geographical imagination and scientific modes of approaching the world’s imaginary. While Avery’s drawings investigate the inhabitants, topology and cosmology of an imaginary island, Michalous’ solidified air forms are bringing memory into future time through silica aerogel, a material produced at NASA for the Mars Pathfinder and the Stardust missions. Paper 4 Author(s):Miss Elia Ntaousani (London Consortium) Paper 4 Presenter(s):Miss Elia Ntaousani (London Consortium)Paper 4 Author(s) email address:elia.ntaousani@yahoo.frPaper 5 Title:Artsists and Scientists in 3DPaper 5 Abstract:This paper reports on a component of an ongoing UK-US research project into artist-scientist collaborations.? Based on months of organizational ethnography in the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputer Applications, we examine the integration of scientific and artistic research methodologies in the 3D visualization of numerous terrestrial and cosmic phenomena, from tornadoes and ocean currents to planets and galaxies in formation. The AVL's work is organized around Renaissance Teams (Cox, 1985), clusters of collaborating scientists, artists, and programmers whose work spans and integrates the historic and contemporary boundaries of scientific research and immersive experiences readable by the public. The AVL's approaches illustrate the complexities required in visualizing the data-rich models of contemporary computational science with the historic bifurcations in art and science practice. In addition to contextualizing these divisions, this paper will report on a Q-sort aimed at uncovering what, if any, attitudinal and evaluative differences exist among collaborative teams of artists and scientists focusing on the production of 3D, digitally-derived scientific visualizations.Paper 5 Author(s):John Paul Jones III (University of Arizona) Keith Woodward (University of Wisconsin - Madison)Paper 5 Presenter(s):John Paul Jones III (University of Arizona)Paper 5 Author(s) email address:jpjones@email.arizona.edu; kwoodward@wisc.edu;Please copy and paste the “Session details” table below if your session requires more than one timeslot (e.g. it has more than 5 papers and you need more time). If you are proposing another session on a different topic, please use a new form.Session detailsSession 2Art, Science and Geographical Imaginaries 2: Critical MethodologiesSession 1 ChairMrill Ingram (University of Arizona) Session 1 Chair emailmrilli@email.arizona.edu;Paper 1 Title:Mapping person-place relations: a synthesis of science, social science and art endeavour. Paper 1 Abstract:This paper outlines how art and science combine in the recording and representation of people’s interaction with their built environment. Based on a project where galvanic skin response units were used alongside geographical positioning technology, this paper outlines how (bio) physical records of human interaction with the world were attained (see Nold, 2008). It goes on to show how this quantitative data was supplemented by qualitative discussion and interview, achieving alignment between scientific record and social scientific interpretation. The paper concludes by outlining how the subsequent cartographic representation of this material combined art, social science and science, and illustrates how the geographic imagination is usefully captured through a creative synthesis of disciplines that are traditionally kept apart. Paper 1 Author(s):Dr Jon Anderson (School of City & Regional Planning, Cardiff University) and Dr Chris Taylor (School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University).Paper 1 Presenter(s):Dr Jon Anderson (School of City & Regional Planning, Cardiff University) and Dr Chris Taylor (School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University).Paper 1 Author(s) email address:AndersonJ@cardiff.ac.ukPaper 2 Title:'Geo-Located Satscapes and their Implications for the Arts and Geography'Paper 2 Abstract:SATSYMPH, a collaboration between contemporary composer Marc Yeats, poet and writer Ralph Hoyte and coder, electroacoustic engineer and composer Phill Phelps, construct geo-located symphonic user-directed soundworlds which respond to individual users’ geographic position.The experience is accessed by downloading an app onto a GPS-enabled device such as an Apple iPhone, or, potentially on any device running Google Android. This app contains all the information required to run the experience. When the user enters the virtual soundworld layered over the real world the app is triggered and relays the multi-layered content (in this case as audio through headphones). The content is ‘user-directed’ in that the behaviour of the user within the virtual soundworld determines what they hear. Content is ‘mixed’ by actions within ‘a virtual auditorium’. SATSYMPH's work adds the elements of ‘landscape’ and ‘geographical position’ to the music/poetry compositional processes. It poses broad questions about Geography's historic and on-going relationship with art and science (and technology), their consequences for our ways of knowing and imagining the world and for our understandings of the discipline and practice of 'Geography'. It also profoundly questions ‘authorship’ – who is the author of a geo-located artwork? The composers, or the user who makes an entirely original work through their own actions?SATSYMPH’s work is at the forefront of a whole new wave of immersive, personalised, user-directed experiences which respond to the user-context. ‘User-context’ is set to be the definer of future content delivery.Paper 2 Author(s):Ralph Hoyte, Marc Yeats, Phill PhelpsPaper 2 Presenter(s):Ralph Hoyte, Marc Yeats, Phill PhelpsPaper 2 Author(s) email address:ralphdhoyte@; marc.yeats@; zenpho@zenpho.co.ukPaper 3 Title:Learning Space: Psychogeography as an Educational and Creative Tool Paper 3 Abstract:It is very easy for us to not notice the urban space in which we both live and work. For example, it might be the case that the first time we notice the urban décor in our local shopping centre is when it is pointed out to us by someone else. In the consumer-oriented society in which we now live it is difficult to see beyond what Guy Debord described as the 'spectacle': the images that mediate our relationships with each other, and indeed with society as a whole. Young people, who may not have had the benefit of remembering a time before Jean Baudrillard's hyperreality, may take for granted how postmodern space appears. Psychogeography is a method and practice which can be used with school children, and in further and higher education, to awaken young people to the space they occupy every day. Designing routes through space, walking in the city and remapping these spaces, enables an awareness to develop that furthers ideas that go beyond just the physical space we occupy. Urban walking can generate discussions across disciplines: political, geographical, economic, cultural, artistic and philosophical. Students that engage with psychogeography and urban walking find it an enlightening, creative and educational experience that rouses their interest in new fields and engenders new modes for expressing themPaper 3 Author(s):Tina Richardson, University of LeedsPaper 3 Presenter(s):Tina Richardson, University of LeedsPaper 3 Author(s) email address:fin5tr@leeds.ac.ukPaper 4 Title:Youth, Photography & Speculative Geographies of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.Paper 4 Abstract:Fort McMurray and the Alberta Oil Sands have been painted in the light of an ecological?disaster of mega-proportions. International press and visual discourses surrounding the Oil Sands have done well to abstract, fragment and compartmentalize the extractive processes that fuel the world oil economy. In particular, photographers such as Edward Burtynsky and Peter Essick (National Geographic) have contributed to an international image of technological and engineering feats that do well to illuminate the increased efficiency of oil extraction from bituminous sands (a sticky, messy feat). With the increase in efficiency Fort McMurray has served as the magnetic point of?reference?and home base for those prepared to commit themselves to the overall process, including a diverse range of national and international immigrants who come to cash-in. In 2008 to 2010 I spent time with a group of youth aged 15 to 19 conducting social research using visual methods of collaborative photography and public exposition. Together we worked as co-creators to envision social and geographic glimpses of a place, Fort McMurray, as a challenge to the dominant visual narrative purported by global media sources. Our goal was to create a space for youth to voice their creations and open a?dialogue?about social and?geographical?concerns within their community. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the project and will bring its focus to the problems, difficulties and successful elements of apporaching social research in this way.Paper 4 Author(s):Andriko J. Lozowy (University of Alberta – Sociology)Paper 4 Presenter(s):Andriko J. Lozowy (University of Alberta – Sociology)Paper 4 Author(s) email address:andriko.l@Paper 5 Title:Discussant: Paper 5 Abstract:Paper 5 Author(s):Paper 5 Presenter(s):Paper 5 Author(s) email address:Session detailsSession 3Art, Science and Geographical Imaginaries 3: Sites, Spaces, PlacesSession 1 ChairElizabeth Straughan (Aberystwyth University)Session 1 Chair emailErs06@aber.ac.ukPaper 1 Title:‘Experimental Gentleman’: art-science on board ship Paper 1 Abstract:‘A combination of the artist and the man of science is rare’ observed Sir Arthur Shipley in 1913, however, as he continues, maybe not as rare ‘as one is apt to think’. In this paper I will make some preliminary observations on historical art-science collaborations and their place in the production of geographical knowledge and the formation of geographical imaginaries. The empirical focus of this paper is the collaborative practices of selected groupings of ‘experimental gentleman’ brought together onboard ships during the 18th century and the ways in which they negotiated the varied demands of science, art and imperialism in their collaborative practices. Research will proceed through an inter-textual analysis of ships’ logs and journals set alongside the varied visual cultures of exploration (e.g. topographic surveys, navigational charts, incidental field sketches, large oils and detailed botanical and ethnographic drawings). Focusing on this material I will examine the practices, experiences and power-dynamics of these collaborations. In doing so I argue for the place and importance of these collaborations in Enlightenment Geography’s ways of knowing the world and the emergence of modern geography as a discipline. Paper 1 Author(s):Dr Harriet Hawkins, University of Aberystwyth Paper 1 Presenter(s):Dr Harriet Hawkins, University of AberystwythPaper 1 Author(s) email address:Hah7@aber.ac.ukPaper 2 Title:Field Station: a vehicle for experimental art and geographyPaper 2 Abstract:Given the idiosyncrasies of disciplines and the imaginaries of its participants, how can non specialists truly engage with the bodies of knowledge practitioners immerse themselves in? How does a general public engage with specialist knowledge? Why would they? And why would we want them to? Can bringing disciplines together offer novel ways of exploring these questions??Field Station is a project in development which aims to use the spectacle of visual art to explore? the response of audiences to contemporary artworks informed by geographical knowledge, data and ideas. By relocating practice from the studio and gallery to the site of influence within the landscape, art has the capacity to intrigue, captivate, infuriate and inform those who come into contact with it.?Work made by artists in response to specific sites is routinely informed by knowledge relating to its physical appearance, history, social or economic circumstances - in short, the material collected, analysed and disseminated through physical and cultural geography. Field Station will build on the history of geographically related practice in contemporary visual art and seek to situate itself in the discourse of contemporary cultural and critical geographies. The session will examine historical precedents of artists working within the ‘geographic’ domain, from 18th century landscape artists to critically engaged geo-politic practices prevalent today. Using predominantly visual means I will draw out recurring interests and themes within this canon of work and examine recent practice in public engagement across both the visual arts and contemporary geography.Paper 2 Author(s):Sara Bowler (Business Fellow in Visual Arts, University College Falmouth)Paper 2 Presenter(s):Sara Bowler (Business Fellow in Visual Arts, University College Falmouth)Paper 2 Author(s) email address:Sara.Bowler@falmouth.ac.ukPaper 3 Title:The Ice and the Real Estate on the Zuidas in Amsterdam Paper 3 Abstract:?The Zuidas is usually described as corporate and anonymous, a place without Amsterdam roots that could easily be picked up and put down elsewhere in the world. In this paper space is reconfigured in a geographical place. It shows that the way ' globalization' materializes, is closely related to geological actors - wind, rivers, ice and subterranean substances. To be more specific geomorphology enacts the international service businesses. It enacts - so to speak- global material configurations of ideologies (in this case capitalism). The paper shows that ice of the Saalian (roughly 150000 years ago) created a basin that got filled up with sand and clay: great grounds for high peat to settle and pile up. The peat moor influenced a lucrative and moneymaking area in Amsterdam with a great infrastructure. The lack of grip on the soil above the push moraine made poor farmland, but was a great place for an international airport. The international airport together with the great infrastructure formed a great location for international, service businesses. The Zuidas was born. The shape of the Zuidas follows the old east/west orientated lots and drainage ditches of the polder. GIS mapping shows that the most expensive piece of land in the Netherlands, the Zuidas, borders the boulder clay in the soil: the footprint of the glacier. It is the locus of the terminal moraine! The paper shows how the Amsterdam glacier dictates deep in the ground, along with the ever chilly and persistent west wind, it has to be said, the organization at the surface.??Paper 3 Author(s):Irene JanzePaper 3 Presenter(s):Irene JanzePaper 3 Author(s) email address:info@burojanze.nlPaper 4 Title:LostPaper 4 Abstract:In this paper I will outline the 3 Cape Farewell expeditions in 2004/05/06 to the Arctic I’ve participated in. I will explain that as the notion of travel for travel sake has becoming a difficult activity to justify, so I have adopted the endotic mode of exploration, which is an exercise in staying close by, not leaving the familiar and traveling interstitially or limanilly through a world I thought I knew. I will explore how the need to acknowledge being lost is important, as between 95% and 97% of our universe is missing, and with the unpredictability of climate change it seemed necessary to explore being lost, to know the world has become larger than our knowledge of it, and that our maps are unreliable. I will consider how the understanding of the Sublime has been framed by the worldview of the 18th century and as such, I believe, must be open to critical reassessment. Is the sublime the peak it’s long been believed to be? Or is it, along with the beautiful and picturesque, a foothill to a greater range that is yet to be discovered? Is there more to what we think we see? Is it possible to discovered new territories of aesthetics? I will explain how these questions inspired my first expedition to the source of the Dollis Brook. – or to give it it’s full title - the Expedition to the Source of the Dollis Brook in search of the consequences of the ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.Paper 4 Author(s):Nick Edwards (Cape Farewell Artist 2011)Paper 4 Presenter(s):Nick Edwards (Cape Farewell Artist 2011)Paper 4 Author(s) email address:nickedwards61@yahoo.co.ukPaper 5 Title:Discussant: Paper 5 Abstract:Paper 5 Author(s):Paper 5 Presenter(s):Paper 5 Author(s) email address:Session detailsSession 4Art, Science and Geographical Imaginaries 4: Practice and PublicsSession 1 ChairProfessor Sallie Marston Session 1 Chair emailmarston@email.arizona.eduPaper 1 Title:Critical Art and Intervention in the Technologies of the ArcticPaper 1 Abstract:The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) uses media art and the research of artists to investigate the complicated, global, cultural, and ecological interrelations in the Arctic, and to develop concepts for constructing free and open tactical communications systems and a mobile, eco-friendly, media research station, which will support interdisciplinary and intercultural collaborations.The project is a collaboration between an international group of individuals and non-profit organisations, including The Arts Catalyst. It is the brainchild of artists Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman. The API aims to move beyond the dominant visual discourses in the geopolitics of the Arctic thorough a series of interventions in media and communications technologies, in collaboration with the people of Igloolik and other small settlements in Canada's High Arctic. Running over a period of years, the project involves workshops, fieldwork in the Arctic, an international design competition, publications, exhibitions and other public events.This paper will discuss the cultural and political character of technology (cf. Langdon Winner) in the Arctic through the lens of investigations and representations in the work of contemporary artists, explore how artists and nonaligned citizens are intervening in the politics of technology, and consider the significance of these interventions – including the Arctic Perspective Initiative - in relation to ideas of nomadism and autonomy in contemporary culture and the specific milieu of indigenous Arctic people’s lives.Paper 1 Author(s):Nicola Triscott, (Director The Arts Catalyst) Paper 1 Presenter(s):Nicola Triscott, (Director The Arts Catalyst) Paper 1 Author(s) email address:nicola.triscott@Paper 2 Title:1mile? - a case studyPaper 2 Abstract:Artists have frequently used map making as a device to explore and convey ideas about place. Often this work attempts to subvert or reinterpret cartographical hierarchy in order to voice suppressed historical, political and social narratives. In this practice, modern techniques such as bio mapping and GIS seek to extend the perimeters of geographical insight so that the map becomes a framework for investigation where topography is both examined and resisted.1mile? was inspired by an environmental surveying technique which involves counting species within a square metre frame to reveal the ecological diversity of a habitat. Populations of flora and fauna are studied and compared with similar and dissimilar sites, often over time. The technique allows us to explore the rise and decline of keystone species, and the communities of organisms they attract and support, so that the relationships between living organisms can be mapped and better understood.1mile? applies this idea to the ecology of human communities across the world. Using interdisciplinary collaboration, artists and ecologists work with local people to explore the cultural and ecological diversity of their neighbourhoods through artistic engagement. The programme provides insights into the relationships between people, ecology and place and enables vital dialogue and knowledge sharing within and between cultural and geographic communities. A website shares and challenges findings, perceptions, ideas, experiences and creativity to highlight and attempts to understand the relationship between the expression of cultural identity and the environment.Paper 2 Author(s):Yvette Vaughan Jones (Executive DirectorVisiting Arts)Paper 2 Presenter(s):Yvette Vaughan Jones (Executive DirectorVisiting Arts)Paper 2 Author(s) email address:yvjones@.ukPaper 3 Title:Time and Tide Bell Paper 3 Abstract:A presentation of the history and development of the?Time and Tide? Bells. ?A?permanent installation?at? the high tide mark at a number of? diverse sites around the U.K., from urban centres to open stretches of coastline.? Played by the movement of? the waves, the Time and Tide ?Bell (which I ?designed and plays different notes from a single strike) ?creates a? varying, gentle, musical pattern.? As the effect of global warming increases, the periods of bell strikes will? become more? and more frequent, and as the bell becomes submerged in the rising water the pitch will vary. The first bell was installed in July 2009? at Appledore, Devon: the second on Bosta beach Gt. Bernera, Outer Hebrides in June 2010: the third at Trinity Buoy Wharf, London in September 2010. The fourth to be installed in Aberdyfi, Wales, Spring 2011, with Orford Ness and Middlesborough under development.?The?integrity of the Time and Tide Bell project? nationally is in the choice of the sites and how they connect, geographically and ?culturally. The Time and Tide Bell creates, celebrates, and reinforces connections, between different parts of the country, between the land and the sea, between ourselves, our history, and our environment.? Each site brings something particular and unique to the whole group.?This? new bell form was designed in collaboration by Marcus Vergette and Dr Neil Mclachlan.? This form has never existed before and has only been possible as a result of very recent developments in computer modeling. ?This project combines some of the most recent science to remodel an ancient communication device , to engage in ?our ways of knowing and imagining the world.Paper 3 Author(s):Marcus Vergette Bosta, Outer HebridesMarcus Vergette Bosta, Outer HebridesPaper 3 Author(s) email address:marcus@marcusvergette.co.uk,?Paper 4 Title:The Art of Diplomacy: what ecological artists offer environmental politics.Paper 4 Abstract:Ecological art expands the way humans perceive the natural world, providing possibilities, according to the artists, for more diverse interactions between humans and nonhumans and opportunities to develop new awareness about the interdependence of humans and environment.? Characterized by collaborations with scientists, engineers, planners, and community members, the work of these artists aims to remediate and restore degraded places, and often to remedy associated social injustices.? Targeting urban riverfronts as well as secluded island marshes, encompassing entire watersheds and coastlines as well as pocket parks, these artist-initiated environmental efforts offer a new model for ecological restoration.? In this presentation I will share some examples of this practically-oriented art, and suggest that the work of these artists may be understood as what Isabele Stengers has conceived of as “diplomacy.” Negotiating across geographical, institutional, personal, species, and disciplinary contexts and boundaries, ecological artists do not seek to singularly represent the natural world so much as to provide for attachments to the nonhuman that “have the power to make practitioners think, feel and hesitate,”? (Stengers 2010, 15).? It is this power, she suggests, that provokes human thought, and consequently opens up possibilities for new notions of how we might expand our political processes to include the nonhumans with which we share the world.??Paper 4 Author(s):Dr Mrill Ingram (University of Arizona)Paper 4 Presenter(s):Dr Mrill Ingram (University of Arizona)Paper 4 Author(s) email address:mrilli@email.arizona.edu;Paper 5 Title:Discussant:Paper 5 Abstract:Paper 5 Author(s):Paper 5 Presenter(s):Paper 5 Author(s) email address: ................
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