ARTISTIC EXPRESSION / ADVOCACY OPTIONS

If you choose this category to investigate, you could explore -- or experience --  how artists, poets, writers, performance artists, or activists have connected with the science topics of Global Change and are expressing the issues involved in meaningful ways.  OR you could collect some global change information and express it yourself!

SOME IDEAS:

1. Visit an "online gallery" that addresses environemntal / climate change themes  and describe what you learned and how it links to our class.    Note that to "do" artistic expression of science well, one needs to know the underlying science!   Consider the Chris Jordan video and all the research he had to do to figure out the "sheer numbers" of things he depicts in his images, e.g. this one:

This image depicts eight million toothpicks. According to Seattle artist Chris Jordan,
that's how many trees are harvested in the U.S. each month to make paper for mail-order catalogs.

As Jordan describes on his website:  www.chrisjordan.com

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

 2.  Visit the UA Insttute of the Environment's Environmental Portal and click on the theme of Culture & Creative Arts:
                                     http://portal.environment.arizona.edu/research/expertise/culture-and-arts

BONUS POINT OPPORTUNITY:

Create your own artistic piece or performance;  write a poem or essay about the cover of our textbook . . . or design your own cover!   Document and explain what you did in a report, slide or video

THE TEXTBOOK COVER

 The artwork selected for the cover of your Introduction to Global Change textbook is a painting of a lone tree on a small hill, encircled by a fence, under a glowing orange sky or sun.  It’s  a  piece by artist Gregory Kitterle titled “Eden.”  Reflecting on this painting, its title, and the topics we’ve discussed this semester could inspire a student in one of the Arts majors, or Creative Writing or even Religious Studies to think about the course and its content from a new, creative, and  unique perspective. 

Along these lines, your personal project report on the TEXTBOOK COVER might consist of one of the following:

  • design your own graphic for the cover of the text and explain how it relates to the course content
     

  • write a short essay about the appropriateness or meaning of the Kitterle painting as an illustration for the course content
     

  • write a poem about the painting and what it evokes in you on the subject of global change.
     

  • reflect on the Genesis scriptures about Eden, do some research on how they have influenced the environmental perspective of different religions, and write a short report and personal statement about how this relates to your own thinking and beliefs

Eden by Gregory Kitterle

ANOTHER BONUS POINT OPPORTUNITY:   Create a short video that conveys global change information in a creative and informative way.    

 

Here's one that was produced by a group of students last year on waste & landfills -- a bit rough around the edges but fun and informative !

 

5.  Spend some time exploring  one or more ADVOCACY websites -- critique the site (positives and/or negatives) or look at several sites and collect info on what themes (related to our NATS class) keep popping up again and again; speculate on why!  Here are a few to get you started . . .

  • Green America:  http://www.greenamerica.org/ . It contains lots of info about making wise and environmentally friendly consumer choices and suggests ways to get ACTIVE about some of the today's most pressing issues.

  • Union of Concerned Scientists:  http://www.ucsusa.org/  Not just for scientists!  A lot of user-friendly, science-based info on critial issues today.

  • Arizona League of Conservation Voters:   http://www.azlcv.org/   Issues close to home!

  • Sustainable Tucson:  http://www.sustainabletucson.org/  Even closer to home!

  • The Better World Shopper:  http://www.betterworldshopper.com/  "dedicated to providing people with a comprehensive, up-to-date, reliable account of the social and environmental responsibility of every company on the planet  . . ."