Climate commons was intended always to be a short term experiment with two primary goals. First to bring together researchers/thinkers/producers from a wide range of fields to contribute information/ideas to a multidisciplinary pool. Henry Jenkin’s writes about this in his blog: “In a networked society, people are increasingly forming Knowledge communities to pool information and work together to solve problems they could not confront individually. We call that collective intelligence.”

The second was to create on the internet in a blog form a space for conversation, questions, and contributions from anyone–a participatory network. As I contemplate what happened in the more than one hundred posts and three hundred comments with the site visited by an average of 3000 people a day, a number of new questions have formed:

what is the nature of participation on the internet?

many people have asked me what art and science have in common? I am more interested in what they don’t have in common I think. Of course there are shared subjects (climate change, the Arctic, glaciers, etc.) and shared investment in a process of inquiry, research, and analysis. But even each of those things can be broken down and found to share only the most gross of efforts. But that seems less useful than contemplating where their differences lie, or more aptly, how they might come together to create a greater whole? I am interested in focusing on the role of research that both artists and scientists share an active engagement with.

I was introduced to William McDonough and his book Cradle to Cradle by Jane while working with her on this project. It is a fantastic book that seems to aim to change the way the reader thinks more than teach a lesson.

I just listened to a talk he gave a few years back on the Social Innovation Conversations podcast that is an excellent introduction to his ideas and way of thinking. It’s definitely worth the hour listen.

That friend is the Arctic, or so it seem to residents of the Arctic. The third point of focus for this project, this forum on the radiating effects of climate change, is the Arctic. The arctic is the very cold canary that tell us what is happening with our climate before we feel it in more temperate zones. The changes, as we have heard here from Larry Merculieff, are more drastic and hit home not just to the large community of people who live above the imaginary line that describes the arctic Circle, but also the the rest of the world’s land and people. Changes include the much reported: spring thaws are earlier. Fall freeze-ups are later. Sea ice is shrinking. Unfamiliar species of plants and animals are appearing. Intense storms are more frequent.