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 gave five talks about my exhibit up at the ICA in Boston last night–8 minutes five times in a row.  After the blinding headache that ensued no doubt from the effects of my own droning repetition, I started thinking about the most significant part of what I was saying about the project.  Basically the images I was talking about, as you see here, take DEMs from glaciologists studying the dynamic response of the mass balance of glaciers around the world to environmental factors and I render them in a 3D program with temperature, light, cloud, snow covers that are relatively accurate to the sites (the picture you see here is the edge of the Austfonna glacier in the northernmost tip of Norway, an area known to be a common jumping off point for early north pole expeditions).  I then insert these tableaux of vaudevillian performers (here Mike Waters, the project manager for the ICA building construction supervises Naomi Greenfield, a local balloon artist, making an umiak, a common boat form in the arctic, out of pin balloons).

I’ve been shopping. And wrapping. And making gifts too. But more of the shopping and wrapping. I tried to buy local, avoid new wrapping paper, etc., but still it seems like a whole car load of presents for the family and friends. At what cost to our planet is all this consumption. I heard a really good segment on our local public Radio, WGBH (listen to it here):

“Boston College economist and sociologist Juliet Schor. says the Christmas season is an especially bad time of year for the environment: 25 percent of total spending occurs now and household garbage increases by 25 percent.
What kind of ecological footprint are you leaving behind?”

I was talking to my mother about this and she said that it was fine if I wanted to recycled the five garbage bags full of wrapping paper as long as I didn’t bum everyone out by doing it on Christmas morning. I find most people think that Christmas is the time to have a holiday from responsible choices for our environment.
Whats the solution?