Dan Ladd has been grafting living trees into architectural and geometric
forms for 30 years. When he was young he was always intrigued with strange
tree self-grafting he would find in woods and orchards.
Art that inspires science: how a modern sculpture inspired a major
breakthrough in biology
Photo: Kimberly Faye
Don Ingber is a cell biologist from Harvard Medical School, Children's
Hospital. One day he saw a piece of modern sculpture and -- Eureka! -- he
was inspired to make a major breakthrough in biology.
The first time Don Ingber saw Needle Tower, the monumental sculpture by
Keneth Snelson, it was almost 30 years ago: "It's like kind of an old
friend."
A collaboration of artist Terike
Haapoja and software developer Simosol, titled Tree's Day. The work
creates a carbon flow animation of a Scots pine tree in real time from a
field station in Finland.
Strandbeest
Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who builds walking kinetic sculptures that he
calls a new form of life. His "Strandbeests" walk the coastline of Holland,
feeding on wind and fleeing from water.
Snow
Video installation made by Pat van Boeckel (Netherlands) for I-Park Environmental Art
Biennale, September 2009, Connecticut, USA.
As it is in Heaven Art work by Karin van der Molen (Netherlands) for I-Park Environmental Art Biennale,
September 2009, Connecticut, USA.
Objects in the mirror
Video installation made by Pat van Boeckel for I-Park Environmental Art
Biennale, September 2009, Connecticut, USA.
Netherlands
How Art
Catches a Rabbit
50 minute (English subtitles) documentary on the Kunstbroedplaats ("Art
breeding place") project in the Dutch wetlands of the Weerribben, 2005
By ReRun Producties
The Rain Choir - Sound
of Rain
Ethiopia
The Painted People. The Surma and Mursi peoples
use their bodies as canvases, working with whatever materials they find in
nature
For six
years, photographer Hans Silvester travelled to the remote Omo Valley in
Ethiopia to capture the striking body art of the local Surma and Mursi
peoples. Traditionally nomadic, these indigenous people decorate the
territory of their naked bodies with whatever nature offers, such as
leaves, flowers, grasses, butterfly wings and snail shells. Their bodies are their canvases.
Straddling Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya, the Great Rift Valley slowly tears
open the planet, exposing a vast array of pigments.
The earth offers red ochre, white kaolin, green copper, yellow sulphur and
gray ash.
In minutes, with their fingers, a crushed reed, the tips of their nails,
they transform themselves into works of great beauty.
Picasso once said: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain
an artist once we grow up."
Picasso also said it takes a long time to become young. The people of the Omo
never forgot what every child once knew.
A new media artist has worked with LTER scientists in the UK to create a unique
web-based art work exploring climate-driven environmental change.
The UK's LTER network, the Environmental Change Network was a founding member of
a project called Climate Change Explorer, which aimed to combine the arts and
science to raise awareness of climate change. As part of the project, ECN
commissioned a new media artist - Lorraine Berry - to produce a web-based
creative work which drew upon ECN data and knowledge concerning climate change.
Lorraine's
work - launched earlier this year - and entitled 'As Seasons Change', takes
the form of an interactive 'book'. 'As Seasons Change' combines fractal
images and 'sonifications' of real datasets to explore the impact of climate
change on the natural world.
An image from 'As Seasons Change' by
Lorraine Berry
For example, the piece contains long-term
global temperature data from the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, converted to
sound, creating an emotional 'sound of climate change'. There are similar
sonifications of data from the ECN network. The piece was launched last year,
and has been visited by people around the world.
Reverse Graffiti Project
One person's dirty wall is another's canvas. Paul "Moose" Curtis uses the
dirt of the urban landscape as a backdrop for creating art. In a downtown
San Francisco tunnel, for instance, the accumulated soot on the walls is a
perfect backdrop for him to selectively spray away the black using wooden
stencils. The result is the appearance of large botanical murals. He calls
his process "reverse graffiti."
Germany
Integral Ecoawareness Training and
Practice Integral Ecoawareness Training and Practice is a holistic,
bodymind-based method to enhance awareness of self and our
interconnectedness with nature. Weaving together exploratory research in
dance, somatics and deep ecological thinking.
Developed by three international art and sustainability educators, IEA
includes Laban/Bartenieff, contact-improvisation, somatics/bodywork,
acting, permaculture and nature awareness methodologies.
The
Mollestad Oak in southern Norway is at least a thousand years old. It is
to be found near Grimstad. The winter sun causes its bark to release a
mist. "Being alive, this oak, the elder of elders, vibrating energy!"
Camera: Jan van Boeckel.
Sweden
Sunrise concert at lake Grängen by
visualsoundartist Martien Groeneveld
On his giant xylophone, Dutch
visualsoundartist Martien Groeneveld
welcomes the sun and the echoes at lake Grängen in Hjulsjö, Sweden.
With his crystal glasses and violin string he produces sounds
for the forest creatures. Camera: Jan van Boeckel.
