Events > US Theatre > Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change
Illuminating the Science: Art and Climate Change
Forest Fire in Poros, Greece, 2007.
Photo by Joshua Wolfe from the book
Climate Change:
Picturing the Science (2009),
a collaboration with climatologist
Gavin Schmidt.
The vision of climate change provided by the arts complements the analytical information given by the science. The landscape of numbers can be populated by dreams in the form of images, dance or music, leading to a more complete understanding of how our planet works. Join The Earth Institute, Columbia University; the Segal Center; and artists, scientists, and communication experts working across multiple disciplines in an inspirational, informative program to explore present and future connections between the arts and climate change science. In honor of Earth Day. Co-curated by Lisa Phillips.
Afternoon session at 3:00 p.m. will feature:
- Gavin Schmidt, climatologist, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
- Stephen Pekar, geologist, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Queens College, City University of New York
- Britta Riley, artist, entrepreneur
- Jeremy Pickard, theatre artist
Moderated by Sabine Marx, Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University.
Evening session at 6:30 p.m. will feature:
- Klaus Lackner, geophysicist, Earth and Environmental Engineering, Columbia University
- Katie Holten, visual artist
- Ajit Subramaniam, biological oceanographer, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
- Cynthia Hopkins, performing artist
- Jon Braman, rapper-songwriter
Moderated by Lisa Phillips, Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, The Earth Institute, Columbia University
Gavin Schmidt is a climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He received a B.A. (Hons) in Mathematics from Oxford University, a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from University College London and was a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research. He was cited by Scientific American as one of the 50 Research Leaders of 2004, and is an advisor to Popular Mechanics. He has worked on education and outreach with the American Museum of Natural History, the College de France, the New York Academy of Sciences and the Daily Show. He is a co-founder and contributing editor to www.RealClimate.org
Stephen Pekar, a geology professor at Queens College, has been investigating pastclimate and oceanographic changes during times (16- 45 million years ago) when CO2 was as high as what is predicted for this century (500-1000 ppm). As CO2 is rising rapidly today, which is predicted to be like putting our climate on a “hot plate”, exploring these times for him is like “Looking Back to Our Future”. Toinvestigate climate change of the past, he looks at sediments, microfossil, and geochemical data obtained from cores obtained from near-shore to deep-sea locations ranging from the tropics to Antarctica. His research has taken him on expeditions around the world, including four to Antarctica, one of which he was project leader. This past January, he was part of a scientific team to recover Antarctic sedimentsdeposited when Antarctica was ice-free as part of the Integrated Drilling Program Expedition 318: Wilkes Land.
http://qcpages.qc.edu/EES/pep/pekar.html; http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/offshore_new_harbor/index.htm
Britta Rileyis an artist and entrepreneur whose work dealswith people, innovation, &the environment. Her design firm consults with museums and environmental organizations to create effective public participation in exhibitions & online.In her participatory art practice, which she calls R&D-I-Y (Research-and-develop-it-yourself), she invites ordinary people to contribute their end-user insights& tocollaborate on solutions to big environmental problems. Participants examine & reconstruct their roles in global systems through fun, personal experiences.In Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee.Drink.Pee, participants chemically transform their pee into fertilizer for use on their houseplants, observing the particularities of their own “waste,” recycling their unmetabolized nutrients locally, & sparing aquatic ecosystems a bit more urine-pollution. Through The Windowfarms Project, hundreds of urbanites around the globe are growing some of their own food in their apartment windows & generating unique innovations that make thisopenly developed hydroponic technology increasingly more viable. Her work has been featured at MoMA, the Whitney, & on NPR. She is a research associate and former artist-in-residence at Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology. www.windowfarms.org
Jeremy Pickard captains Superhero Clubhouse, a theater collective engaged in creating ecologically-inspired plays and events via a green and collaborative process. The first four in his series of Planet Plays (URANUS, a play about waste; NEPTUNE, a play about water; MERCURY, a play about poison; and VENUS, a play about energy) have been produced over the past two years in NYC and beyond. The East Coast premiere of URANUS will be presented outdoors this summer as Solar One's first-ever play. Jeremy spoke on Prelude Festival’s green theater panel in September 2009, and attended the first American Tipping Point conference in Decembe. His work can be read in an upcoming edition of CalArts' Mammut Magazine focusing on the theme of "solastalgia." Jeremy continues to train extensively with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company. www.superheroclubhouse.org
Sabine Marx is the Managing Director at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University. She joined CRED in 2005 after two years of post-doctoral work at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia’s Earth Institute. She received her Ph.D. in medical history from Carnegie Mellon University and holds a Master’s degree in Sociology and Pedagogy, with a minor in Psychology and Art Therapy, from the University of Cologne, Germany. www.cred.columbia.edu
Klaus Lackner is the Ewing Worzel Professor of Geophysics at Columbia University, where he is also the Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, the Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, and a member of the Earth Institute faculty. Lackner’s current research interests include carboncapture and sequestration, air capture, energy systems and scaling properties such as synthetic fuels and windenergy, energy and environmental policy, lifecycle analysis,and zero emission modeling for coal and cement plants.
Lackner’s scientific career started in the phenomenology of weakly interacting particles. He and George Zweig developed the chemistry of atoms with fractional nuclear charge. He participated in matter searches for particles with a non-integer charge in an experiment conducted at Stanford by Martin Perl and his group. After joining Los AlamosNational Laboratory (LANL) in 1983, Lackner became involved in hydrodynamic work and fusion-related research. He was a scientist in the Theoretical Division, but also an active part of the Laboratory’s upper management. He was instrumental in forming the Zero Emission Coal Alliance and was a lead author in the IPCC Report on Carbon Capture and Storage. In 2001, Lackner joined ColumbiaUniversity and, in 2004, became a member of Global Research Technologies, LLC.
Lackner earned his degrees from Heidelberg University, Germany: the Vordiplom, (equivalent to a B.S.) in 1975; the Diplom (or M.S.) in 1976; and his Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics, summa cum laude, in 1978. He was awardedthe Clemm-Haas Prize for his outstanding Ph.D. thesis at Heidelberg University. Lackner held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center before beginning his professional career, and he attended Cold Spring Harbor Summer School for Computational Neuroscience in 1985. Lackner was also awarded the Weapons Recognition of Excellence Award in 1991 and the National Laboratory Consortium Award for Technology in 2001. www.energy.columbia.edu
Katie Holten is an Irish artist living in New York. She represented Ireland at the 2003 Venice Biennale. Her work has been featured in numerous international group exhibitions and she recently had solo museum exhibitions at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (2010); The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2009); Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2008); Villa Merkel, Esslingen (2008); and the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2007). In 2007 she was commissioned by the city of New York to create Tree Museum, a public artwork to celebrate the centennial of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Web sites: www.katieholten.com; www.treemuseum.org
Katie Holten, studio in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, 2010
Photographer: Richard Mosse
Ajit Subramaniam is a biological oceanographer at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. He is interested in understanding what allows specific species of phytoplankton to grow where they do. Phytoplankton are microscopic single-celled plants found in oceanic waters that draw down atmospheric carbon and emit oxygen during photosynthesis and are the base of the marine food chain. He uses ocean color remote sensing–information about the color ofwater measured by satellites in space—to help him study these phytoplankton. Currently he is working on understanding the role of large tropical rivers in introducing nutrients into the ocean that help phytoplankton to grow. He worked for the NOAA Coastal Services Center in Charleston, SC, the University of Maryland in College Park, MD, and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles before moving to Lamont in 2004. He recently completed a two year “rotation” as a Program Director at the U.S. National Science Foundation. He has a bachelor’s degree in Physics from India, a master’s degree in Marine Environmental Sciences specializing in coastal zone management and a Ph.D. in Coastal Oceanography from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~ajit/
Cynthia Hopkins is the recipient of the 2007 Alpert Award in Theater, honoring her work as a writer, composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist, and theater artist. She is the co-founder and artistic director of the ensemble company Accinosco (www.accinosco.com) with whom she has created The Accidental Trilogy: Accidental Nostalgia (2005 Bessie Award for Creation); Must Don't Whip 'Um (2007 Bessie Award for Design); and The Success of Failure (or, The Failure of Success). These works feature the band Gloria Deluxe (www.gloriadeluxe.com), which Ms. Hopkins formed in 1999 and which has since produced seven full-length albums and performed at numerous venues in New York City and elsewhere. Ms. Hopkins is currently at work on a new piece titled The Truth: A Tragedy, commissioned by Les Subsistances in Lyon, France (where it premiered in March 2010) and Soho Rep in NYC (where you can check it out in May 2010).
Cynthia Hopkins. Photo by Paula Court.
Dubbed the “Father of ukulele hip hop” by the Washington City Paper in 2006, rapper-songwriter Jon Braman is part of a growing cadre of young artists mixing hip hop with other distant musical elements. In Jon’s case, the results are surprisingly infectious, as he combines the funky, political rhymes of a conscious MC and acoustic jazz-folk hooks played over a baritone ukulele. True to his roots, he still plays the same ukulele he found in the garbage as a kid. From NYC to Hawaii, Jon has shocked and mesmerized audiences with irresistible melodies and rhymes about growing up, love, injustice, and eco-cataclysm. http://jonbraman.com/music.html
Lisa Phillips is the Assistant Director for the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, where she manages programs and funding initiatives for cutting-edge scientific research in alternative energy. She enjoys bringing together artists and scientists to maximize the impact of, and appreciation for, their work. She comes from the nonprofit performing arts sector, where she held roles as a producer, booking agent, general manager, and consultant. She served as the Director of Booking for MAPP International Productions, representing inter/national contemporary dance, theater, and multi-disciplinary artists. www.energy.columbia.edu
About The Earth Institute, Columbia University:
Earth is at a critical crossroads. While revolutionary advances in science and technology have lifted humanity to new heights of prosperity and longevity in many parts of the world, hundreds of millions of people are vulnerable to the impacts of hazards and natural disasters, extreme poverty, infectious disease and a host of other challenges. At the same time, human activity, especially in the last 100 years, is threatening the health of the environment and potentially posing risks of unprecedented magnitude to our shared future.
The Earth Institute, Columbia University is the world’s leading academic center addressing the challenges of sustainable development. Our mission is to mobilize the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable Earth. The Earth Institute’s overarching goal is to help achieve sustainable development primarily by expanding the world’s understanding of Earth as one integrated system. We work toward this goal through scientific research, education and the practical application of research for solving real-world challenges. With 850 scientists, postdoctoral fellows, staff and students working in and across more than 30 Columbia University research centers, the Earth Institute is helping to advance nine interconnected global issues: climate and society, water, energy, poverty, ecosystems, public health, food and nutrition, hazards and urbanization. With Columbia University as its foundation, the Earth Institute draws upon the scientific rigor, technological innovation and academic leadership for which the University is known.
3 p.m. & 6:30 p.m., Thursday, April 22, 2010
Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!