Staying Focused on Solutions to Global Warming
Since the last Virtual Concert, I have been thinking ahead to moving ahead. The Virtual Concerts will begin next Tues again. This time, rather than series of 16 hour marathons, they will be created in an episodic format, weekly, breaking down the issues the August events tried to swallow whole, python-like, in two long learning curves, a few days apart. Instead they will expand into a year of careful efforts.
The goals of the Virtual Concert short episodes are the same: address global warming by finding ways to interface virtual and physical sites and effect environmental triage without emitting carbon on flights to each site. The four Summer sites, in India, Korea, Italy and Maine seem to boil down to water, soils and species distribution as impacted by global warming. The questions are, how that global warming impact each of those concerns in relation to human life and what we are doing about it. The "Virtual Concerts" will look at those questions thru the lens of Ecological Art.
The first episode, at 10: AM ET will center on Rob Rosenthal's "Porpoise Hunting" tape from indigenous Maine fishermen. Some of the discussion will be around the vast gap between Indigenous food-gathering and global corporate food harvesting.
Whether by design or coincidence lately, many things on the news seem geared to distract us from the impending environmental crisis. 6000 deaths in Iraq in the last couple months is certainly an example of that, so is the response to lower fuel prices. The consumer's response to the latter is: forget about sustainable options.
However, if coastlines continue to subside and weather patterns continue to disrupt agriculture, we are talking of millions of lost lives in the next decades, let alone the impact on a broad range of other species. Projections vary that sea level rise will be between 2 feet and forty feet in coming decades. That will put much urban life underwater and the cities are where the populations are. At the same time, a variety of cumulative effects are reducing the availability of fresh water and food. World resources are not being mobilized to address that.
As I use this format to address the urgency in a systemmatic and unconventional way, I am constantly reminded that I am looking at the forest not each tree. And yet each tree counts. Each part of the puzzle counts. The relationship between the fisheries and picking berries is as important as demographic distributions.
Arguably, my advantage as an artist is to see the overview, outside the box and then continue to take one small, informed & thoughtful step at a time.
The goals of the Virtual Concert short episodes are the same: address global warming by finding ways to interface virtual and physical sites and effect environmental triage without emitting carbon on flights to each site. The four Summer sites, in India, Korea, Italy and Maine seem to boil down to water, soils and species distribution as impacted by global warming. The questions are, how that global warming impact each of those concerns in relation to human life and what we are doing about it. The "Virtual Concerts" will look at those questions thru the lens of Ecological Art.
The first episode, at 10: AM ET will center on Rob Rosenthal's "Porpoise Hunting" tape from indigenous Maine fishermen. Some of the discussion will be around the vast gap between Indigenous food-gathering and global corporate food harvesting.
Whether by design or coincidence lately, many things on the news seem geared to distract us from the impending environmental crisis. 6000 deaths in Iraq in the last couple months is certainly an example of that, so is the response to lower fuel prices. The consumer's response to the latter is: forget about sustainable options.
However, if coastlines continue to subside and weather patterns continue to disrupt agriculture, we are talking of millions of lost lives in the next decades, let alone the impact on a broad range of other species. Projections vary that sea level rise will be between 2 feet and forty feet in coming decades. That will put much urban life underwater and the cities are where the populations are. At the same time, a variety of cumulative effects are reducing the availability of fresh water and food. World resources are not being mobilized to address that.
As I use this format to address the urgency in a systemmatic and unconventional way, I am constantly reminded that I am looking at the forest not each tree. And yet each tree counts. Each part of the puzzle counts. The relationship between the fisheries and picking berries is as important as demographic distributions.
Arguably, my advantage as an artist is to see the overview, outside the box and then continue to take one small, informed & thoughtful step at a time.
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