Moritz Wettstein, Janet Goldner, Richard Pombo and Ecological Art

I have cast a broad net on this blog and in the Virtual Concerts. Composer Moritz Wettstein was my guest yesterday on the Virtual Concerts. Wettstein, an artist-in-residence at Harvestworks, spoke about the NETPD project he is involved with. I introduced his work by saying I saw this kind of work as an "Aesthetic Math" of creating solutions for international acoustic infacing for ecological monitoring.

Next week, Janet Goldner will speak to how the culture of Mali has affected her sculpture. As with Wettstein, my interest is in how artists and ecologies cross-pollinate eachother and the tracking of that interactive effect.

Last night I made fifty calls, mostly to Missouri and Virginia. I was part of a phone crew for moveon.org of almost 700 000 people who made close to 1 million calls. I participated on an evening when I was exhausted and had other commitments. Today, I am even more exhausted but elated beyond words!

I am thrilled beyond words that Americans have rejected Bush policies, sent anti-wildlife Representative Richard Pombo, Chairman of the powerful House Resources Committee packing and squeezed a door open for us all to once again address global warming, along with so many other issues, more realistically.

At the International Society for Ecological Restoration in Zaragoza, Spain last year, one of the more sobering conversations I had with Europeans, was whether global warming can be addressed without American support. After reflection they said "No". Bush still has veto power but he is significantly weakened at a crucial historical point in addressing this most crucial issue internationally.

On my blog and in my Virtual Concerts, I do my best to make the connection between such horizontal efforts and the larger picture of our art practice. Activism and formalism cross-pollinate. It is one more applied lesson from Allan Kaprow: work horizontally, even in vertical systems.