NEWS
Media, art and climate change debates collide
A new book by four RMIT academics looks at how artists can provide alternative ways for thinking through the relationship between media and climate change debates in the Asia-Pacific region.
Screen Ecologies: Art, Media and the Environment in the Asia-Pacific Region is published by MIT Press.
It is the outcome of an Australian Research Council linkage with Fairfax publishers and the construction firm Grollo.
Its authors are Professor Larissa Hjorth and Professor Sarah Pink from the School of Media and Communication, and Dr Kristen Sharp and Associate Professor Linda Williams from the School of Art.
They grapple with the contradiction between the way in which people use digital and visual media to show the growing toll on the planet, and the damage to the environment caused by the production of technology like mobile phones.
Hjorth said: “Images of environmental disaster and degradation have become part of our everyday media diet.
“This visual culture focusing on environmental deterioration represents a wider recognition of the political, economic and cultural forces that are responsible for our ongoing environmental crisis.
“And yet efforts to raise awareness about environmental issues through digital and visual media are riddled with irony, because the resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation and waste associated with digital devices contribute to environmental damage and climate change.
“Screen Ecologies examines the relationship of media, art, and climate change in the Asia-Pacific region – a key site of both environmental degradation and the production and consumption of climate-aware screen art and media.”
Screen Ecologies shows how new media and visual artists provide alternative ways for understanding the entanglements of media and the environment in the Asia-Pacific.
Chapters cover topics including artists’ exploration of alternative ways to represent the environment; regional stories of media innovation and climate change; the tensions between amateur and professional art; the emergence of biennials, triennials, and new arts organisations; the theme of water in regional art; new models for networked collaboration; and social media’s move from private to public realms.
Story: David Glanz