Month: November 2013

I’ve been attending visiting artist lectures in Lawrence Hall for around 4 years now, first as a beginning artist and now as a graduate student. Every lecture that I can remember, there’s been something written on the chalkboard right behind or next to the guest artist.  It’s always something from the prior class that had inhabited the room, generally incomprehensible out of context, and sometimes profane. The entire time I watch the artist and their assisting faculty member struggle with the room’s technology, praying their technology-reliant presentations will appear in full form, I endure a inner crisis whether to stay in my seat or take the initiative to erase the chalkboard. It’s ironic, really, that there’s still chalkboards in LA 177 and 115, rooms which pride themselves on having some of the newest technology AAA has to offer. Mid-class sketches are still important, and maybe I’ve never erased the chalkboards because that gives me some kind of hope.

Andrea Polli was the latest visiting artist to the UO, an Art & Ecology professor from University of New Mexico. I left her lecture, as I told someone in my cohort, in a “cloud of inspiration.” I majored in studio arts as an undergrad, and while I love to create, I love learning about biology and anthropology just as much, if not more. When I would tell anyone this before graduating with my Bachelor’s, I’d get little more than a “hmm, what a strange combo. Good luck with that.” In applying to masters programs, I had started to regularly suppress my desire to study environmental sciences. I convinced myself that I was an artist and a beginning art teacher, and that was that.

Thank you, Andrea Polli, for being the first person to inform me that indeed, the disciplines of art and ecology are not separate but of a greater interweaved thread of understanding of the human experience. To be driven to care about both, I can now profess to the world, is natural. And it feels so good. Polli didn’t stop at combining art and ecology in the questions she’s asked as an artist, but has allowed technology to serve as a tool for sharing information and finding answers.

She began her lecture by sharing this quote with the audience; “There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system” -Mark Neiser.

Then, she asked a question.

“Do media instructors convince students to become consumers of commercial products?” 

She was conflicted by this feeling, and works to understand her role in it all.

One of the driving topics of her work is discovering what social and cultural effects there are when defining the natural environment as “information space.” Need I say I was awed? These feelings I had been trying to reconcile for years were being tied up for me in nice neat bows.

Assorted projects she’s been involved with:

-Weather models describing climate change gathered from Antarctic scientists, sounds and data

-“Cloud car”, modeled from the feeling of breathing in New Delhi. The car breathes. Look it up.

-Experiments with Chuck Varga in making air particles visible (air quality)

-Bioethics of Beer- a pub where you learn about your beer by interacting with strangers for a more participatory, and apparently, sustainable experience

-Victimless leather is not victimless, bio-couture

So where does technology come into all of this? From what I heard, Polli views technology as an aid in participation, allowing people who already care about some of these issues to understand them better through tools that make it them more visible, acessible and interesting.

What a thought– allowing technology to make visible a social issue, when technology itself is usually thought of making social issues invisible… is it not?

I wanted to share this with you all, not just because I know many of you were unable to make it, but because it was a defining, encouraging experience for me. Thank you for your visit to Eugene, Professor Polli! I can’t wait to research more about your work and hear about future endeavors.