Laboratory for Other Worlds: Scientific Data, Environmental Humanities, and the Public Imagination

CHAT Faculty Fellow Seminar with Patte Loper, Professor of the Practice at the SMFA.

This is a hybrid event. You can join us in-person at the Fung House, 48 Professors Row, Medford OR on Zoom. Register for a Zoom link here.

About the Talk:

We need efficient and aesthetic ways to convey complex ecological knowledges to the public to advocate for conditions that lead to multispecies thriving. Developed as part of a National Science Foundation grant, the goal of this project is to design an exhibition that can raise scientific literacy about Earth and Climate Science faculty Dr. Andrew Kemp’s research on dynamic sea level trends in the last two millennia. To help render the scientific knowledge legible, this work is executed using an intellectual framework provided by the Environmental Humanities, a global academic and political movement that bridges art, anthropology, biology, and philosophy to offer scientific, cultural, and political responses to environmental challenges. Drawing, painting, experimental plant communication devices, and mapping strategies devised equally from field guides of Northeast plants and feminist concepts of the commons are used to focus on a small patch of weeds erupting from, and thriving in, an East Boston parking lot threatened by sea level rise.