AUCKLAND ECOLOGIES is a new research initiative launched by the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business, Unitec Institute of Technology. Finding connections between different disciplines; the visual arts, business, computing, landscape architecture, and architecture, Auckland Ecologies uses Auckland as a site in which to investigate both historical and contemporary urban issues.
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Art and Ecology
Report on findings about the University of New Mexico
(UNM) ‘Art and Ecology’ programme.
Janine Randerson
9th October 2012
While exhibiting and presenting on
my work ‘Neighbourhood Air’ at ISEA:
Machine Wilderness (19-27 September) I also gathered information on the
'Art and Ecology' programme at the UNM. Many of the international artists in ISEA: Machine Wilderness were concerned
with ecopolitical issues and sustainable technologies, future mobilities, or
border politics where art meets product design, architecture and technologies
of communication such as mobile media. The event was hosted by the UNM in
Albuquerque.
The UNM is a world leader in
sustainable technologies and the ‘Art and Ecology’ programme partners with
‘environmental communications’, landscape architecture and sustainability
studies. I suggest that this programme has particular relevance to the
interdisciplinary nature of the ‘Auckland Ecologies’ research cluster at Unitec
within the FCIB. The following notes are based on conversations with ISEA festival director and UNM lecturer
Andrea Polli, and also several undergraduate and Masters students in the
programme.
The UNM ‘Art and Ecology’ programme
has been running for 11 years and has quickly gained an international reputation
for its wide-ranging and imaginative scope. The University is set in the desert
environment of New Mexico, a place of artistic pilgrimage through the twentieth
century and also a site of ecological crisis. Courses are UNM are often
‘team-taught’ and bring in expertise from the sciences and industry and where
relevant.
One of the established courses in
the UNM ‘Art and Ecology’ programme enables students to travel on a semester
long field trip around sites of ‘Land Art’ from the 1960s until today. These
included such places as Walter de Maria’s The
Lightning Field (1967) in Western New Mexico and James Turrell’s Roden Crater (ongoing) in Arizona. The
students are equipped with camping gear. As well as observing these sites the students create their
own environmentally responsive installations. The ‘communion with nature’
approach and the grand gestures of the early ‘Land Art’ movements is now
augmented by a focus in the UNM ‘Art and Ecology’ programme on how social
groups, including indigenous groups can be engaged in public projects.
The ‘live’ educational aspect of
social projects or community interventions is also an emergent focus of the
well-known Glasgow School of Art ‘Environmental Art and Sculpture’ programme. I
also met with one of the lecturers on the Glasgow course, who described how
‘environmental art’ extends to social projects in the urban environment, rather
than desert extremes.[1] There are
student exchange programmes between the Glasgow School of Art and the UNM ‘Art
and Ecology’ programme. I believe that if Unitec could offer an
interdisciplinary ecological programme that we could also set up similar
international exchanges, particularly with the added value of the RiR
residence.
The ISEA conference progressed to Santa Fe where conference activities
were situated at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA): College of Contemporary
Arts. At this site I participated
in an intriguing sound walk through the landscape by Terri Rueb called ‘No Places
with Names: A Critical Acoustic Archaeology”. This project involved indigenous
community participants, anthropologists and sound artists. The IAIA venue also
hosted ‘Kai Hau Kai’ an installation about the sharing of cultural food
practices and communication using online social media by Ngai Tahu artists
Simon Kaan and Ron Bull in collaboration with local indigenous Indian students.
The conference then moved on to the UNM
Department of Architecture for a session in Taos on the Portable/Affordable Building, a mini-symposium and design
competition presented in conjunction with the UNM-Taos Green Technology
programme. Taos is home to the ‘Earth
ships’ and other solar and bio-architecture designs. ISEA artists-in-residence who had been collaborating with
scientists at Los Alamos (such as projects for algae based bio-fuels) and other
technologists also gave seminars at Taos.
To visit the millennium old
World Heritage site of Taos Pueblo was a significant experience for me. This is
the only site of World Heritage that is still occupied and has been occupied
continuously. Taos Pueblo highlights that indigenous cosmologies need to be
central to an ecological approach to the creative industries. When I think
about what kind of field course might take place in or around Auckland or
greater New Zealand I think of historical and contemporary pa sites, as well as
whare whakairo. Visits to artist or designer’s workshops with an emphasis on
sustainable design/art could be another focus of an extended, multi-site field
trip with an interdisciplinary student cohort.
Finally, another appealing feature
of the UNM programme is it’s flexibility and responsiveness to particular
events. For example, in 2012 students worked with Andrea Polli on the ISEA: Machine Wilderness event as an
elective course. New courses each
spring also bring in visiting national or international researchers and artists
who contribute their expertise in addition to a team of teachers. For example a
new UNM course this year is ‘CO-EVOLUTION: Art + Biology in the Museum’,
another is ‘Creating Change’. I think that the ‘Auckland Ecologies’ research
cluster could offer some kind of international symposium and then a permanent research
hub that might offer flexible, team-taught courses as speculation for the
future.
[1] One ‘Art and
Ecology’ student I spoke to at Masters level noted the sometimes ‘forced’
nature of the current trend towards social projects. This highlights the need
for sensitivity and ethical consideration in this approach.
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Future Proof
Professor Hugh Bird,
UoA, recently invited AP Dushko Bogunovich and Senior Lecturer Matthew Bradbury
to give a lecture at the University of Auckland School of Architecture and
Planning, Future Proof 2012 seminar series. Dushko and Matthew outlined their
proposition for the future growth of Auckland, an alternative to the compact city model. They presented two recent research design projects, in East Auckland and PR China, that helped to illustrate the implications of their thinking.
http://www.creative.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/future-proof
Sunday, 2 September 2012
Auckland Ecologies Symposuim
A half-day
seminar at Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae, Unitec from 1.00 – 5.00pm with
refreshments until 7.00pm Friday September 7th, convened by Marcus Williams and
Matthew Bradbury.
The focus
will be on current and potential research around the themes underpinning the
Auckland Ecologies Research Focus established by the FRSC in 2011.
After the
whakatau there will be six micro presentations by CIB staff currently engaged
in cross-departmental FRSC funded research projects.
Micro
Presentations
Paul
Woodruffe (DVA) (research partners Ken Simpson, Ilse Marie Erl, Sara Donoghey,
and Faye Norman) - The Everyday Collective; Rosebank Rd (articulating
local community groups with council and business)
Kristina
Kaza (Arch) (research partners Allan McDonald, Jeannette Budget and Graeme
McConchie) – Prone (Auckland’s earthquake prone heritage buildings)
Dushko
Bogunovich (Arch) – (research partners John Boon, Matthew Bradbury, Nikolay
Popov, Leslie Haines, David Turner, Peter McPherson) - Auckland 2020/30/40/50 (Alternative
Growth Scenarios for the Supercity. Stage 1 - Case Study: Eco-town (east
Auckland))
Janine
Randerson (DVA) (research partner Chris Manford) - Neighbourhood Air (creative
media as a tool for increasing awareness and agency for environmental air
quality in Auckland)
Ngaire
Molyneax (DoMM) (research partners Dina Sharma, Ken Simpson and Victor Grbic) –
Organisational capability enhancement in urban Maori (understanding Maori
business in Auckland)
Leslie
Haines (L/Arch) (research partner Nikolay Popov) - Auckland’s Urban Forest (mapping
distribution and intensity of Auckland trees)
Guests
Neil
Donnelly, Manager Strategic Planning of Todd Property Group
"My
acid test for success is to know that when I drive past our developments in 15
- 20 years I will still feel as proud of them as I do today. Longevity is a key
element of Todd Property Group's success." Evan Davies, Managing Director
Our vision
for Todd Property Group is to be the leader in developing properties that
contribute sustainable and lasting value to communities. Todd Property
website
Stephen
Cavanagh – Manager Sectors - ATEED
Auckland
Tourism Events & Economic Development (a council-controlled
organisation)
Auckland is
often quoted as the economic powerhouse of New Zealand, due to its size,
influence and business performance. However, it remains a region of untapped
potential, where significant opportunities exist to leverage its unique
business, tourism, and events landscape to further increase economic growth for
the betterment of Auckland and New Zealand. ATEED website
Structure
Marcus
Williams will outline the CIB Research funding structure for 2013
Ken
Simpson will talk about the Rosebank Rd/Unitec relationship platform TEPU
Matthew
Bradbury will talk ‘blue skies’ about the Auckland Ecologies focus.
Social
Attendees
are invited for a light meal and refreshments at the Wairaka room at
Carringtons after the seminar.
Monday, 11 June 2012
Wednesday, 30 May 2012
First out of the blocks
Allan McDonald, team leader, Krystina Kaza
and Jeanette Budgett are the first Ak Ecologies project to publish their initial
research. Join us on Tuesday 5th of June at Sno White to see the work
and read Jeanette’s essay .
Rosebank Road Project progress 29/5/12
Paul Woodruffe and
Faye Norman have photographically documented 3 important sites on the
peninsular; the old Connell brothers land, Vince Middledorp’s land with
racehorse stables and the last 2 acres of Haywood Wright’s property complete
with his original buildings and heritage garden. We are currently filming these
places and interviewing the owner/residents of these sites and will be editing
this work into a 1993 28 minute amateur film of the Connell brothers gifted to
us by a council employee to complete a documentary of these places of special
character. The community mapping project is slowly taking shape with the
support of the Avondale Community Garders and the Avondale Historic society,
the first being an art-map of the route Vince walks his race horses, the second
will be of the industrial section of Rosebank Road. We are also currently
working with the ACG on a design and project management proposal to plant fruit
trees on 5 childrens playground areas in Rosebank Road, we are looking for BLA
students and staff to work on this with.
Five 3rd
year DVA students working with the collective have just completed the branding
identity for the Unitec/Rosebank Road Business Association joint venture, our
first contact with the businesses in the area. The collective have become
members of the Avondale Community Gardeners.
Sunday, 27 May 2012
sustaincity around the world
AP Bogunovitch
has just given three papers at international conferences including a key note
address "Cities and Academia in the Era of Climate Change" at the 12th
International Educating Cities conference at Changwon http://www.iaec2012.go.kr/eng/sub/02_01_02.jsp
and: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p2sN3jpqnM
"The City
and the Crunch: Contours of A Pending Disaster ‘, at the "Contours of The City" Conference in Bologna
and Urban
Sustainability: Resilient Regions, Sustainable Sprawl and Green
Infrastructure" at the "Sustainable City 2012 - 7th International
Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability" conference at Ancona
Sunday, 6 May 2012
The Unitec Arboretum project is progressing well with documentation of campus trees 2/3 complete, labels for 100 trees prepared for installation on World Environment Day June 5, and the interactive campus tree website in development, as shown in the screen shot. Penny Cliffin participated in the Wairaka Stream information session on campus last week with other Unitec sustainability fund researchers, and is giving a refereed conference paper about the Arboretum in Copenhagen next month.
Monday, 19 March 2012
New Direction for Christchurch
Dushko and Matthew write in the Herald about the opportunity the tragic consequence of the Christchurch Earthquake can providing for the development of a new kind of urbanism.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10793129
The everyday collective laboratory
Philosophical position.
To
govern a society shared by people of emotion, people of reason, and everybody
in between — as well as people who think their actions are shaped by logic but
in fact are shaped by feelings and non-empirical philosophies — you need
politics. At its best, politics navigates all the minds-states for the sake of
the greater good, alert to the rocky shoals of community, identity, and the
economy. At its worst, politics thrives on the incomplete disclosure or
misrepresentation of data required by an electorate to make informed decisions,
whether arrived at logically or emotionally.”
Neil de Grasse Tyson.
The everyday collective laboratory is a methodology of
intuition and artistic enquiry that addresses these concerns as they relate to
place, belonging and landscape. It does so by assisting aspects of society to
communicate through map making, and the capturing and dissemination of subtle
data from a diversity of mind states.
Paul Woodruffe
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Auckland Edges
Watch a panel of the great and good, David Clelland, Manager Spatial and Infrastructure Strategy, Auckland Council, Rachel de Lambert, Design Director Boffa Miskell, Connal Townsend Chief Executive Property Council, Bob Dey Property Guru, Dr Dushko Bogunovitch Assoc Professor Urban Design UIT , and Brady Nixon, Property Manager Countdown, discuss the future shape of Auckland
Saturday, 10 March 2012
'Neighbourhood Air'
http://www.neighbourhoodair.co.nz/
Neighbourhood Air (2012) is an interactive, online artwork that gathers live pollutant levels from Auckland city air. The collaborative project includes urban meteorologists, programmers, media artists, breathers of city air and weather as a continuous feedback mechanism. Sensor instruments in New Zealand provide a community platform for continuously accessible,real-time information. This new work was shown at Screen Space in February/March 2012 (Melbourne) before it travels to New Mexico as part of 'Machine Wilderness' ISEA Electronic Arts Symposium in September 2012.
collaborators:
Janine Randerson (media artist and lead investigator)
Jason Johnston (audio composition)
Jeff Nusz (interface programming)
Chris Manford (Computer Science, Unitec: sensor data programming)
Greer Laing , Geoff Henshaw and John Wagner (instrument scientists from Aeroqual, NZ)
Dr Jennifer Salmond (Urban Meteorologist, University of Auckland)
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