Art, Science and the Environment Resource List

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This is an evolving list of artists, scientists, art/science collaborations, projects and organizations who are working on issues related to the intersection of art, science and the environment. If you have suggestions to add to the list, please send them to isast@leonardo.info.

Artists, Scientists & Art/Science Collaborations

Amy Balkin's work focuses on how humans create, interact with, and impact the social and material landscapes they inhabit.

Brandon Ballengée bridges the gap between research biology and art by combining a fascination with fish and amphibians with the techniques of commercial art photography.

Freya Bardell is an ecological designer and artist whose work in sustainable design seeks to integrate new technologies and ecological systems to design, architecture and landscaping environments.

Lisa K. Blatt is a photographer and video artist whose work addresses the natural environment.

Brent Bucknum is an Ecological Designer who founded the Hyphae Design Laboratory in February 2008, a consulting and design firm dedicated to bridging the gap between innovative architecture and hard biological sciences.

China Blue is interested in data and how it shapes our lives. Her more recent biomimetic work continues to embrace data sonification while highlighting the issues of global warming and its impact on our fragile ecosystem.

Janet Saad Cook uses contemporary science and technology in combination with the ageless cycle of the sun to create her art.

Tim Collins and Reiko Goto are artist/researchers with over twenty years experience of working across art and science to enable creative discourse about ideas, that shape perception and experience of our changing environment. The work focused upon forests, rivers and cities.

Robert Davis is a systems developer in the Psychology Department of Goldsmiths College, University of London, who is particularly interested in systems that are contingent upon the environment and the entities that inhabit it, as well as the adaption within such systems.

Agnes Denes is a pioneer of both the environmental art movement and Conceptual art.

Mark Dion is a fine artist best known for his use of scientific presentations in his installations.

Sam Easterson's work uses video to increase the public's awareness of animals and plants in their native habitats as well as glean a new perspective on these creature's daily lives

ecoarttech is a collaboration led by Cary Peppermint and Leila Christine Nadir that explores environmental issues and convergent media and technologies from an interdisciplinary perspective, including art, digital studies, philosophy, literature, and eco-criticism.

Futurefarmers is a group of artists and designers working together since 1995 creating work that challenges current social, political and economic systems

Andy Goldsworthy is a sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings.

Usman Haque is an architect who has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and mass-participation performances.

Dan Harvey and Heather Ackroyd juxtapose nature and structure, control and randomness to reveal a time-based practice with intrinsic bias towards process and event.

Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement, have worked for almost forty years with biologists, ecologists, architects, urban planners and other artists to initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support biodiversity and community development.

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger is a scientific illustrator and science artist who, since 1986 has collected, studied and painted morphologically disturbed insects, which she finds in the fallout areas of Chernobyl as well as near nuclear installations.

Karen Holl's research focuses on understanding how local and landscape scale processes affect ecosystem recovery from human disturbance and using this information to restore damaged ecosystems.

Tiffany Holmes is a new media artist who explores the potential of art and technology to promote environmental stewardship.

Geo Homsy is a computer and software architect with a deep understanding of physics, biology, and robotics.

Suzanne Husky examines intimate relations with plants, animals, the earth, and how we interact together in poetic and political ways through sculpture, installation, drawing, documentary photography, and film.

Joseph Ingoldsby creates computer generated, site specific installations to educate and engage the public about threatened landscapes and endangered species using art and technology to explain the science.

Marisa Jahn is an artist/writer/curator/activist who co-founded REV-, a non-profit organization that fosters socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy.

Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist and engineer whose work primarily explores the interface between society, the environment and technology.

Andrea Juan is an artist working on site-specific-projects, developing installations and performances related to environmental issues.

Ned Kahn is an artist whose work replicates the forms and forces of nature by visually, tactilely and acoustically manifesting the Earth's complex, random and aleatory perturbations.

Christian Kerrigan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the relationship between nature and technology.

Gerard Kuperus is Assistant Professor in Philosophy as well as Environmental Studies at the University of San Francisco. In his research he is interested in the way in which we understand ourselves in relationship to nature and how such an understanding can possibly form a foundation for ethics.

Carol LaFayette explores the way technology mediates ideas about nature and the environment.

Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang are a collaborative team whose love of nature is combined with an interest in science to produce an on-going series of art works about the oceans and the environment.

Eve Andrée Laramée speculates on how human beings contemplate and consider nature through both art and science in a way that embraces poetry, absurdity, contradiction and metaphor.

Robin Lasser produces photographs, video, site-specific installations and public art dealing with socially and culturally significant imagery and themes, often concerning human's relationship to the natural environment.

Cheryl E. Leonard is an artist and experimental musician who creates site-specific compositions and instruments using primarily found natural materials, guerrilla performances, and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

London Fieldworks is a collaborative art partnership formed by artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson in 2000 for creative research at the art, science and technology intersection. Their projects engage with the notion of ecology as a complex inter-working of social, natural, and technological worlds.

Chico MacMurtrie works using sculpture to animate space and stimulate public dialogue.

Daniel Miller is a new media artist who integrates robotics, ecology and various electronic media into his artwork.

Andrea Polli is a digital media artist whose work addresses issues related to science and technology in contemporary society. She is interested in global systems, the real time interconnectivity of these systems, and the effect of these systems on individuals.

Janine Randerson is a multi-media artist with an interest in the effects of technologies of observation on aural and visual perception is a recurrent theme in her work: from remote satellite imaging to the sonification of micro-meteorological data.

John Roloff is a visual artist whose work is an examination of psychological and conceptual relationships between humanity and nature, materiality and process, often evoking a poetic interplay between primal and scientific conditions.

Peter Roopnarine is a curator at the California Academy of Sciences and professor at San Francisco State University whose research interests include molluscan systematics and evolutionary paleoecology, the quantification of patterns and rates of evolution in the fossil record, life in extreme environments, and the dynamics of extinction in paleo-food webs.

Gideon Shapiro: Interested in the role of public art and architecture in shaping or reflecting society, Gideon Shapiro has collaborated with Amorphic Robot Works since 2005.

Buster Simpson is a Seattle-based artist who has been developing environmental artwork for over 40 years. Exploring complex issues with humor, poetry and metaphor he has worked primarily in the public realm.

Kim Stringfellow is an artist/educator whose work and research interests address ecological, historical, and activist issues related to land use and the built environment through hybrid documentary forms incorporating writing, digital media, photography, audio, video, installation, and locative media.

supercollider is a not-for-profit group promoting science through the creative industries.

Mark Brest van Kempen's public art projects, exhibitions and performances recreate and reveal our complex relationship with the landscape.

Bill Washabaugh: Trained as an aerospace engineer and mechanic, Bill Washabaugh has applied his technical expertise and creative vision to numerous fields of design.

Ruth Wallen is a multi-media artist whose work is dedicated to encouraging dialogue around ecological and social issues.

Chris Watson is one of the world's leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena.

Chris Welsby is a new media artist who explores the landscape using single channel films and videos and installations.

Gail Wight investigates issues of biology and the history of science and technology. Her work engages the cultural impact of scientific practice, and plays with our constant redefinition of self through our epistemologies.

Collaborative Projects, Organizations, Programs & Residencies

The Acoustic Ecology Institute provides access to news, academic research, public policy advocates, and articles and essays about sound and listening.

The Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) is a non-profit, international group of individuals and organizations that uses media art and the research of artists to investigate the complicated, global, cultural, and ecological interrelations in the Arctic, and to develop concepts for constructing tactical communications systems and a mobile, eco-friendly research station, which will support interdisciplinary and intercultural collaborations.

Ars Bioarctica is a long term art and science initiative administered by the Finnish Bioart Society with a focus on the Arctic environment.

Cape Farewell is a UK-based organization that pioneers the cultural response to climate change. Working internationally, the project brings artists, scientists and communicators together to stimulate the production of art founded in scientific research.

The Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art is an internationally recognized research center that supports the practice, study and awareness of creative interactions between people and their natural, built, and virtual environments.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface, and in finding new meanings in the intentional and incidental forms that we individually and collectively create.

The Climate Clock Initiative is a public artwork in downtown San Jose, CA using information and measurement technologies to gather and display climate change data.

Ear to the Earth is is a worldwide network sponsored by The Electronic Music Foundation (EMF) based on the idea that environmental sound can connect us to the environment with a special vibrancy and emotional depth. Their goal is to heighten environmental awareness through sound, inspire engagement in environmental issues, and sustain engagement through ongoing activities.

Ecoviz is a blog published by Tiffany Holmes that documents and archives experiments in environmental data mapping and information visualization.

The Environmental Health Clinic and Lab approaches health from an understanding of its dependence on external local environments rather than on the internal biology and genetic predispositions of an individual.

The Global Garden is a collaborative initiative to creatively contribute to positive environmental action in regards to climate change.

The Green Museum is an on-line museum highlighting the work of environmental artists.

HeHe is a collaborative art group formed by Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen. Through poetic interventions about the limits and meaning of our technologically conditioned world, their practice explores the relationship between the individual and their environment, both natural and man-made.

i-weather.org is an international consortium created in 2001 that has set itself the goal of creating the world's first artificial climate to satisfy the metabolic and physiological requirements of a human being in an environment partially or completely removed from earthly influences: mediated reality, networks and netlag, the disruption of the body clock that comes with air travel, as well as with extra-terrestrial trips and holidays.

Living Climate Change is a virtual space, hosted by IDEO, that addresses the global issue of climate change by challenging artists and designers to think and share provocative ideas about the future.

National Academies Keck Futures Initiative is a program of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine with support from the W.M. Keck Foundation. Objectives include enhancing the climate for conducting interdisciplinary research, and breaking down related institutional and systemic barriers.

The National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists & Writers Program provides opportunities for scholars in the humanities (painting, photography, writing, history, and other liberal arts) to work in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The program seeks to increase public understanding of the Antarctic region, including the continent and the surrounding oceans, as well as the associated research and education endeavors.

PLAND (Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation) is an off-the-grid residency program in New Mexico that supports the development of experimental and research-based projects in the context of the Taos mesa.

Recology San Francisco: a one-of-a-kind initiative that enables artists to work with materials taken directly from the city of San Francisco’s waste stream, while teaching the public about recycling and resource conservation.

Resonating Bodies is a series of mixed media installations and community outreach projects which focuses on biodiversity of pollinators indigenous to the natural and urban ecosystems of the Greater Toronto Area.

Stress Free is an innovative artistic proposition that combines new media technologies with theatre and video art to foster the rise of a new urban ecology.

The Studio for Urban Projects: Engaging the broad themes of ecology and urbanism, the projects of the Studio for Urban Projects, based in San Francisco, have taken the form of audio tours, interactive websites, exhibitions, and architectural environments. These projects allow participants to reflect upon the cultural dynamics that shape our urban landscapes.

WEAD-- Women Environmental Artist Directory furthers the fields of, and the understanding of environmental and social justice art.

The WIRED Lab is an Artist Run Initiative based in rural South West NSW. It was established in 2007 to ensure the legacy of The Wires, a unique and distinctly Australian invention that primarily exists in rural landscapes. The Wires are inherently interdisciplinary with foundations in sculpture, environmental/land art, sound composition, interactivity, behavioural constructs of old/new media, physics and complex systems sciences.


Bibliography: Art, Science and the Environment

Art, Science and the Environment Bibliography: a list of articles published in Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal on art, science and the environment


Call for Papers: Environment 2.0

Call for papers: Environment 2.0 Leonardo calls for papers documenting cross-disciplinary thinking on participatory observation and mapping of the environment, climate and biodiversity; environmental data systems and services; and environmental sustainability in a networked society.


GLOBAL WARNING Symposium: Art, Science and Environmental Activism

The GLOBAL WARNING symposium, organized by ZER01: The Art and Technology Network, the City of San Jose Public Art Program and CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University in collaboration with LEONARDO/ISAST, with additional support from the Montalvo Arts Center, was held September 16–17, 2010, in conjunction with the 2010 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, CA. This two-day symposium examined the interconnectedness of ideas and actions and the current relationships between art-making, science and ecology. A group of distinguished artists, scientists and policy-makers presented and examined case studies of collaborative environmental art projects.

More about the symposium

Watch video documentation of symposium talks

Updated 12 November 2014