CREATIVE CONTAGION:
Scientists invite artists to Antartica. Artists design media devices that send environmental data to audiences inside museum galleries. People working in response to global environmental change address art museum conferences entitled "Art + Environment."
Artists, scientists, media designers, and environmentalists are cross pollinating. And already, the outcomes are extreme. They are unleashing deep core changes in their own and one another's assumptions, materials, practices, and lives. In some circles, art has become as important as science in understanding the nature of environments.
This flashpoint gathers and diagrams, perhaps for the first time, vectors of creative contagion across art, science, and media. It tracks what each field is catching from the other, with what effects. It surveys what actions individuals and groups are taking to pass it on--often with the hope and conviction that this is one contagion the world really needs.
During the summer and fall of 2008, we will build the creative contagion flashpoint and produce a new scan called art + environment. We will generate materials for each through our live blogging from the Art + Environment conference (Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Oct. 2-4, 2008) and by posting creative responses to the first Extreme Media Studies field trip, Testing Ground (Oct. 2-17, 2008).
Watch the creative contagion spread. For latest information and updates, go to Field Trip 1: Testing Ground sections of the EMS blog. Prepare for the field trip by visiting the NVA's official conference site.
