Tag Archives: video

General

Bruno Latour thinks about the Anthropocene

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Bruno Latour‘s Gifford Lectures Facing Gaia: A new enquiry into Natural Religion, which were given at University of Edinburgh over the last few months are now on the web.

Bruno Latour’s website has the text (pdf) of the lectures and describes them as:

Those six lectures in ‘natural religion’ explore what it could mean to live at the epoch of the Anthropocene when what was until now a mere décor for human history is becoming the principal actor. They confront head on the controversial figure of Gaia, that is, the Earth understood not as system but as what has a history, what mobilizes everything in the same geostory. Gaia is not Nature, nor is it a deity. In order to face a secular Gaia, we need to extract ourselves from the amalgam of Religion and Nature. It is a new form of political power that has to be explored through a renewed attempt at political theology composed of those three concepts: demos, theos and nomos. It is only once the multiplicity of people in conflicts for the new geopolitics of the Anthropocene is recognized, that the ‘planetary boundaries’ might be recognized as political delineations and the question of peace addressed. Neither Nature nor Gods bring unity and peace. ‘The people of Gaia’, the Earthbound might be the ‘artisans of peace’.

The lectures are organized by groups of two, the two first ones deal with the question of Natural Religion per se and show that the notion is confusing because on the one hand ‘nature’ and ‘religion’ share too many attributes and, on the other, the two notions fail to register the originality of scientific practice and the specificity of the religious regime of enunciation.

Once the pleonasm of Natural Religion is pushed aside, it becomes possible to take up, in the next two lectures, the question first of Gaia as it has been conceived by James Lovelock and of the Anthropocene as it has been explored by geologists and climate scientists. It is thus possible to differentiate the figure of the Earth and of the agencies that populate it from the notion of nature and of the globe thus bringing to the fore the geostory to which they all belong.

In the last two lectures, after the notion of Natural Religion has been put aside, and after the complete originality of Gaia and geostory have been foregrounded, it becomes possible to reopen the political question at the heart of what will be life at the Anthropocene. Once the key question of war has been introduced, the search for a peace along the delineations allowed by politically relevant ‘planetary boundaries’ to which Earthbound (the new word for Humans) accept to be bound become again possible.

 As mentioned on Resilience Science previously, Canada’s CBC radio has a great accessible series – How to think about science – on science studies and philosophy of science, which includes an introduction to Latour and his work.

General

Seminar on Role of Design in Anthropocene @ Konstfack, Stockholm – updated

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For readers near Stockholm. I’ll be speaking Jan 14th at a seminar on design in the Anthropocene at Konstfack, the University College of Arst, Crafts, and Design in Stockholm.

I’ll give a talk “Co-Creating the Anthropocene: What are some possible roles for design?”

The seminar announcement states:

What is the Anthropocene?
Scientists are beginning to call our current geological period “the human age”, in other words, “the Anthropocene”.
Excerpt from http://www.anthropocene.info/: “Every living thing affects its surroundings. But humanity is now influencing every aspect of the Earth on a scale akin to the great forces of nature.

There are now so many of us, using so many resources, that we’re disrupting the grand cycles of biology, chemistry and geology by which elements like carbon and nitrogen circulate between land, sea and atmosphere. We’re changing the way water moves around the globe as never before. Almost all the planet’s ecosystems bear the marks of our presence.
Our species’ whole recorded history has taken place in the geological period called the Holocene – the brief interval stretching back 10,000 years. But our collective actions have brought us into uncharted territory. A growing number of scientists think we’ve entered a new geological epoch that needs a new name – the Anthropocene. (…)”
What roles could design take and what insights arise in relation to this understanding?
Together with guest speakers, we at ID will be discussing this perspective on design during this important symposium.

–update
The event will be recorded – when it is on the web I will post a link here.

Schedule of speakers

Monday, January 14 2013

09:00   Welcome and introduction/ Martin Avila, Bo Westerlund – Konstfack ID

09:20   Anthropocenic citizens need anthroposcenic imaginaries [and designs]/ Jakob von Heland – Filmmaker and consultant on human ecology and resilience.

09:50   Metadesign and Fashion – How can we mobilise design sensibilities for sustainable products, systems and paradigms? / Dr Mathilda Tham, Visiting Professor in Fashion and Sustainability Beckmans College of Design, Stockholm. Metadesign researcher, Goldsmiths University of London.

10:20   Coffee break

10:40   Co-Creating the Anthropocene: What are some possible roles for design?/ Garry Peterson, Professor in Environmental Sciences with key focus on resilience in social-ecological systems at Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University.

11:10   Panel discussion

UPDATE #2:

Videos of the event are now online at Konstfack.

Ecological Management, Ecosystem services, Scenarios

Tim Daw on ecosystem services tradeoffs

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  • In the video below Tim Daw, from the University of East Anglia’s School of International Development and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, explains his project Participatory Modelling of Wellbeing Tradeoffs in Coastal Kenya. The project, in which I’m also participating, has examined tradeoffs between social wellbeing and ecological conservation in small scale fisheries in Kenya using a combination surveys, models, scenarios, and participatory workshops.

For more information on the project is available on the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s website. The project is funded by the UK’s Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation programme. and there is more information on the ESPA website.

For more on poverty and ecosystem service tradeoffs see:

  • Bennett, E.M., Peterson, G.D. & Gordon, L.J. (2009) Understanding relationships among multiple ecosystem services. Ecology letters, 12, 1394–404. DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01387.x
  • Daw, T., Brown, K., Rosendo, S. & Pomeroy, R. 2011. Applying the ecosystem services concept to poverty alleviation: the need to disaggregate human well-being. Environmental Conservation, 38, 370–379. DOI: 10.1017/S0376892911000506
  • Raudsepp-Hearne, C., Peterson, G.D. & Bennett, E.M. 2010. Ecosystem service bundles for analyzing tradeoffs in diverse landscapes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107, 5242–7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0907284107
Adaptation

Reinventing social-ecological memory

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Nuu-chah-nulth Canoe Steaming video from Tofino, British Columbia shows the reinvention of historic canoe making, both as political symbol and for cultural tourism.

Nuu-chah-nulth Canoe Steaming, by Jacqueline Windh a Tofino based writer and photographer.  She made the video of master Nuu-chah-nulth canoe carvers Joe and Carl Martin steam a dugout canoe on Chestermans Beach, Tofino, Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

For more on the canoe see a travel article written by Jacqueline Windh.

I’d like to know the story of how a group of German apprentices (the folks in black/white clothes + hats) ended up helping out, and whether it represents a collaboration.

Visualization

Earth from space

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A beautiful video that shows the extent of human activity over the Earth’s surface.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera
by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from
August to October, 2011.

HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, etc.

Music: Jan Jelinek – Do Dekor (Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records) | ~scape 007 cd
http://www.janjelinek.com | http://www.scape-music.de

Editing: Michael König | http://www.koenigm.com

Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory,
NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov

Shooting locations in order of appearance:

1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Mideast at Night
15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night

Ecological Economics

Richard Wilkinson gives a TED talk on impact of inequality

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Richard Wilkinson, well known British public health researcher and co-author of the recent influential book on economic inequality the Spirit Level (which has been previously mentioned on Resilience Science) gives a TED talk about his research on the social impact of inequality.

More on his research and his advocacy of social change is on the Equality Trust‘s website.

Visualization

Cultivating the spread of resilience thinking

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It is great to see resilience thinking spreading.

The cooperative Cultivate Ireland has created a new video on community resilience for its ‘resilience month.’ The film uses surfing change as a metaphor for different aspects of resilience building.

The video fits well with the Transition Town movement, but recognizes that resilience has two faces both persistence and transformation.

The video is promoting a report – Carnegie Trust’s Exploring Community Resilience which can be downloaded (pdf). The report is built on a wide variety of approaches to resilience but recognizes the influential work of Buzz Holling and the Resilience Alliance.

General

Links: Science videos

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1) Video of Hans Rosling’s talking about Epidemiology for the Bottom Billion – where there is not even a pump handle to remove! for the John Snow Society’s 2011 Annual Pumphandle Lecture.

2) Mathematical biologist Martin Nowak talks about the evolution of cooperation at Edge. Link goes to video and text.

3) Eyes on Leuser, a camera-trapping project monitoring wildlife in the Leuser ecosystem of northern Sumatra, Indonesia.  Watch footage of various rainforest animals from camera traps. (via DotEarth).