ISEA promotes ELiteracy
ISEA promotes international interdisciplinary discourse and discovery.
Utilizing cardboard, LEDs, ceramics and electronics with sponsorship from intel Corp., lead to a project that investigates how science, technology and indigenous knowledge can create meaningful, contemporary promotion of identity, agency and autonomy.
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| (x)trees Agnes Chavez & Alessandro Saccoia (Taos, New Mexico & Milan Italy) |
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Dual Visualization, video mapping & social interactive projections on a wall. Virtual trees created from thoughts and messages.
(x)trees is an algorithmic drawing of tree forms generated from tweets and SMS (text) messages.
We walk into this space and become surrounded by the everchanging trees. With each text, branches and leaves develop as a result of the text appearing and disappearing. The immersion helps us acknowledge interconnectivity between nature and technology and public opinion concerning tree planting worldwide. Because anyone can tweet, facts, quotes and myth are published onto the space.
How does this work? The program scans Twitter for key words that appear as seeds under each tree. Then the message appears as a leaf at that moment in time. I was struck by how much the world knows and does not know about trees.
I immediately wondered if this projection on a high school wall, usually blank and uninformative couldn't be utilized in a similar fashion? We have 6 sending towns of student populations at our school. It would be interesting to project a map of Lamoille county with towns that lit up everytime someone projected a text identified with what it means to be from that hometown. I think key words would help us control the propensity for inappropriate language, if that is an immediate worry for some and would give us pause about hometown pride, how we identify ourselves locally. This project could change to project images to decifer how our school community feels about the second amendment, or worldwide- where Lamoille alum are or where Lamoille alum hope to go. Oh the places we can go....
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| Olol: our land our light Blue Wade & Kura Puke (Los Angeles, CA & Wellington, New Zealand) |
To me, it meant listening to a looping audio of a young man describing the importance of surfing as integral to his indigenous identity. These cardboard robots became avatars for that artist. I realize as a classroom teacher, I often teacher about indigenous populations of North America in a historic sense (up to 1970s). I don't really know how to connect students with contemporary studies of populations now. This gives me many ideas about identity as a communal and individual concept.
Just as Intel, artist Thomas Greenbaum and students of a private school were able to work collaboratively on this residency project, Lamoille students could do the same with IBM, and the artists in residency in Johnson, Vermont. I especially loved the poetic sounds of student voices and cardboard imagery.
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