It is time to shift the narrative around the climate crisis.
That is the focus of Manufactured Ecosystems, a new free exhibition at the University of Guelph’s Zavitz Gallery that illustrates the ways technology could replace ecosystem services in the event of global climate collapse.
A collaboration between a global team of artists, scientists, engineers and writers led by Dr. Shoshanah Jacobs, Manufactured Ecosystems will feature interactive installations, speculative prototypes and imaginative storytelling.
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“It is a deliberately jarring physical and virtual art and literary exhibition depicting a future where efforts to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss have failed,” says Jacobs, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology.
The main gallery will feature the work of six commissioned artists and six commissioned science fiction writers, and in the hallway leading into the gallery will be work from a variety of U of G undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines.
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Visitors will explore objects visually, observe technology in action through video of creative works while a Gigapan will allow for virtual tours. The exhibit is a consideration of what kind of technological advances are necessary to be able to live without ecological services such as water filtration, decomposition, oxygen production and pollination. Imagine robotic bees or a mechanical photosynthesizer.
The exhibit is the public-facing piece of a larger international research initiative supported by a grant from the federal New Frontiers in Research Fund.
“The goal of our grant was to help change the narrative around the climate crisis from one of grief and desperation to one of hope and joy in the creativity of collaboration,” Jacobs says.
Some of the work in Manufactured Ecosystems pushes it forward as a concept, while other pieces push back against it. The entirety, curated by Dr. Christina Smylitopoulos, professor in the School of Fine Art and Music and fourth-year undergraduate student, Alyssa Ponte, marries art and science in an authentically transdisciplinary way.
“Art has always pushed science,” says Dave Dowhaniuk, a PhD candidate in the School of Theatre, English and Creative Writing and member of the research team. It was artists who pushed engineers how to create the blackest black of paints, one that absorbs all light and minimizes reflection. “It is only in modern times that we have separated them into their own disciplines.”
The human impact necessary for technological advances
At its core, Manufactured Ecosystems is a disruption in both fields; a form of science expansion. The vision was not just about knowledge mobilization, Jacobs says, but also knowledge creation.
“In the science world,” says Elizabeth Porter, a PhD candidate in the Department of Integrative Biology, and project coordinator, “we work really hard to strip a lot of humanity from science and research because we want to reduce biases and limitations. But there is a human influence on data. Science is also deeply human.”
Understanding what it is to be human must inform the technologies we develop, Jacobs says.
Art is integral to science, just as science can be integral to art creation, Porter adds.
Along with the exhibition is the launch of an open-access database of devices and concepts that substitute for endangered ecosystem services. There are also plans for an anthology, a curriculum for elementary and high school students, and to tour the exhibition.
Manufactured Ecosystems is on now until Aug. 7. For more information visit the project online.