EMI Week 1
The following notes are reading notes provided to students in an upper-level undergraduate course entitled “Ecopolitics and the Cinema.” The course name is a little outdated, as the course has evolved in the direction of an ecophilosophical exploration of cinema, but a new title has not yet been approved.
As an Environmental Studies course, it is tailored to students majoring in interdisciplinary environmental studies. Concepts from other disciplines — such as philosophy, film or cultural studies, and others — are introduced and explained more carefully than they would be in other disciplinary contexts.
Ecologies of the Moving Image online course
I’ve begun teaching a course on film and ecology and using my book Ecologies of the Moving Image as the main text.
Since the topic is related to the theme of this blog, and since I’ll be creating reading guides and posting links to film clips and related materials for my students, I thought I might as well share those publicly here.
The first materials from the course will go up later this week on this blog. They’ll continue on a more-or-less weekly basis, at least until further notice.
The book can be ordered online from the publisher for $36.75 Canadian, or from Amazon for $42 U.S. Alternatively, you can request that your local or institutional library order a copy from the publisher.
The tentative course syllabus is here, but the scheduling will be a little off (later online than in the classroom version) and screenings may change a little from what’s listed there. I will try to add links to films or clips that may be available open access. (And help will be graciously accepted; use the “Comments” field for any given week.) Otherwise, you can view things on Netflix, Amazon, or whatever other place you may get your videos/DVDs. (Public libraries are especially recommended!)
More soon.
SBB review
The following is a a summary of our class review of the “Seedbomb Burlington” class project.
What worked well
Overall the expressed consensus was that the project went well. Materials were easy to get and to work with. The use of media, especially social media (such as Facebook), was considered successful. Many people beyond the class participated in the workshops, with a wide demographic among those interested, and there were expressions of interest from schools and individuals for follow-up workshops. Community engagement — including donations from organizations and businesses — was high. And in the end several hundred — perhaps close to 1000 — seedbombs were created and disseminated. The sense was that we made an impact and that that impact will not have been in vain.
What didn’t work as well; lessons for next time
Week 13: Politics in global network society
As we wrap up the course, let’s weave together some of the threads we’ve explored over the last few months.
- We have looked at theories of new media, social media, Web 2.0, and media convergence, and examined a series of definitions of “media ecology.” These included the medium theory of Marshall McLuhan and others; the mental environmentalism of Adbusters; the cultural environmentalism of James Boyle and Lawrence Lessig, with their ideas of a mental or informational commons; the global network society theories of Deleuze (“society of control”), Galloway and Thacker (whose article we didn’t talk much about), and others; the “greening of media” assessments and proposals of Toby Miller and Richard Maxwell; and (briefly, this past week) the “three ecologies” of Felix Guattari.
- We’ve looked at the relationship between contemporary media and the public sphere; distinguished between Read more »
Week 12: Seedbombs & sentient cities
The Boston Marathon bombing forced us this week to reconsider the name of our class project, “Seedbomb Burlington.” We decided to stay with the name for two reasons. First, all of our PR materials — press releases, social media sites, et al. — are well in motion and can’t be recalled at this point. (And even if it wasn’t too late, the obvious alternative — “Seedball Burlington” — just doesn’t sound the same.)
But secondly, we had a general consensus that seedbombs have little to do with real bombs. The only thing they share is a certain incendiary image, which comes from the term’s historical connection to the guerrilla gardening movement. That image, we decided, can be toned down, even if there was some diversity of views about its usefulness. (We were still deciding on our posters, and had good ones to choose from that were less, well, bomb-like. Above is the one being postered around town.)
The goals of the two kinds of bombs are, in any case, antithetical. Read more »
From radical gardening to locative media
What do the two have in common?
Our class project, Seedbomb Burlington, will involve organizing and carrying out a series of events/actions taking place in the landscape of Burlington, Vermont. It will also be a media event.
The initial actions will be two workshops that will take place on and around Earth Day 2013. But these should be considered as part of a much longer process: a process of remapping, re-seeding, re-wilding, reclaiming. A reoccupation of the city by the earth.
I’ve assembled an archive of readings on various topics related to the project including Read more »
The plan
Project: Seedbomb Burlington
Seedbombing, or aerial reforestation, refers to the practice of introducing vegetation to land by throwing or dropping compressed bundles of soil containing live vegetation (seed balls). Undertaken with the goal of re-naturalizing barren or ecologically underutilized land, seedbombing is an ecological practice for reviving urban environments.
Seedbomb Burlington is a place-specific project intended to provide people with skills and knowledge for remapping, reimagining, and rewilding their city through the practice of site-specific seeding with ecologically appropriate plants. It is a project of social and ecological reclamation and information dispersal, involving seeds, soil, boots, bikes, vacant landscapes, maps and smart phones, social and locative media, and time, gentle time.
Week 10: Greening the media
Media matters, and media matter also matters.
As shown in Richard Maxwell’s and Toby Miller’s book Greening the Media, information and communication technologies are not ecologically benign. They leave behind plenty of residues — mountains of waste, toxic by-products that affect workers and consumers, and much else — and rearrange the materiality of the world in so many ways.
About
We live in a different world than did previous generations of humanity. Billions of humans can access a vast ocean of information at their fingertips. Digital media have helped construct a sphere of thickly networked, hypermediate, and interactive communication links that span all levels of human society around the globe.
How do these new media environments affect and interact with the social and biophysical environments that preceded them, and that continue to undergird them?
The concept of “media ecology” is not new. From the medium theories of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and Neil Postman to the media ecologies of Felix Guattari, Matthew Fuller, Jussi Parikka, and others; from the “mental environmentalism” of Adbusters and other culture jammers to the “cultural environmentalism” of public domain defenders like James Boyle and Lawrence Lessig — understandings of media as ecologies and of ecology as mediated converge in many ways today.
We are beyond the old debates between the caffeinated cyberoptimism of the digerati and the anti-technology pessimism of the Heideggers, Elluls, and Zerzans. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t precariously poised over the abyss. Ecological calamity stares us in the face, and we need some kind of new “natural contract” with the planet, as philosopher Michel Serres has called for. How can digital media help us get there?
e2mc seeks to explore the relationships between media and ecologies: material, social, and perceptual ecologies within which mediations play an increasingly powerful, complex, and transformative role. It is devoted to the idea of “evolving ecological media culture”: an evolution of a media culture that is cognizant of its multiple ecological contours and connections.
e2mc begins as an experiment, a class exercise for ENVS 204 “Media Ecologies and Cultural Politics,” a senior undergraduate class at the University of Vermont. But it will not limit itself to traditional pedagogical constraints. Where it leads we will see. We invite any and all to share in the adventure.
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