Event 1: Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art

On April 18th I attended Linda Weintraub’s lecture on eco materialism and the following symposium. Her lecture was about how she developed the ideology and the art that she is working on. “What is next?” “Is that all?” These two sentences ran through her lecture and impressed me a lot. Besides the word beauty, what else can we say about the nature? Such spirit of pursuing the fundamentals made Linda outstanding. Another impressive moment was when she talked about her “Woods”----her ecological home, where she could have intimate and direct connections with the nature.

Linda's Woods

I couldn’t help thinking about the idea of art and science in the first week. We learned that as a general trend, art and science are to some extent more integrated than before. But what Linda showed me seems to be a counterargument to this. Instead of employing more technologies, she goes back to the exact nature that is surrounding us. I suppose that a lot of her inspirations came from her intimacy with the nature. Indeed, the nature itself is a masterpiece of the God and what we can learn from it is boundless.  The intuitions and inspirations she obtained from nature originated deeply in her heart as she was fully immerged in the surroundings. These feelings are the most genuine expressions of her mind and are the most appealing of all because we, as part of the nature, are intrinsically attracted by natural objects. In a society where technology has become the mainstream of our life, she chose to return to the original lifestyle and to listen to the deepest sound n her heart. This is probably why she is such a great artist.




In the symposium, I was fascinated by the idea of using nanobubles to save an ecosystem. It was implemented by Dr. Marino Morikawa to save the wetland in Peru. The idea was to introduce gas into the water to immobilize bacteria and kill them and to use biofilters to block bacteria from entering. Here we can see the rising of nanotechnology.


I would definitely like to recommend the readers to participate in this event. There you will be able to experience the nature that she brought from her home, and moreover, listen to your heart. 

Group photo with Linda (I am in black, second to the right)


Reference
Armstrong, Mary. The Arc of Life. July 2016. 
    http://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/the-arc-of-life/Content?oid=2373867

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