[-empyre-] Introducing Amanda McDonald Crowley and Jeannette Ingberman

[amanda mcdonald crowley]

Hi all and thanks Renate and Tim for the opportunity to participate.

In my brief intro, I mentioned that I am a lurker on a lot of media,  
technology and culture related lists, which have included [-empyre-]  
pretty much since its inception, so its kinda fun to be forced out of  
the closet in this way :)  I have to admit that Christina McPhee also  
attempted this a while back with less success than you guys, so here  
we go...

The timeliness of the invitation as it related to Eyebeam's Feedback  
exhibition was obviously the draw.  It has been really inspiring to  
see this discussion kicked off by Renate and Tim in collaboration  
with Britta and Rebecca, who were exhibiting in the Feedback show,  
and to have included Stephanie Rothenberg, who with Jeff Crouse,  
presented their Invisible Threads project at Eyebeam this month.

For Eyebeam, as we were developing the Feedback show, it was really  
important that we not do yet another eco-art exhibition.  With  
Feedback we attempted to inspire both artists and their audiences to  
action.  The show was curated by a research group that has been  
meeting at Eyebeam for about 20 months now.  In fact Rebecca Bray was  
the facilitator of that group from the get-go.  And Feedback was  
umbrella'd under the theme "Beyond Light Bulbs" developed by our  
sustainability research group -- the premise being that once we had  
changed our light-bulbs to carbon fluorescents what do we do next?   
Affecting policy change, not just personal action, was an aim of the  
show.

But we also now have an emerging (un)sustainable research group at  
Eyebeam.  The questions being posed there are around the (ir) 
relevance of thinking "green".  Where is the punk work when we are  
all being so serious about the environmental issues that we are  
currently facing? Where is the discussion about the fact that energy  
exists aplenty, it is just poorly distributed? And in America, where  
we work from, how to we begin to dissect the *extreme* industry that  
is emerging around the green movement?  Here, Green Consumerism (a  
shockingly apt oxymoron) is in the process of becoming a core industry.

In this last week of discussion around "wired sustainability" I'd  
like to see us address how we feel about being techno-evangelists who  
care about the environment.  What does it mean for us, as a  
community, to be ardent users and promoters of technology while at  
the same time, trying to take care to have a low (eco) footprint on  
the planet?

So now I am going off to cook food -- all locally sourced -- and turn  
my computer off, for a while.

Looking forward to connecting with you all, once I have eaten, to  
talk about projects that address these issues and to see if we can  
find a way to move forward after this discussion.

Amanda


--
Amanda McDonald Crowley
executive director

EYEBEAM
540 W. 21st Street
New York, NY  10011, USA
T +1 - 212.937.6580 x223
F +1 - 212.937.6582
amc at eyebeam.org
www.eyebeam.org



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