Climate Change Facts and Vocabulary
Art Detective
Readings and Concepts
Definitions
100
What is the Greenhouse Effect?
Gases in the atmosphere trap heat and block it from escaping the planet
100
Sam Taylor-Johnson, Self-Portrait as Tree, 2000
100
Joanna Macy and Molly Brown's Coming Back to Life talk about three possible stories circulating in the industrialized world today. What are they?
Business as Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning
100
Anthropocentrism
Human beings are viewed as the center of the universe. How does this differ from biocentrism?
200
Human-Nature Binary
Imagining the human and natural worlds as something separate and non-equal
200
Composed of four concrete cylinders that are 18 feet in length and 9 feet in diameter, this work is arranged in an open cross format and aligned to frame the sun on the horizon during the summer and winter solstices. Holes are drilled to line up with constellations in the night sky
Nancy Holt Sun Tunnels, 1973-6
200
Finis Dunaway argues that, among the New Topographics, Lewis Baltz and Robert Adams...
...rely on the cold mood of BW photography to highlight isolation and alienation of the postwar suburban culture.
200
NEW TOPOGRAPHICS: who are they and what radical novelty do they bring to landscape photography?
No longer interested in pristine nature and wilderness, but in the suburbs, parking lots, industrial warehouses
E.g.: Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore.
300
What shared target was agreed by all the world countries in the Paris Agreement?
Limiting temperature rise to well below 2o C compared to pre-industrial levels, ideally less than 1.5o C.
300
Wangechi Mutu, You Are My Sunshine, 2015
300
How does Joel Snyder characterize the photographs of Timothy O'Sullivan and Carleton Watkins in his essay “Territorial Photography”?
Watkins' photography has an invitational character and reinforces the belief of his audience in an American Eden, encouraging the public to view these images as potentially accessible and available places for exploitation and development.
Timothy O’Sullivan's vision is “contra-invitational”: his photos represent the land as hostile and denying any possibility of comfort for the human being.
300
Ecocriticism
The study of cultural objects for their ecological meanings, whether or not the inherent meaning of the artwork is deliberately invoking the ecological.
400
Climate Change
Long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns, either natural or human-caused. Since the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, human actions are the primary factor spurring climate change.
400
Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1970
400
THE SIERRA CLUB AESTHETIC
According to Robin Kelsey: Eliot Porter and Ansel Adams (SIERRA CLUB) "sacrifice the world for the image": "the land was often being valued as a photograph. The most important thing to conserve was the pleasurable view." (402): they do not show any actual relation with human beings; only promote conservation, not true sustainability.
400
TRIVIAL TIME vs GEOLOGICAL TIME
Trivial time: thinking in minutes, hours, individual human time. Geological time: millennia.
500
Sustainable
Can be used or done endlessly, without compromising the earth's resources
500
Zoe Leonard, You See I am Here After All, 2008
500
What are some key ideas in William Cronon's article "The Trouble with Wilderness?"
He says that to think of nature as pristine wilderness:
- means that the nature and human being do not belong together (human-nature binary);
-is a threat to responsible environmentalism.
500
CONTEMPORARY SUBLIME. Explain this concept in relation to Alec Soth's, Niagara, 2006
Correct answers:
- offers an updated take on Edmund Burke's concept of the sublime and E.F.Church's Niagara, 1857
AND
- Interested in transcendent emotions (love, ordinariness, commitment, disappointment) + commercialization of the falls.