Description

UNM Biology 402/502 // UNM Art Studio 389/429/529 // UHON 402
Joseph Cook // Szu-Han Ho

Space for posting thoughts, ideas, references, resources, and works. The theme of our seminar and workshop series is "Morphology and Geographic Variation." With the natural history collection as our starting point, we'll hear from scientists, artists, designers, programmers, musicians, and more on place-based study. Part of AIM-UP, an NSF Research Coordination Network.

Using Natural History Collections and Art to Communicate About Climate Change (UNM)


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Julia Anderson, Kayce Bell, Xiangyun Chen (UNM)

This module incorporates biology, physical sciences, social sciences, and art to discuss and communicate about climate change. Students will be required to complete three sets of background readings on climate change, one from a biological and physical science perspective, one from a social and cultural perspective, and one from an artistic perspective. Part of the module will include a small written summary for each topic. There will be one in-class discussion of the readings and one in-class discussion on the project. Students will create a piece (in chosen medium) utilizing museum specimens or images of museum specimens that addresses how biological species may respond to climate change. Students will be required to choose one particular aspect of biological response to climate change (adaptation, migration, extinction, etc.) for their piece.  Students will be required to write an artist statement for their piece, which includes how they think making art and their work will change other people’s perspective and maybe raise awareness of climate change using art as a tool. Students will also be required to evaluate if their piece contains elements of all the aspects they want to address. We will provide a short introduction to each of the discussion areas and the appropriate readings. We will also provide some images of museum specimens and examples of art pieces using museum specimens to communicate about climate change.