Screen Ecologies

“This is a truly extraordinary book. It takes its readers on a profound journey, across the media, art, the environment, and the Asia-Pacific region. Looking at the political economy of meaning, attention, and climate change in an entirely novel way, the authors have produced an immensely stimulating and important volume.”
—Toby Miller, coauthor of Greening the Media

Images of environmental disaster and degradation have become part of our everyday media diet. This visual culture focusing on environmental deterioration represents a wider recognition of the political, economic, and cultural forces that are responsible for our ongoing environmental crisis. And yet efforts to raise awareness about environmental issues through digital and visual media are riddled with irony, because the resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and waste associated with digital devices contribute to environmental damage and climate change. Screen Ecologies examines the relationship of media, art, and climate change in the Asia-Pacific region—a key site of both environmental degradation and the production and consumption of climate-aware screen art and media.

 

Screen Ecologies shows how new media and visual artists provide alternative ways for understanding the entanglements of media and the environment in the Asia-Pacific. It investigates such topics as artists’ exploration of alternative ways to represent the environment; regional stories of media innovation and climate change; the tensions between amateur and professional art; the emergence of biennials, triennials, and new arts organizations; the theme of water in regional art; new models for networked collaboration; and social media’s move from private to public realms. A generous selection of illustrations shows a range of artist’s projects.

Product Details

  • Publish Date: 05/2016
  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: MIT Press
  • Language: English
  • ISBN: 9780262034562

Reviews

“Offering a decolonizing perspective on art and media practices outside the Global North, the authors examine what ‘world problems’ look like when filtered through the lens of the Asia-Pacific region. By means of a variety of artistic and activist projects from that region, they examine the deterioration our planet has undergone as a result of human activity. This is a refreshing analysis but also an important call issued to all of us to see ourselves as implicated in the global environmental-technical networks—and to take some steps toward greening those networks.”
—Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London; author of Bioethics in the Age of New Media and coauthor of Life after New Media
“This is a rich, innovative, and original book discussing the intersection of art, mobile and digital media, and environment in the dynamic Asia-Pacific region. The strengths of the book lie in its deep understanding of mobile, social, and locative media and their incarnations and implications for artistic practices and institutions, as well as aesthetic concerns. What is most interesting is its detailed, fascinating documentation and discussion of a wide range of artworks—and the wonderful illustrations it contains of these.”
—Gerard Goggin, Professor of Media and Communication, University of Sydney

About the Authors

Larissa Hjorth, an artist ethnographer, is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

Sarah Pink is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT.

Kristen Sharp is Senior Lecturer in the School of Art at RMIT.

 

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