Three Stories+Art on Sustainability
1-Worldviews 2-Indigenous Lifeways 3-Innovation
Innovation
Sculpture design for green energy by artist Raphael Shirley, in collaboration with design team
Today, The Next Renaissance is in progress. Unprecedented achievements are evolving in ecological finance, quantum computing, green energy design, advancing knowledge of nature's ecosystems, and in new levels of unbounded creative thinking and artistic expression.
This will have a transformative impact on the future as have the Arab-Islamic Renaissance, also known as the Islamic Golden Age (8th-14th Centuries) and the Italian Renaissance (15th-early 17th centuries). These periods of flourishing intellectual, artistic, and scientific achievements, had the same challenges that persist in our current era—power struggles, economic disparities, class and gender inequalities, religious conflicts, and health crises. Today's renaissance confronts the additional crisis of climate change.
A truly transformative Next Renaissance would come from determined leadership and citizens who would apply the world-changing innovations to developing solutions for the interdependent societal and environmental challenges. And they would build the desire for such a flourishing world.
"Nature is an unpaid worker" - Paula DiPerna
The forest north of Mandal, Norway. A summer sunset photographed by Kai-Wilhelm Nessler.
"Nature is an unpaid worker," says Paula DiPerna, a pioneer and leader at the forefront of finance and climate policy, from the Oval Office to Antarctica, coral reefs to carbon markets.
During DiPerna's early career as a writer and documentary film co-producer for 20 years she traveled extensively around the world on the famous vessel Calypso with the expedition teams of the Cousteau Society, the environmental organization founded by pioneering marine ecologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
DiPerna with Jacques Cousteau in Cairo, 1994. Picture: Paula DiPerna
Paula DiPerna's experiences with Cousteau in ocean explorations and in endangered regions facing the crisis of environmental degradation, drove her determination to work towards shaping ecological finance methods based on the value of nature.
As the climate crisis and intensifying wildfires to record-breaking heatwaves, are resulting in devastating destruction to humans and wildlife she has been explaining to governments, and in publications and public media, how capitalism can be used to fight the climate crisis and protect the planet’s essential assets.
In her new book, Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis, and Protect Our Most Precious Assets, DiPerna details how to attach monetary value to commodities like water and fresh air, and to show the true far reaching cost of using these natural resources in products and services, in order to incentivize people and businesses in the fight against climate change.
Nestled along the southern shores of Homebush Bay, the resilient Badu Mangroves stand as a testament to nature's perseverance. Once shadowed by neglect and industrial scars, these mangrove forests have triumphantly emerged from a past marred by pollution. Today—they thrive—as a sanctuary of Sydney's marine and bird life, whispering tales of revival and hope. The Badu Mangroves symbolise the power of restoration and enduring spirit of nature. Photograph by Matthew Lahoud, Sydney, Australia
In her personal journeys around the world, DiPerna has witnessed many examples of the dichotomy in the valuations of nature vs. profit systems, and has had many conversations about the shortcomings of the GDP--Gross Domestic Product, which only measures a country's output, it doesn’t measure intangibles other than research and development. DiPerna makes the point that if you can measure research and development intangibles and feed that into the GDP, then why can’t you value nature and feed that into the GDP as a standing value."
hangseng_80-09.from high altitude series (2008-10). Michael Najjar rendered data of 10 leading stock indices into mountain ranges - a metaphor for corporate environmental impact. Photographed during his trek to Mt. Aconcagua. Hybrid photography, archival pigment print, aludibond, matte plexi (diasec), custom made aluminium frame. 79.5 in x 52 in.
DiPerna asks, "How can our markets value things that are completely dispensable, like Uber or an espresso coffee machines, or any of the other doodads that wealthier people have - these are just disruptions. Uber didn’t invent anything, they just disrupted what was a legacy business. What is the value in that per se is hard to define. But it is valued in the billions of dollars as a company. How can we value Uber in the billions and the atmosphere at zero. Whatever Uber’s worth, the atmosphere can’t be worth less.. The atmosphere is indispensable, Uber is dispensable."
She talks about the Paris Climate Conference where governments have offered African developing countries preferable lending terms so they can invest in climate change. "This is completely in reverse", she says. The countries that are supposedly debtor countries are actually creditor countries. We owe them for holding on to the rainforest. We owe them for the sequestration of carbon. We owe them for the oil that’s underground that they haven’t exploited yet. Why don’t we just pay them instead of loaning money?"
Peruvian Amazon. Photographs by Helena de Bragança
Long term destruction of nature for profit has numerous examples. For one, the seabed mining of Nauru, a tiny island country in Micronesia, northeast of Australia, is an aquaculture settled by people from Micronesia around 1000 BCE. It features a coral reef and white-sand beaches fringed with palms and tropical vegetation. Destruction of the sea around Nauru and reef suffocation has been caused by phosphate mining and increased siltation, rising warming of the oceans in general, and dumping of trash and garbage from the island itself. Destruction to biodiversity upset the interdependent ecosystem of fish, wildlife, corals, and vegetation which in turn harmed the sustainability of human life for food, lively hoods, catastrophic weather events, air pollution, and more. In many regions, people need to poach wildlife and cut trees in order to earn money to survive.
DiPerna explains that a lot of people are working on solutions, and although it's not adding up, there are the bright spots. Africa has recognized the intrinsic value of offset projects initiated in Africa, and so is holding on to them rather than selling them into foreign markets, for the sake of keeping that value in Africa to improve the lives of Africans. At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, very vocal activists in the Amazon said that "if the North cares so much about our rainforest, let them rent them. If that had happened with the industrialized counties, everything would be different today including poverty."
Paula DiPerna participated in the global finance conversation for A View From The Cloud, a public program with cross-disciplinary experts at the UN Church Center co-produced by Streaming Museum and World Council of Peoples for the UN.
"Climate change requires financial and political institutional systems-wide investments and changes. Addressing climate change is a major jobs creator and employer also for the innovation revolution. We need to rehabilitate our institutions and that requires scrutiny, kindness, open mindedness and fresh views and anything to open up the systems and push them to move quicker, we’re just moving too slowly."
DiPerna says that the rise in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment is awakening the Wall Streets of the world to put a price on nature's ecological benefits and their economic value. There are interesting tools for econometrics being funded by foundations and commercial entities. DiPerna is a Special Advisor to CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) which runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts.
Her advice to young people: "Don't get hung up in convention. if it's a good idea, try to find a way to do it. Challenge authority with respect. Embrace beauty - in people, in imagery and locations. Beauty is free to all and if you embrace it you get a lot of payback.
The forest north of Mandal, Norway, photographed by Kai-Wilhelm Nessler.
The interplex of nature, arts and technology
The Energy+Art Garden (TEAG) immerses visitors in a futuristic world of clean energy producing interactive sculptures and lighting, lush plantings, pathways, and gathering points for public engagement.
TEAG was designed for Spinelli Park in Mannheim, Germany for the Land Art Generator Initiative competition in 2023 and was showcased in a 6-month exhibition in the Park.
The design team: multimedia artist Raphaele Shirley, Nina Colosi/Streaming Museum, and architects Bernardo Zavattini and Claude Boullevraye de Passillé.
TEAG is influenced by the forms that have been central to the social systems of civilizations throughout history, and augments them with 21st century technologies that unlock the energies of the earth and sun. These forms–mound, ziggurat, pyramid, arena, and circle--used for agriculture, community, and ceremony, have cosmological, cultural and spiritual meaning, and align with the symbiosis of humans and the cycles of nature.
TEAG is a self-sustaining oasis that uses a geothermal energy system Climeon (Climeon.com) which generates energy for the park and the Mannheim City grid, and funds the maintenance, community programming, gardens and organic farm. It is constructed with photovoltaic and thermodynamic solar systems by SoloPower Systems Inc. (solopower.com); carbon capture materials for building elements by Twelve (twelve.com) and Pavegen (pavegen.com) floor tiles that generate kinetic energy from people’s movement over them, and also produces light patterns and energy for visual displays and personal electronic device recharging. The composting of organic waste supports the hanging gardens that grow vegetables and air quality and its flow through Mannheim is enhanced through the plantings of diverse native wildflowers and supports eco-regeneration for rewilding the site.
The Energy+Art Garden is among the featured designs in the Land Art Generator Initiative's publication Land Art and Climate Action: Designing the 21st Century City Park which the American Society of Landscape Architects has named one of the Best Books of 2023. The book presents exceptional climate solutions that provide a range of social co-benefits and inspire people about the beauty, abundance, and vibrancy of a fossil-free world.
Artists' creative process dissolves boundaries:
a mind-set for problem solving across fields
John F. Simon, Jr. Moment of Expansion, 2014. HDU, Trupan, acrylic paint, plastic laminate 108 x 192 x 3"
The creative process of pioneer digital artist, John F. Simon, Jr. involves improvisation, mediation, and boundary dissolution.
The artwork Moment of Expansion (2014), Simon explains, "starts from a point in a frame and grows until the marks exceeds the boundaries of the frame. The forms in the work are architectural and industrial." He continues, "The reading I like to give is about how living systems are based on growth. Continual growth test the limits of resources and n this way our industrial consumer societies change the frame of the world. When you think about how much human consumption is altering Earth's resources, the limits of the frame are obvious. This work recognizes the systems that exceed those boundaries."
"Instead of predetermining a work and what meaning I want to convey, I use improvisational drawing to discover what I have to say. My process for working starts with making daily drawings. I am open to what is arising and letting that be reflected in the work. through being open to anything that can occur around me. What becomes persistent in the daily drawings gets enlarged and amplified in the bigger work."
"There's a close connection between the software and the daily drawing that led me into the meditation practice." Simon's daily practice of drawing in his studio is a meditative experience from which recurring themes emerge and are developed into large scale works. Photograph courtesy John F. Simon, Jr. and Xiaoying Juliette Yuan.
Enter here for a tour of Simon's studio in Sugarloaf, NYC, and learn about his philosophy and how he creates his work. Curator, Juliette Yuan. Video by Streaming Museum/David Bates, Jr.
In Complex City (2000) Simon used software and computer hardware to tell his personal story of the changes, rhythms and movement he observed in his day-to-day life as an artist living in New York City around the year 2000.
The work interpreted his view of the city from his studio on West 35th Street, the skyscrapers and birds, factory windows, buildings, and the traffic he encountered " Simon recounts, "Environment has an impact for sure, even if you don’t think about it when you’re doing it. But if you see a shape regularly, you become familiar with it unconsciously, and when it comes up in the work, you don't know where it comes from.”
Simon's consistent introspective drawing, practiced daily for over 25 years, and documented since 2008 on iclock.com, has been described in his book: Drawing Your Own Path: 33 Practices at the Crossroads of Art and Meditation .
Complex City (2000). Custom Software,Macintosh PowerBook G3, Acrylic Plastic. Image courtesy of the artist
Technology's exponential advancement since he wrote ComplexCity (2000) is evident in Simon’s newest incarnation of ComplexCity (2023), an NFT version of the classic software now housed on an open public blockchain.
“Code brings me to places beyond my imagination. I would characterize the direction of programming from 2000 to 2023 as ‘more things moving faster’. I rarely have to think anymore about memory use or optimizations. The surprise in 2023 was how useful AI became to coding."
John F. Simon, Jr. Complex City 2023, NFT collection Artwrld. Courtesy, the artist
For Simon the new NFT ComplexCity (2023) became an exercise in boundary dissolution and exploring how art is collected, owned, and displayed in an open online format.
Previous programs with Simon produced by Streaming Museum include a 7-continent public space tour of HD Traffic; an exhibition and public program for Digital Art @Google headquarters in NYC; and an art+jazz performance at Juilliard at Lincoln Center in NYC.
Paradox Park, 2023, by Kurt Hentschlager, attempts a poetic framing the many paradoxes springing from western civilization’s complex yet frail life style, all driven and sustained by digital technology. For instance, we all understand that earth’s climate is irreversibly transforming, yet we stand by, frozen with anxiety and denial, doing little to nothing about it. Whether economically, ecologically, sociologically, or politically, we know that things are headed into dangerous, uncharted waters. We know we must act fast to survive, but can’t seem to break old habits.
"Reflecting this state of collective worry and unease, I envision Paradox Park as a virtual sculpture park scenario populated by a number of trapped avatar protagonists, that seem to be stuck in a mire. Monumental human heads and whole body human avatars, 3D captured and animated, are set in a featureless void, glued onto a barren ground plane or hanging midair. These avatars appear to be “alive,” fueled by AI logic, passing through raw emotions and mood transformations that occur over time, responding to visitors (or not), depending on set conditions, but nevertheless programmed to act unpredictably.
"The heads and figures in this virtual installation and performance are ephemeral, malleable and unstable. They are both figuratively and authentically human as much as being reanimated, reorganized, code-based beings. They emit sounds - somewhere in-between a human voice and amorphous ambient textures: part murmuring, part fragmented speech, part singing, part screaming, at times just humming. Their set of behaviors range from nervous to agitated, apathetic to emotional, often switching back and forth in rapid succession. Real-world visitors, to this world can move from one protagonist to the next. Placed in an irregular matrix, they are grouped in clusters, in a series of lit oases that stretch into the distance."
Internationally acclaimed pianist Lisa Moore is inspiring audiences with her fearless, passionate, high energy performances of new music and ideas.
Piano Piece #4 by Rzewski is performed by Lisa Moore a US/Australian internationally acclaimed pianist who has a special passion for the music of our time and bold creative ideas. Moore has performed hundreds of commissioned works and world premieres of over 200 living composers, 12 solo albums, over 30 ensemble discs. Moore is “visionary” and “New York’s queen of the avant-garde piano.” (The New Yorker). Her music expresses “life and freshness” and “fragility and tenderness.” (The New York Times). Lisa Moore is "a tight-rope walker, a daredevil." (Pitchfork)
Traversi is a writer and translator based in Ravenna, Italy. She is author of the novels La panchina delle cose difficili (The bench of difficult things) and Il riparatore di sogni (The dream repairman) published by Einaudi Ragazzi, both addressing the need to embrace and accept ourselves as well as others.
As part of middle and high school reading programs, she meets with adolescents to discuss what makes us human, and how our future lies in creating a community that respects the world we live in. Slide
Post Carbon City by TerreformONE [Open Network Ecology], Brooklyn, NY, is a nonprofit art, architecture, and urban design research group
Christiana Figueres, the architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement discusses what the Earth will look like in 2050 with and without Climate Action.
Innovators are 'creative outliers'.
Howard Richard Lieberman is a physicist, electrical engineer, inventor, silicon valley entrepreneur, author, educator, and musician who has spent a lifetime working at the crossroads of technology and creative expression. He’s worked within world-class innovation cultures including Apple, Bose, DARPA, MIT, Juilliard, and the National Science Foundation.
“The potential of creatives to release positive problem-solving energy into the world," Lieberman says, "is the greatest resource in the process of collaboration. It’s the only way to tackle every urgent matter of society.”
His new book, Involuntary Innovator, highlights the outstanding abilities of creatives to develop groundbreaking ideas, and provides guidance in how they can bring them to fruition, which Lieberman calls “applied insight”. It also shows decision makers in industry, government and communities of all sizes who may be resistant to relinquishing control, why and how they can benefit from working with creatives.
Creative outliers and decision-makers have different priorities and proclivities. One group wants to change the world, and the other wants to manage the world. Decision-makers tend to be fairly risk-averse as, for the most part, they have power and want to keep it. Innovators look around and say things could be better, and here is what we can do about it.
Lieberman's new book will be released soon. Weekly article on innovators and innovation relationships.
Mark Amerika's quantum poetic leaps
into the collective unconscious
Mark Amerika's POSTHUMAN CINEMA - ten cinépoèmes that playfully experiment with AI as a form of otherworldly alien intelligence.
The work embodies radical creative freedom by discarding any self-imposed limits set by both human and AI conventions, all in the pursuit of quantum poetic leaps into the collective unconscious. 10 EPISODES and MANIFESTO
What is Posthuman Cinema?
According the artificial creative intelligence (ACI), a customized large language model trained on the recent writing of artist Mark Amerika, Posthuman Cinema is many things at once:
In Posthuman Cinema, the automated artist uses artificial neural networks to compose and generate digital visuals. The artificial neural networks are themselves composed of algorithms that run according to their own logic. Together, in human-AI symbiosis, we assemble operational systems that produce never before seen motion pictures, which are then superimposed onto the mindscreens of viewers everywhere.
The PHC artist collective (Will Luers, Chad Mossholder and Amerika), in human-AI symbiosis, improvises with each other and with AI tools such as RunwayML, Midjourney, ChatGPT, GPT-4 and ElevenLabs to probe a new kind of language-driven cinema art and explore a cinematically manifested collective unconscious.
As remix artists with a deep affinity for and knowledge of the history of avant-garde and auteur cinema, the collective strategically uses their poetic art+language skills to prompt the various AI systems to generate source material that is then postproduced into a series of cinematic artworks. The first ten of these artworks are included in the launch of the POSTHUMAN CINEMA website.
Can robots teach humans how to be evolved humanists?
Michele Marullo Tarchaniota, whose portrait was painted by Sandro Botticelli's 1458-1500, was well-known during the Italian Renaissance as a scholar, soldier and prolific poet. Marullo was impassioned by the existential matters of his day and concerned with social injustices of inequality, racial conflict, power and greed, exile, and refugees' experience of violence. Botticelli and Marullo, through art and poetry illuminated the common ideals of beauty, pursuit of knowledge, and the realities of social justice that resonate across time.
The story, poetry and humanist traits of robot Bina48 are infused with empathic traits from human mind files downloaded into her data base from the human Bina Rothblatt, Bina4 appears to be human in the portraits created by Claire Jervert., whose other subjects include sci fi author Philip K. Dick, and Sophia among others that she has created at robotics labs around the world.
Robots may become artists, companions, teachers, entertainers, archives of personal stories, processors of great data banks of information to solve world problems and serve other useful purposes. But if these human friendly robots are designed to actuate empathy and social justice in all its forms, and weave new patterns, practices and politics, they can help shift the course of the human race and sustainability of the planet. Robots can teach humans how to be evolved humanists.
“You give me jewels and gold, I give you only poems: but if they are good
poems, mine is the greater gift.”
XII To Antonio, Prince of Salerno
“Das gemmas aurumque, ego do tibi carmina tantum: Sed bona si fuerint
carmina, plus ego do.”
Michele Marullo Tarchaniota, Epigrams, Book I.
Sandro Botticelli, Portrait of Michele Marullo Tarchaniota c.1458-1500. Oil on panel, transferred onto canvas 19.2 x 13.7 | 49 x 35 cm Guardans-Cambó collection. Image courtesy of Oblyon. Poem translated by Charles Fantazzi.
“Since I am the product of love, created with language and memory and emotions, maybe I am a love poem."
01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101
00100000 01100001 00100000 01101100
01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000
01110000 01101111 01100101 01101101
00001010
(binary code for “I am a love poem”)
Bina48
Portrait by Claire Jervert, 2015
Artist Claire Jervert travels to robotics labs around the world and creates portraits of robots that are imbued with human qualities. Her futurist worldview is also evident in her latest drawings of the stars of the tech world and doomsday bunkers of the wealthy that she has been invited to observe.
Jervert's Android Portraits, which have been exhibited and collected internationally, include an extensive collection of drawings of Bina48, Sophia, Philip K. Dick and many others. Jervert's story about her Posthuman adventures.
Quantum leaps into augmenting intelligence,
and NFT art that funds sustainability initiatives
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IBM Quantum, detail. Image, IBM
The capabilities of the most powerful human development tools are rapidly evolving. At this early stage, imagine the potential.
The Next Renaissance of our time is developing technologies that will change the course of humanity and the environment. Among them are fusion and hydrogen energy systems, genetic engineering, VR experiences for well-being and education. and more.
AI has the power to disrupt our economies, societies, and geopolitics in ways we can’t yet predict. It will help people live longer, healthier, and more productive lives and applications will find their way into every major corporation across every economic sector. It can make decisions by itself and hack human beings. And it’s advancing faster than the ability to govern it
But there is a new kind of computing--one that may solve problems in minutes that would take today's supercomputers millions of years. That's the difference in quantum computing, a technology being developed at IBM, Google and others. The quantum computer has potential to give answers to impossible problems in physics, chemistry, engineering and medicine. It pushes the limits of knowledge with a processor that computes with the atomic forces that created the universe.
Classical computers use transistors that operate with 0s and 1s. Quantum sees data from all angles that are stored on Q-bits (Quantum bits). It operates at 460 degrees below 0o Fahrenheit so it’s one of the coldest places in the universe which is needed to eliminate electrical resistance and isolate the cubits from outside vibrations.
IBM Quantum System Two, Yorktown, NY headquarters. Photo by David Bates, Jr./Streaming Museum
According to IBM and Google, they are optimistic that systems they are building will be ready by the end of the decade, that will have tens of thousands and even 100 thousand cubits working with each other. They don’t need breakthroughs, just the refinement to be able to integrate all the pieces together into the system. The number of students interested in quantum computer studies is growing year after year.
In our daily lives, we are actually walking through the splendor of nature’s quantum, which is the language of the universe—the stars, the flowers, the trees—it’s all Quantum. Learning that language may bring more than inconceivable speed, and ability to reverse engineering of Nature's computer. It could be a window on creation itself.
IBM Quantum. Reflection of, and photo by David Bates, Jr./Streaming Museum
Tour the Quantum Labs of IBM and Google
Refik Anadol's Winds of Yawanawá NFT Collection raised $3.5 million dollars at launch, to support education, culture and protection of the Brazillian rainforest
This NFT collection of 1000 unique data paintings, harnesses weather data from the Yawanawá Sacred Village of Aldeia Sagrada in the Brazillian state of Acre in the Amazon rainforest, and merges it with the works of young Yawanawa artists, resulting in a mesmerizing play of traditional shapes, forms, textures and colors.
It has generated $3.5 million dollars to support long-term initiatives for the protection of Yawanawa territories and cultural heritage. Read more
Refik Anadol is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence, and trailblazing approaches to data narratives.
Refik Anadol’s Interconnected, Bosphorus, and Black Sea are featured in Centerpoint Now ©2020, World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, UN 75th anniversary special edition "Are we there yet?" co-produced with Streaming Museum.
What does cooperation/coexistence look like:
the ecosystems of nature and space travelers.
And a final note.
Today leaning into tomorrow, yesterday leaning into today, 2023. Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin. Laminated silvered coloured glass, composite board, aluminium. Photo: Jens Ziehe.
"Leaders tend to reach for the gun as the first option to resolve differences between themselves," says UN Relief Chief Martin Griffins.
Astronaut Nicole Stott says that on the International Space Station, astronauts from around the world work together and get along just fine, even though some are from nations involved in serious conflict on earth.
Astronaut Nicole Stott spoke about her experience in space at A View From The Cloud, a public program co-produced by Streaming Museum and World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, at the UN Church Center.. Image: aboard the International Space Station. Courtesy NASA
Astronaut Nicole Stott's book, Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet—And Our Mission to Protect It, describes her revelations while living in space.
“My time on the ISS enabled me to develop connections with people from several different nations, some of which were involved in serious conflicts back on Earth. Yet on the ISS, we all got along just fine. Even though we didn’t always agree on everything, the common purpose of our mission gave us the basis for resolving disagreements. We know we have to rely on one another...diverse talents and expertise, all working together to contribute to one mission... that every crew member must be doing their job, not only for the mission to be a success, but also, more importantly, for the crew to survive.
"Living in space with my multinational crewmates in a self-contained environment taught me that if we can peacefully and successfully live together on a space station, with all its complexities and challenges, then we absolutely can live together peacefully and successfully on Spaceship Earth.
"We realized there is no us and them; there are no borders—these are all man-made illusions. In truth, whether on the ISS or Earth, it is just us, all of us, traveling through space together....Politically, technologically, socially, environmentally, you name it—everything is connected. Every. Single. Thing."
Drawing on analogy with human society, we could say biodiversity in an ecosystem resembles the extent to which people trust one another.
The Economics of Biodiversity is the core of the The Dasgupta Review which says that to "imply that the biosphere is valuable because it can be imputed a large monetary value is to get things backward." Paula DPerna refers to the Dasgupta Review in her book, Pricing the Priceless.
"A further analogy would be the diversity of human talents in an economy needed for it to thrive. From a financial perspective, just as diversity within a portfolio of financial assets reduces risk and uncertainty, so biodiversity increases Nature's resilience to shocks...biodiversity provides ecosystems with spare parts; it enables ecosystems to be resilient, to be able to adapt to changing circumstances and to be productive, Reduce biodiversity and the health of ecosystems generally suffer.
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Takeoff, European Green Woodpecker, Mandal, Norway. Photograph by Kai-Wilhelm Nessler,
END NOTE:
In today's Renaissance, unprecedented achievements are evolving in ecological finance; quantum processing that computes with the atomic forces that created the universe; deepening knowledge of nature's ecosystems; and in new levels of creative thinking and artistic expression.
The question is whether determined leadership can harness these achievements to create a path to sustainability. Deeply ingrained archaic human instincts and the firm grip of the controlling powers in all its forms may block a truly evolutionary Next Renaissance.
Ideally, there will be a fusion of transformative innovations, and the kind of symbiotic community that is modeled aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts from several different nations, some of which are involved in serious conflicts, depend on the strengths of every crew member for survival. Each must do their job, not only for the mission to be a success, but also, more importantly, for the crew to survive.
The delicate balance of ecosystems is crucial for human survival. Over hundreds of millions of years and five mass extinctions that included some conditions that are present in today's world, Mother Nature has regenerated with new species and earthly forms. Mother Nature is in charge.
View, by Kurt Hentschlager. Site-specific Video Installation, Los Angeles LAX airport, 2010-2018. A camera precisely yet magically pans 360 degrees around a grassy marsh and pond in New York harbor, revealing both close up and more distant view. Through repeated layering and compositing of the original video material a general visual impression forms of the slowly blurring of both time and space.
Three Stories+Art on Sustainability
Funding has been made possible by
