I was invited to present as part of the Art and the Environment Talk Series. A collaboration between the Ross Art Museum and the Department of Environment & Sustainability. This series includes artists, activists, and scholars and their efforts to confront and change the world around them for the better. All talks are free and open to the public.

The museum also has some fantastic related exhibitions as well: Our Changing Landscape: Life in the Anthropocene and Michelle Stitzlein: Demarcations and Delineations.

The full list of speakers in this year’s Art and the Environment Talk Series:

2/10 (Tues) 6:30pm  John Sabraw – Toxic Colors John Sabraw is an artist, activist, and professor at Ohio University. His work marries environmental cleanups, chemistry, and art into a cohesive whole. He uses the iron oxide in mine runoff to make paint pigments. He has recently collaborated with Gamblin oil paints, to make the “Reclaimed Earth Colors” paint set. 

2/24 (Tues) 6:30pm  Laura Ann Bergman – Regenerative Farming and Social Justice Laura Ann Bergman has been the farm liaison for Seminary Hill Farm since 2022. Laura Ann has spent her whole life growing food in Ohio. Seminary Hill Farm is part of Methodist Theological School in Ohio which works in pursuit of a just, sustainable and generative world.

3/3 (Tues) 6:30pm Jarod Anderson – Strange Naturalist Jarod Anderson is a nature writer, podcaster, and poet who has just published his fifth book Strange Animals which is also his fiction debut. His work revolves around a deep appreciation for the natural world, mental health and the healing power of nature. 

3/17 (Tues) 6:30pm Emma Kline – Living Art and Cross-disciplinary Work Emma Kline is the Lab Specialist for the Living Art and Ecology Lab at OSU. LAEL’s purpose is to create a space that fosters cross-disciplinary collaborations and invites students to engage with their local environment through artistic practices. 

BONUS! 3/18 (Wed) 4:15pm Lesley Wheeler – Mycocosmic Poetry Reading Lesley Wheeler is a poet, literary scholar and professor at Washington and Lee University. Her latest book of poetry, Mycocosmic, deals with navigating personal and planetary loss and regrowth following the example of mushrooms that flourish after forest fires.

3/24 (Tues) 6:30pm Amy Youngs – Art, Technology, and the Natural World Amy Youngs’ work is a blend of eco art, interactive sculptures, digital media, and technology into installation and interactive pieces. Young works as an artist and professor at OSU teaching both art and science and the confluence of the two. 

4/14 (Tues) 6:30pm Eve Warnock – Collaborative Art and Invasive Species – Eve Warnock is the founding artist of OBLSK, a creative group of artists, inventors and designers that create interactive installations. Her latest work has been a collaboration with the Columbus Parks and Recreation to use removed invasive plants in environmental sculptures for Columbus Arborfest.

4/21 (Tues) 6:30pm Carolina C. Barbosa – Open Data and Open Science Dr. Carolina C. Barbosa is a faculty member in OWU’s Department of Environment & Sustainability and has been advocating for open science practices through her work with the grassroot networks DSOS (Data Science and Open Science in Aquatic Research) and GLEON (Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network)

An event for people to drink tea and consider what we can learn from the billions of soil organisms who co-create the healthy conditions for plants to grow in – and in turn, nourish us. Tea is a plant, after all. After drinking, we fed our used teabags and paper cups back into the wormbin ecosystem. While it might seem strange to have tea with worms, springtails, mites, and billions of microscopic organisms, we are always having tea with them.

We discussed what we can learn from worm bin ecosystems. For instance, they show us the undigestable microplastics hidden in teabags – and they show us how our food and paper waste can be turned into valuable nutrients for gardens and indoor plants. Worm composting does not create unpleasant odors and does not produce methane, a greenhouse gas which is generated by food waste that rots in landfills.

For this event, we drank loose-leaf tea scooped into strainers or into small paper pouches. I’ve learned from the worms that some commercial tea bags are made of plastic, even those that really look like paper. Worms can’t eat it, soil doesn’t need it, and studies show that plants take microplastics up into their bodies. This is a problem for them and for animals like us, who eat plants.

Thousands of composting worms and arthropods and billions of microbes live inside this worm-shaped wagon. They are making rich compost from waste generated from my home, such as cardboard, wilted lettuce, banana peels, apple cores, dead plants, tea bags and used coffee grounds. This composting ecosystem includes a colony of red-wiggler worms (Eisenia Fetida), who have lived with me for thirty years. We have shared many meals. The fertilizer they make is fed to my houseplants, herbs, tomato plants, and lettuces. To publicly celebrate soil critters, I have mobilized my worm bin onto a wagon. Worms do their business in the dark; they do not announce to us that they offer solutions to climate change and they do not speak about their important role in circulating nutrients and healthy microbes in soils. I’m sharing this on their behalf because I hope other households will develop regenerative relationships with composting worms. Sharing nutrients with household worm ecosystem is a slow, steady way to reconnect one’s sense of self within the larger web of life.

The recycling of old into new is also how I approached making Mobile Soil Maker, this “Worm Wagon” ecosystem sculpture. I made it from the remnants of an old artwork, rather than using all new materials. You can see the original installation from 2004, Intraterrestrial Soundings.

“Augmented and virtual reality have become commonplace. The Augmented Senses: Feminist Queer Augmented/Virtual Reality virtual symposium highlights experimental and creative approaches to enhanced immersive experiences. Focusing on gender, trans, and feminist themes around the body, desire, biological art, and our microbial environment, three contemporary artists will present their work: micha cárdenas, Eva Davidova, and Amy M. Youngs.”

– More on the Feminist Queer Augmented and Virtual Realities symposium site.

This was programming put on by the CURTIS R. PRIEM EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTER at Rensselaer

Join us for a conversation with Amy M. Youngs and Russ Corbett-Detig to discuss their approaches to interpreting data, moderated by Isabel Bjork, Executive Director of the Genomics Institute. 

This happened on Wed, Apr 14, 2021, but since it was an online event, a recording is available.

Amy M. Youngs creates ecological and digital artworks that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She exhibits nationally and internationally at venues such as the Te Papa Museum in New Zealand, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and the public parks in New York City. She is an Associate Professor at the Ohio State University where she coordinates the Art & Technology area in the Department of Art, leads interdisciplinary grant projects, and teaches courses in digital art, eco art, and art – science.

Russ Corbett-Detig is an assistant professor in the Biomolecular Engineering Department and an affiliate of the Genomics Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His team conducts research on a wide range of questions in computational and evolutionary genomics. Russ received his PhD from Harvard University where he worked with Dan Hartl and he did his postdoctoral studies in Rasmus Nielsen’s group at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Sesnon Speak Up Series aims to provide a safe space for students and the UC Santa Cruz community to engage with critical ideas generated from our programmed exhibitions. This event is scheduled in conjunction with the virtual exhibition, What Makes Us Human: An Art + Genomics Convergence.

The Society of Fellows Digital Dialogues series brings together artists, scholars and activists working in a range of disciplines aligning with our current theme of Human Rights: Pasts and Futures. Areas of expertise include studies in art, performance and activism; critical human rights; disability; incarceration; Indigeneity; environmental justice; intersectional rhetorics; migrant and refugee rights; race and citizenship; and sexuality, among others.

Dialogue four considers the challenges that the Anthropocene epoch poses to human and non-human life and the potential of cultural practices and newly imagined ethical concepts for addressing these challenges. Panelists discuss how aesthetic and cultural practices generate attachments to the places we inhabit, and how posthuman renderings, such as augmented reality applications, encourage embodied experiences that connect humans empathetically with the biodiversity of seen and unseen worlds. Additionally, the panel will address questions of cultural inheritance, environmental justice, and the dangers of living under carceral rule. 

Presenters

• Tommy Davis (Associate Professor, Department of English, Ohio State)
• Tristam McPherson (Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Ohio State)
• Elissa Washuta (Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ohio State)
• Amy Youngs (Associate Professor, Department of Art, Ohio State)

Moderator

• Michael Mercil (Professor, Department of Art, Ohio State)

This is in Madrid, Spain, but actually happening online, since we can’t all go to Madrid now. One of the pandemic positives is that the organizers have made it FREE – no conference fees. Just sign up here.

I’m thrilled to be included among such a great line up of speakers of artists and scientists; many I know and others I’m looking forward to knowing. JENNIFER PARKER, JORGE FERNÁNDEZ, GAIA BINDI, SAM DUPONT, NADJEJDA ESPINEL-VELASCO, GENE FELICE II, DAVID HARRIS, JUNIPER HARROWER, TRINIDAD IRISARRI, and CLAUDIO JOSÉ MAGALHAES. Check out the conference program. Thank you to JOSE CARLOS ESPINEL VELASCO for inviting me and for co-organizing this inaugural event.

I’ll be presenting a talk called: Softening Boundaries – Practicing Humility. It is on Tuesday, December 15 at 12:15pm EST. 18:15 Madrid time. Wish me luck!

Can we break away from current agricultural practices which are intimately connected to desertification, water and soil pollution, antibiotic resistance, climate change and social and economic inequalities? In a two-hour discussion we are interested in considering a sustainable, multispecies perspective to farming, which could start in the soil and progress through thinking about the multiple ways we can consider food. Aquaponics, vertical farming, worms, soldier flies, and permaculture offer real solutions, where food is grown while respecting living beings, and the intertwined ecologies that support them.Humane food can be grown in urban or rural communities, though the soil is critical. How can we learn and care about living beings we cannot quickly know or see? What is care like in practice? We are also interested in exploring the concept of “citizen eco-artist” as so much of what we do resides in the spaces between actual science, sustainable practice and speculative fiction.

• This international talk with be livestreamed on youtube and recorded for later viewing.
  
• A coproduction of the Network for Prototyping the Future and Art Laboratory Berlin

Beyond Human: Art & Tech Connections in Urban Parks Panel

Becoming Biodiversity Stewardship Event

Join the Environmental Stewardship Team and artist Amy Youngs for an augmented reality tour + planting at Willow Lake!

• Info and signup for the June 2 event.
• Info and signup for the June 8 event.
• Download app (free).

The Open Fields festival focuses on the changing role of arts in societies, art’s transformative potential, and relations to sciences. Open Fields  investigates the use of data visualizations and other mappings of the contemporary. It looks into areas such as open commons, the future of social interaction, data representation and visualisation, critical design, sustainable infrastructures, eco-aesthetics, techno-ecologies, bio-hacking and other techniques of a transformative potential.
And see more of my photos of the event.

STEAM Factory Showcase: Thursday, September 8, 2016 – 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Strongwater Food & Spirits: 401 West Town Street, Columbus, OH 43215

Join us for an evening featuring a diverse array of STEAM Factory faculty members from a wide variety of disciplines presenting engaging and interactive research demonstrations, presentations and micro-lectures. The evening will provide a wonderful and informal opportunity for alumni and friends to interact with STEAM Factory members located in Franklinton, the burgeoning new Columbus district of arts, creativity and innovation! …more info