Opinion
Where Plastic Flows: Visualizing Environmental Data
OAKLAND, Calif. — There's the old thought experiment in the days before social media and mobile phones: if you could send a message in a bottle, where would it end up?
environment
Opinion
Knowing Where Your Gadgets Come From
OAKLAND, Calif. — As I type out this post, I am ever more aware of those who piece together the keyboard, circuits and processors that brought this computer to life.
Art
Climate Change Data Set to Music to Serenade a Warming Planet
A cellist has composed a haunting song that turns charted data of climate change into an ominous serenade.
Opinion
Reflecting China's Missing Lakes
LOS ANGELES — That Chinese cities are incredibly polluted is a fact that any visitor to the country must accept. From dead pigs in the water to brown in the skies, pollution is both backdrop and foreground to contemporary Chinese life.
Interview
Agricultural Evolution Leads to the New Garden City
CHICAGO — Before centuries of modernization and industry settled in, Gentofte, Denmark, was a simple farming town under the vision of a single lord with 42 serfs. Over the past 200 years, Gentofte has evolved into what is rightly considered a suburb. In the exhibition New Garden City, curator Aukje
Opinion
Mountains and Oceans of Trash
SAN FRANCISCO — Pollution and health have been on the Chinese mind as of late. From dead pigs in Shanghai to tips for avoiding bad air in Beijing, a clean environment can be difficult to find. Smog and water pollution have become a feature of China's urban landscape, creating a hazard not just for C
Art
Major New Multifaceted Exhibition Focuses on Ecology and Environmental Issues
The word "expo" conjures big visions: grand pavilions, ferris wheels, exotic exhibitions, a world's fair. But last Sunday, a different kind of expo opened at MoMA PS1, in Long Island City, Queens — Expo 1: New York, the latest curatorial effort of the institution's director, Klaus Biesenbach. It's n
Opinion
Are "Farmscrapers" the Future of Sustainable Architecture?
One of the advantages of living in a city is that the urban environment is in many ways more sustainable than suburbia — mass transit provides easy access to different areas without cars or highways, and dense planning efficiently fits more people into less space. But the quintessential architectura
Art
Beijing Bike-Sculpture Filters the City's Pollution
Matt Hope, a Beijing-based artist, is taking his adopted city's problems head on. Instead of hiding in his apartment and dealing with Beijing's extreme pollution crisis with the help of air filters and masks, Hope is hitting the streets with a bicycle-cum-sculpture that actively filters the air arou
Art
An Eco-Friendly Villa in Costa Rica Encourages Sustainable Art Practice
SOUTHERN ZONE, Costa Rica — I’m staying in the blue room. It is my honeymoon and we have travelled four hours from the San José airport to a magnificent rainforest hideaway. Monte Azul dubs itself as an eco-lodge that combines culture and conservation. This ecolodge — which comprises four “casitas”
News
Judge Officially Pauses Christo's Colorado Project
In keeping with Christo's announcement last month that his planned Colorado project, "Over the River," would be indefinitely postponed, federal judge John Kane has ruled that the artist cannot move ahead with the project until a lawsuit attempting to stop it is resolved.
Opinion
Green Footprints Make a Green Tree
Chinese artist Jody Xiong, who's collaborating with the China Environmental Protection Foundation, placed large white canvases on 132 crosswalks in 15 cities in China. As each person crossed, they picked up a small amount of green paint on their shoes, which they left as trails on the canvas.