Eco Expression
Student Eco Fashion Show
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Milena Popov
This paper is about John Jay College’s first ever Eco Fashion Show that was hosted by my students from Eco Art and Design class and myself. The event was organized to raise awareness of environmental problems, many caused by mainstream fashion industry, and to provide some ideas for solutions. As stated in the Show’s brochure, everyone can make a difference and lower their individual fashion ecological footprint by making good choices. Beside t-shirts with environmental slogans, the audience was able to see at this show wide variety of eco fashion styles designed by my students - from old clothing died with natural, non-toxic dyes (such as coffee, black tea, blueberries, beets and turmeric), to cut-out old dresses, pants, and shirts transformed into fashionable scarves, hats, and shirts, to interesting found objects clothing applications and jewelry. This show not only drew in large college community audience to rethink their fashion choices, but also inspired students to create a larger eco fashion event to be held at the college every year, that includes student eco fashion workshops, clothing donation, and film screening.
Where Does Writing Matter?: Pedagogies of Place and the Sustainable Student
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Warren Griffiths
The current environmental and political state of the U.S. and the world demands that scholars in the humanities push themselves beyond the classroom and push their students to succeed both within and beyond academics. In a university-wide course like the fundamental writing course I teach at the University of Vermont ("Written Expression") there is ample opportunity to allow students with a wide variety of academic backgrounds and vocational interests to invest these passions into the wider community. As a composition instructor, I incorporate a variety of assignments, discussions, and pedagogical strategies in order to encourage my students to see themselves as a part of the community in which they live, while also teaching them the writing skills necessary to succeed in university. Once a student can see and understand the community they belong to, it becomes easy for the instructor to change their actions and lead them to invest their time, energy, and identity into the economic, cultural, and environmental wellbeing of their community. This paper explores the intersection of the practice of writing and the practice of sustainable living, while suggesting pedagogical strategies for teaching sustainability in a required first-year humanities course.
Environmentalist Data Sonifications and the Art of Turning Science into Music
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bailey Hilgren
Data sonification is a technique that translates information into non-speech sound. While sonifications were first developed in the sciences mainly as exploratory tools, they have recently been used by environmental scientists attempting to communicate complex findings to the general public. In a complementary but largely separate trend, the technique has also been adopted by those working in environmental sound art. In this area of contemporary sound composition, artists explore natural and built environments through sound, sometimes as pure exploration but often as a form of environmental activism. Data sonifications in both scientific and artistic contexts continually resist classification as either solely scientific or artistic - this resistance reveals the strength of their interdisciplinarity. They function as effective environmentalist art and science communication because they appeal to both emotions and logic, a powerful persuasive combination in the face of environmental issues. This paper explores the technique of data sonification through the examination of case studies and demonstrate the effectiveness of sonification as an environmentalist tool.
