Special Section of Leonardo Transactions

Papers from the 3rd Balance-Unbalance

International Conference
Queensland, Australia, 2013
Ricardo Dal Farra, Guest Editor
The Balance-Unbalance project aims to use art as a catalyst to explore intersections between na-
ture, science, technology and society with the intent of engendering a deeper awareness and creat-
ing lasting intellectual working partnerships in solving our global environmental crisis.

The 3rd Balance-Unbalance International Conference took place 31 May–2 June 2013 in
­UNESCO’s designated biosphere reserve in Noosa, Queensland, Australia. We are pleased to pres-
ent this special section featuring selected papers from the 2013 Balance-Unbalance Conference.

—————————————————————

Contents:
Ricardo Dal Farra: Balance-Unbalance: Art and Environmental Crisis 490
Leah Barclay and Susan Davis: A Balanced Approach to Local and Global Action 491
Nina Czegledy: Art as a Catalyst 492
Ricardo Dal Farra and Pablo Suarez: Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre and
Balance-Unbalance: The Art! ⋈ Climate Project 493
Michel van Dartel and Anne Nigten: Towards Ecological Autarky 494
Leah Barclay: Biosphere Soundscapes 496
Krista Caballero and Frank Ekeberg: Birding the Future 498
Mónica Mendes, Pedro Ângelo and Nuno Correia: Hug@ree: An ARTiVIS
Experience for Sustainability 500
Daniela Di Maro, Andrea Bene, Diego Bernini, Simone Bonetti, Giorgio
De Michelis, Francesco Tisato and Gianluca Colombo: Anastatica Sensibile—
Grounding Interactivity on a Natural Process 502
Andrea Polli: A Walk in the Woods: Investigating Ethical Design, Ubiquitous
Computing and Social Media 504
Lisa Chandler, Claudia Baldwin and Megan Marks: Catalysts for Change:
Creative Practice as an Environmental Engagement Tool 506
Julie Arrighi and Grady Walker: Participatory Video and Games for a New Climate 508
Roslyn Taplin: Contemporary Climate Change Art as the Abstract Machine:
Ethico-Aesthetics and Futures Orientation 509
Nicolas J. Bullot: The Functions of Environmental Art 511
Ian Clothier: The Changing Boundaries of Knowledge Between Māori Awareness
and Western Science 513
BALANCE-UNBALANCE
BALANCE-UNBALANCE: ART
AND ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
Ricardo Dal Farra, Hexagram, Concordia
University, Canada, and CEIArtE-
UNTREF, Argentina. Email:
<ricardo.dalfarra@concordia.com>.
See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/47/5>
for supplemental files associated with this issue.
Abstract
Balance-Unbalance aims to use art as a catalyst to
explore intersections between nature, science, tech-
nology and society with the intent of engendering a
deeper awareness and creating lasting intellectual
working partnerships in solving our global envi-
ronmental crisis.
Keywords: art and environment.
Environmental problems, economic un-
certainty and political complexity have
been around for a very long time. Not
one year, one decade or one century.
What was different before was the speed
and depth of transformations compared
with today’s fast changes. The frequent
occurrence that certain events are having
around us - such as floods, twisters, etc -
is increasing fast, and the effects of hu-
man beings on modifying our adjacent
surroundings as well as very distant
places have turned into a power capable
of changing the whole planet, improving
or ruining people’s lives and even elimi-
nating all human life on Earth.
When I started to think about taking a
more active role in looking for ways to
help with climate change and environ-
mental related problems through art ac-
tions, I was wondering what the experts
studying and working daily in preventing
and acting upon the consequences of
certain catastrophes will think about it.
To my surprise, scientists and engineers
alike answered positively and with en-
thusiasm. And the first Balance-
Unbalance event (“Equilibrio-
Desequilibrio” in Spanish) started to take
shape. It was a conference gathering
artists, scientists, philosophers, engi-
neers, government officials and policy
makers from Argentina, Brazil, Canada
and the United States organized by the
Electronic Arts Research Centre –
CEIArtE from the National University of
Tres de Febrero and was held in Buenos
Aires, 2010 [1].
Some lessons were learnt: a) A few
local artists were interested in partici-
pating, and b) We were reaching people
wishing to collaborate but many of them
were already aware of the threats we are
facing or were working in minimizing
the negative consequences of, for exam-
ple, rapid climate changes. It was a good
first step but we need to reach those who
490       Leonardo, Vol. 47, No. 5, p. 490, 2014 doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00815   ©2014 ISAST
are still not paying attention to the envi-
ronmental crisis.
Less than one year later, a second
Balance-Unbalance (a.k.a. BunB) was
held at Concordia University, in Mont-
real, on November of 2011. The confer-
ence was possible thanks to the direct
involvement of Concordia’s colleagues
coming from very different fields, such
as: communication, political sciences,
geography, management, music, digital
arts and design. We had a variety of per-
spectives and background experiences—
some people with decades of study and
work focusing on environmental prob-
lems, with others mostly new—but a
common interest was present in every
discussion and meeting: “…to bring
artists together with scientists, econo-
mists, philosophers, politicians, sociolo-
gists, engineers, management and policy
experts with the intent of engendering a
deeper awareness and creating lasting
intellectual working partnerships in solv-
ing our global environmental crisis” [2].
The second Balance-Unbalance con-
ference was organized in less than six
months. In spite of that, many submis-
sions were received from all over the
world to participate. We had paper pres-
entations, artistic installations, posters,
two evenings with films and elec-
troacoustic music concerts. We also left
‘the door open’ for a number of flexible
transdisciplinary activities. This allowed
us to receive projects of up to 90 min-
utes, fully open to any format as far as
the goals were clearly aligned with the
conference expectations. The response
was amazing.
Some new lessons were learnt this
time too, among those: People coming
from very different fields were able to
talk and understand each other given
some contextual conditions and a com-
mon goal. The results widely surpassed
our expectations as organizers of the
conference. All was developed as part of
a rich and diverse proposal: To use art as
a catalyst to explore intersections be-
tween nature, science, technology and
society, providing a platform for reflec-
tion and debate, and for ideas to become
actions.
Is a conference series enough?
Balance-Unbalance was not conceived
as a series of conferences but as a pro-
gram. The conference series is one of the
projects being developed. A series of art
exhibitions were held in different spaces
in Argentina during 2011 and 2012 too.
Two of those were presented at the Na-
tional University of Lomas de Zamora
and one in the San Martin Cultural Cen-
tre, Buenos Aires, during the Electronic
November international festival [3]. All
these events were organized by CEIArtE.
The decision to organize a third Bal-
ance-Unbalance conference was taken
when it was seen that the goal of going
beyond a conference series was starting
to become a reality. The Associate Di-
rector of the Red Cross / Red Crescent
Climate Centre participated in the 2011
conference. As a direct consequence, the
art! ⋈ climate initiative was launched a
few months after. In its first stage, it is a
global contest leading to the creation of
sound art miniatures to be used by the
Climate Centre in its activities, such as:
workshops, simulation/educational
games, lectures and presentations around
the world. The results of this first contest
have been announced and are being used
by the Climate Centre at the time of this
writing. The next stage will be open to
other areas of the new media arts that
could fit the Centre’s goal [4].
The works were selected by a jury of
internationally recognized composers,
new media artists and members of the
Climate Centre as well, finding that it
was possible to have works of art that
could also fulfill the specific needs of an
humanitarian organization for its daily
field actions. The art! ⋈ climate initia-
tive showed one of many possible posi-
tive paths to follow and also helped to
answer the question: Is it worth doing a
third BunB conference? This collabora-
tion and the consequent contest demon-
strated that a new conference was worth
the effort. The third Balance-Unbalance
conference was held in UNESCO’s des-
ignated biosphere reserve in Noosa, Aus-
tralia in 2013 [5].
Among the new projects being started
by Balance-Unbalance is a public data-
base and virtual meeting point on the
Internet focusing on connecting organi-
zations, institutions and individuals, aim-
ing to empower projects with similar
objectives [6]. We all want to cooperate
and contribute in helping “to save the
world” [7].
References and Notes
1. <http://ceiarteuntref.edu.ar/eq-deseq-en>
2. <http://balance-unbalance2011.hexagram.ca>
3. <http://ceiarteuntref.edu.ar/eq-deseq-ccgsm>
4. <http://ceiarteuntref.edu.ar/art_climate>
5. <http://www.balance-unbalance2013.org>
6. Eco: art and environmentally responsible actions.
7. R. Dal Farra, “Can the Arts Help to save the
World?” Leonardo Vol. 46, No. 2 (2013) p. 110.