Balance-Unbalance …and the magic lamp How do we improve our immediate future?
It is quite a challenge to recognize our fragility. To think that for food to reach large supermarkets, the necessary events sometimes depend on a complexity that is unthinkable for most consumers. And that, to get high-speed Internet access at home, the string of efficient pieces of technology that goes into it is staggering. Individual actions, and the long series of events that ultimately lead us to have systems that work to help us solve problems, and live better, often raise substantial conceptual—as well as operational—questions for us.
Who can and should inspire new exploration, and bring innovative perspectives and critical thinking on how to actively participate in helping to solve some of our major challenges, such as the serious environmental crisis? We need to develop creative ways to facilitate a paradigm shift towards a sustainable tomorrow. Creative thinking, innovative tools, and transdisciplinary actions could bring perceptive, intellectual, and pragmatic changes, in this sense.
With this in mind, an artistic-scientific initiative was launched more than a decade ago, with the objective of generating a deep awareness, as well as creating lasting networks of reflection and action, which can address the multiple facets of the crisis. environmental: Welcome to the international project Balance-Unbalance!
Moderator-presenter:
- Ricardo Dal Farra, founder of Balance-Unbalance; artist; professor of music and media arts @ Concordia University, Montreal.
Meeting participants:
- Christa Sommerer, artist, pioneer of interactive arts; Professor and director of the Master and PhD program "Interface Cultures" @ University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz.
- Omar Darío Cardona, engineer awarded by the UN; Professor of Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change @ National University of Colombia.
- Alis Pataquiva, chemical engineer specializing in biomedical engineering and nanotechnology; Professor @ Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Bogotá.
- Roger Malina, astrophysicist and astronomer; professor of art and technology, and physics @ UT Dallas; executive editor Leonardo/ISAST.