Brown’s Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies announces a weeklong residency with Margaret Wertheim, science writer and co-creator of the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef project from April 14-18, 2014. Her residency opens with a public talk, Reefs, Rubbish and Reason: bringing art and science together in the age of global warming on Monday, April 14 at 5pm in Granoff Creative Arts Center, 154 Angell Street Providence. The talk is free and open to the public. For more information, and to register for workshops and discussions, please go to: www.brown.edu/go/wertheimschedule
In her opening talk, artist, writer and curator Margaret Wertheim will discuss the Crochet Coral Reef project and its unlikely conjunction of art, science, environmentalism and geometry. Tracing a line from sea slugs to general relativity and ocean acidification, Wertheim will raise the possibility that this nexus of art and science may encourage a shift in consciousness about humanity’s role in the ecological future of our planet.
At a time when climate-change denial is at a peak, humanity urgently needs positive messages for social change. In 2006, as an aesthetic response to global warming, twin sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim sat down to crochet a coral reef in their Los Angeles living room. Today their Crochet Coral Reef project is perhaps the largest art + science endeavor on the planet, with more than 7000 active participants worldwide and more than 3 million exhibition visitors.
Margaret Wertheim continues her residency in Providence with a series of workshops, conversations and talks with the Brown, RISD and local community, to discuss how she has pioneered creative new methods for engaging the public about scientific and environmental issues by putting people and communities at the core.
Her residency is part of TAPS’ Performance as Research: a semester exploring intersecting artistic, scientific, and humanistic discovery in the academy, funded by the Humanities Initiative, the Creative Arts Council, the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Office of the President, Pembroke, History, Science and Technology Studies, the Environmental Change Initiative and Applied Math and Mathematics.
For more details about the talk and to pre-register for the residency, please visit the website: http://brown.edu/academics/theatre-arts-performance-studies/margaret-wertheim-schedule-public-events
