I have produced short documentaries (Hacking Istanbul, 2015) and science communication films (Tactics for Quotidian Anthropocenes, Slavery and the Anthropocene, 2019). I currently work on another short documentary film about the petrochemical industry in Southeast Texas.
I am interested in thinking about the expansion of Taiwanese petrochemical manufacturer Formosa Plastics from a visual perspective.
I have a special interest in installation ethnography and to think further about how to integrate ‘online’ and ‘offline’ parts of the exhibition. It be an opportunity to think more about working with the scenery of the exhibition -- lighting, room dividers, sound, use of screens. Last year’s exhibition was divided into five different ‘functions’, which in turn shaped the flow of the guided tour (going from one to the next section).
I would like to continue last year’s engagement with visualization in Earth System sciences and other disciplines. I recently attended an interdisciplinary symposium on “the Anthropocene”.” Climate scientists from the Anthropocene Working Group showed a graphic they produced, and which was perceived as effective and affective by many panelists (used in Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, 2018).
Since I was involved in the design of material for the exhibition last year (logos, brochures, digital slideshows), I’d be open for discussion on how this year’s insights might be more represented. Right now the logos look nice, but maybe they could do more work? Also, what kind of supplemental material (such as brochures) do we want to hand out?
Participation in VtS last year, coupled with plans for research and teaching (beginning in fall 2020) that I am organizing under an umbrella I am calling Remapping Chemicals, Environments, and Toxicity.Remapping Chemicals builds on my current book project, Compound Words, a history of the molecule-by-molecule worldview of the chemical sciences (narrowly construed), focusing on how this default ontology (so to speak) was embodied in and co-entrenched with information infrastructures (first print, then also machine-based) and bureaucratic procedures.
Minimal. I have the sort of amateur web design and graphic arts experience of somebody who is totally untrained but nitpicky about the look of his slides and websites. From a youthful dalliance with ed-tech, I have some rather rusty experience with SQL databases, content management and tagging, and collaborative work on homegrown digital platforms. Probably my most relevant knowledge is my historical and ethnographic work on the design of standards, research data formats, and database platforms in the chemical sciences.
If I do pursue the toxaphene project that I mentioned, possibilities include:A toxaphene manufacturing plant in Brunswick, GA circa 1910s-1960s:https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/dec/10/toxic-chemicals-managed-forests-georgia-southLongleaf pine forest restoration sites—all over my part of North Carolina—aiming to replant the trees whose stumps were ground into toxaphene.
All of them! But I am most interested in place, toxicity, and collaboration ethnography/history.
