HYDRO- LOGIC
Artists and Designers as Change Agents for Water
JANUARY 18 – MARCH 5, 2016

IDEA Space

Hydro-Logic is an art exhibition and series of events geared to inspire students and community to participate as change makers for the sake of water=humanity through art and design. Featuring artists and designers who collaborate with scientists and innovative technologies to reveal inspiring approaches to the most critical resource known to humanity.

 The captivating, large-scale photographs of world-renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky reveal the enormity of Holocene issues, while artists such as power duo Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang demonstrate the ways that small, consistent efforts as an artistic practice can result in measurable reclamation results and compelling images created from beach plastic. Ohio artist and professor John Sabraw broadens the reclamation-as-art process by collaborating with scientists to extract toxic mining minerals from rivers to produce paint pigments and water-inspired paintings. And, architect Arturo Vittori applies form and function to create water collection vessels that save lives and enhance community gathering places.

 Unlike other environmentally themed exhibitions, “Hydro-Logic” will introduce visitors to a world of feasible solutions brought about through innovative creativity.

 The project also includes a series of lectures, talks, and films that consider various aspects of the current local and global water crisis.

Featuring: Edward Burtynsky, Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang of One Beach Plastic, John Sabraw, Arturo Vittori of Architecture and Vision, a community built plastic rubbish sculpture, and a series of inspiring talks and film screenings.

Sponsored by: the Colorado College Cultural Attractions Fund, the Art Department Stillman Fund for Exhibitions, The Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies, State of the Rockies, and, The Innovation Institute and The Environmental Program.

Guest Curator | Holly Parker

 

EVENTS:

Opening | Hydro-Logic Opening Reception and IDEA Cabaret
Thursday, January 21, 4:30 – 6pm
IDEA Space

Water is our most precious resource, and decisions we make now about water conservation affect the ways in which we live (and thrive) in the future. While the challenges are undeniable, artists and designers have joined the conversation to propose new avenues of thought and action.  At this IDEA Cabaret, featured artist Arturo Vittori, of the firm Architecture and Vision, will discuss his prototype water collection vessel, WarkaWater, artists Judith Selby and Richard Lang will speak (via Skype) about the connection between their artistic practices and their environmental activism, and IDEA will unveil a sculpture project created by the CC campus and Colorado Springs community

Sponsored by: the Colorado College Cultural Attractions Fund, the Art Department Stillman Fund for Exhibitions, The Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies, State of the Rockies, and, The Innovation Institutem and The Environmental Program

 

Conversation | IDEA Cabaret: Arid Lands Institute
Tuesday, January 26, 4:30 – 6pm
IDEA Space

The Arid Lands Institute (ALI) is an education, research and outreach center dedicated to design innovation in water-stressed environments. Affiliated with the architecture program at Woodbury University in Burbank, Calif., ALI is founded on the belief that “design professions have an unrecognized potential to catalyze public imagination, action, and leadership in the face of hydrologic variability brought on by climate change. To do so, design education has to change, and professional practices will as well.” Under the auspices of State of the Rockies and IDEA, ALI’s co-founders, Peter and Hadley Arnold, bring their innovative vision to Colorado Springs. At this IDEA Cabaret, Peter and Hadley Arnold will respond to the Hydro-logic and engage in a discussion with CC faculty members and students on water issues in the West.

Sponsored by State of the Rockies

Lecture + Lecture | Scale as Metaphor: Edward Burtynsky’s Vermont Quarry Photographs
by Kirsten Hoving, Ph.D.
March 3, 12:00 – 1:30pm
Slocum Commons

At this lunch and lecture, Art Historian Kirsten Hoving will discuss the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky, featured in the IDEA  Space exhibition Hydro-Logic.  Known for his remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes, Burtynsky explores the collective impact we as a species are having on the surface of the planet. Equally eloquent and disturbing, his work offers an inspection of the human systems we’ve imposed onto natural landscapes. After earning her Ph.D. at Columbia University, Kirsten Hoving joined the faculty of Middlebury in 1983. She teaches modern art and history of photography.  Her most recent book, Joseph Cornell and Astronomy: A Case for the Stars, was published by Princeton University Press in 2009.

 

Film | Watermark 
A Film by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky 
March 3, 2016 at 7 pm
Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center Film Screening Room

Watermark is a feature documentary from multiple-award winning filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier, and renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky, marking their second collaboration after Manufactured Landscapes in 2006. The film brings together diverse stories from around the globe about our relationship with water: how we are drawn to it, what we learn from it, how we use it and the consequences of that use. We see massive floating abalone farms off China’s Fujian coast and the construction site of the biggest arch dam in the world – the Xiluodu, six times the size of the Hoover. We visit the barren desert delta where the mighty Colorado River no longer reaches the ocean, and the water-intensive leather tanneries of Dhaka. We witness how humans are drawn to water, from the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach to the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, where thirty million people gather for a sacred bath in the Ganges at the same time. We speak with scientists who drill ice cores two kilometers deep into the Greenland Ice Sheet, and explore the sublime pristine watershed of Northern British Columbia. Shot in stunning 5K ultra high-definition video and full of soaring aerial perspectives, this film shows water as a terraforming element, as well as the magnitude of our need and use. In Watermark, the viewer is immersed in a magnificent force of nature that we all too often take for granted- until it’s gone.

The film screening room is located on the first floor of the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center
825 North Cascade Ave, Colorado Springs, CO. 80903