Ann T. Rosenthal

Over the last few months, I’ve collaborated on two new projects now showing in Pittsburgh. The first is at the Mattress Factory as part of the exhibition Gestures 15, curated by Katherine Talcott, in collaboration with Wendy Osher, with video contributions from Hot Spots collaborators Karin Bergdolt (Germany) and Elizabeth Monoian (Dubai).

Within the frame of a ‘natural’ history diorama, Late Anthropocene: Three Continents poses a question forged from the remains of our carbon-dependent world. Traces of a yellow brick road lead to an abandoned landscape captured in Pittsburgh; Nurnberg, Germany; and Dubai. Visitors are invited to consider this historical moment where past and future converge, and the possibility for change exists.

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Photo Credit: Brian Koski

Interpretive panel on right reads: In the mid-21^st century, geologists formally agreed that a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene, had begun. The term reflects the lasting impact humans have had on the planet, altering the course of evolution in ways that will last tens of millions of years—a distinction formerly reserved for natural geologic events, such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. These human impacts include habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species, which have caused widespread extinctions; ocean acidification, which has changed the chemical makeup of the seas; and urbanization, which has vastly increased rates of sedimentation and erosion.

The term “Anthropocene” was originally coined by Paul Crutzen, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds.

I think I am nearing my saturation point for new technologies, but perhaps all the more reason to start a blog (yes, I know, blogs have been around for a while). I am fed up with maintaining multiple web sites for various projects. Frankly, I believe that static web sites are archaic and will be replaced… eventually. They certainly have their place if you can a) afford to pay a webmaster or b) have nothing better to do than update your site. For myself, wanting to spend more and more of my creative time either in the studio or working on projects in my community, web maintenance has become a serious burden. Thus I am migrating to a blog to see if it might suffice for presenting my work and keeping my friends and followers informed as to my latest creative pursuits.

I am still waiting for a flexible product that will combine the best of FB, web sites, ning and the like without all that silly stuff like gifts, games, and tweets. Can we not have something for those of us who want to work collaboratively across time and geographies, on multiple projects, sharing images and documents? Well, until that day comes and programmers figure out that some of us have better things to do than tweet our days away, I will see how this blog will meet my needs!

Come back if you’d like to see me try to make some sense of art, life, creativity, sustainability, teaching, learning, and growing older (and hopefully a bit wiser).