What is an Agent-Based Model, and how does it help us understand a pandemic?

Agent-based models (ABMs) are computer simulations capable of accounting for differences in individual (human or other organism) attributes. They can be used to predict how circumstances involving many individuals interacting with one another and their environment might unfold under a range of scenarios. Questions an ABM simulation might help us to answer include, How would motor traffic operate if we add a new road from one city to another?; How would people vote in an election if we spread misinformation over online social networks?; How will this virus spread through our city? 

How do these simulations work? What makes them capable of prediction, and what are their limitations? How are they applied to understand a pandemic?

For clarity, I'll place ABMs into the specific realm of social and human behavioural simulation. Each individual (real) person has unique cultural, behavioural, physiological, psychological and physical attributes. These differences all impact the way we make decisions, and the way we interact with the world around us. ABMs take these individual differences into account by explicitly representing an "individual" and the historical conditions it has experienced, as well as the local conditions it is currently experiencing. Here's a simple example... if I fell off my bicycle and my twin sister did not, I may develop a fear of cycling that my sister does not develop, even though our upbringing, genetics and environment may be very similar. I would then be expected to make different decisions to my sister following the bicycle accident with regard to my assessment of cycling safety. This would impact my future interactions with the world around me in various circumstances. An ABM would explicitly model these different circumstances within an individual "agent" that forms part of a simulation containing many such agents that interact with one another and their environment. The simulation is in effect a complete "virtual world" full of independent agents that make decisions based on their past, their present situation, and their goals for the future.

One way to think about an ABM is as a large computer game, such as Pacman, with thousands of "ghosts" and no player-controlled Pacman character. Each ghost is an "agent" in the software that has its own position in the world, and its own goals, direction of travel, colour and history of interactions, relationships, movements and experiences. Each ghost moves around the virtual world meeting other ghosts, making decisions about what to do when it encounters another, or deciding which way to turn at a junction in the road. The observer just watches the game unfold but can also establish and alter the conditions under which the virtual world operates. They might state explicitly key attributes of the simulation in response to questions such as, How many ghosts are in the world? What are their properties? How big is the world? How are the roads connected? Then, once the world is established, the observer can see circumstances unfold with some semblance to how they unfold in the real world. This can be used to test out ideas about how to improve the world, stop the spread of a virus, save more lives, save more jobs, or preserve a nation's economy.

An ABM for modelling human interactions in a city might be realised as a virtual world full of human agents and non-agent infrastructure such as transport networks, schools, workplaces and homes. To understand how a pandemic spreads we could set up our world full of human agents that have tendencies to wear face masks, or not; tendencies to socially distance, or not; likelihoods to catch viruses, become contagious, and pass on viruses to other agents nearby. The world can have virus agents too - these might only exist within the bodies of a human agent but be passed from human agent to human agent by close contact. Adult human agents in the virtual world might live in households with other children and adult agents of different genders and ages. They might go to work during the day, travelling on virtual transport networks and exposing them to situations where they come in close contact with agents from other households. This could put them at risk of catching a virus if the agent they meet is carrying one, but this will depend on how the two agents specifically handle the interaction - Were they wearing a face-mask during the meeting? Did they stay 1.5m apart? Was the carrier agent shouting or singing?

In building such a complex model, the modeller must always make decisions about what aspects of the real world can be left out. For instance, if eye colour is felt to be irrelevant to a pandemic, there'd be no need to worry about modelling it. Or if the clothing worn by a human was irrelevant, that too would not be modelled. The difficult trick is figuring out what must be included in the model, and what can be omitted. If a key feature of the world for understanding a situation is left out, the behaviour of the model will not bear a close resemblance to the real world system it is supposed to be modelling. For instance if the model doesn't include humans wearing face-masks, then we can't use it to understand what the difference is between a real world with face-masks and one without. Similarly, if we misrepresent the conditions under which a virus spreads (assuming it spreads by contact with droplets on surfaces instead of via aerosols perhaps), then the virtual virus will spread through a community in our model in a way differently to how it spreads in reality, making our model potentially misleading. Hence, our models need constant improvement as we come to understand more and more about the real world situation we are modelling.

ABMs are an extremely powerful way to help us understand the complexities of human interactions and disease spread. They require a lot of expertise to design, a lot of expertise to build and operate, a lot of expertise also to calibrate and validate against the real world. And their results need to be interpreted carefully by experts. They aren't a magic bullet, but they are proving extremely useful in the world's present situation. Without  computer scientists and epidemiologists, the experts constructing, operating and interpreting these models, it's fair to say we'd be running blind when it comes to handling today's pandemic. Sadly, when people ignore the science, well... the ramifications are distressing to say the least.

Extra reading: Here is an Open Access research article (I co-authored with some of the people leading Australia's current pandemic response modelling some years back) explaining an agent-based model, Synthetic Population Dynamics: A Model of Household Demography. This will provide some detail for those wanting to see how researchers use an agent-based model of human behaviour. ABMs are also valuable in understanding ecological interactions, here's a research article (work by an ex-PhD student I supervised recently) ABM simulating bee-flower interactions A-Bees See: A Simulation to Assess Social Bee Visual Attention During Complex Search Tasks.

insect mating

It is autumn in Melbourne. The days are getting shorter, the mornings frostier, but the weather has been glorious for cycling. It is also Preying Mantis mating season. I narrowly avoided one on the road this morning, bright green against the bitumen. The second I saw this afternoon as I left work had not been so lucky. It was squashed flat by a bicycle tyre before my arrival. If it was a female it might not yet have mated or laid its eggs. If it was male, it could not yet have mated or it would already have lost its head! (It hadn't.) It was probably too big to have been a male anyway.

Funny how sometimes I really need to look hard to notice the insects on my daily activities. This is true even when they scream at me from the trees (summer cicadas) or the grass (autumn crickets). At other times they are hard to avoid... such as last spring when dozens of pairs of mating ants fell from the sky to copulate un-ceremoniously on our deck table whilst I read emails!

moral sustainability and cycling - robert nelson

(Moral sustainability and cycling: an ecology of ambition for a hyperactive planet. Published by St. Andrews Sustainability Institute and Ellikon, Melbourne 2010.)

Although I was aware that the author of this text frequently commuted by bicycle and that he was an active art critic, the discovery of his new mini-book on the links between cycling and our current environmental predicament was an exciting surprise. In this essay Robert investigates the reasons many people make uncomfortable cyclists, in particular why many are unwilling to cycle-commute despite recognising its health and environmental benefits. So, why do people buy themselves a shiny new steed on which to commute to work, and then after a few days hide it in the spare room to gather dust and cobwebs?

As well as dealing with the obvious discomforts associated with vigorous activity in the outdoors, the author addresses a number of seldom considered aspects of the daily pedal to work. He reveals several reasons that have little to do with the availability of bike paths, the extra time that might be involved or the danger of mobile-phone wielding mothers in 4WDs. One reason explored was the disparaging high-speed, lycra-clad bunches of athletes and their portrayal in the media as “real” and glamourous cyclists. Cyclists outside of this context are perceived in the Australian psyche as inferior and sub-human. There are of course exceptions. For instance cycling helmetless down a country lane with a basket of bread, cheese and wine is acceptably Euro-romantic and a “simple” pleasure that even advertisers legitimise. Commuting when a car would do? Holding up peak hour traffic by occupying a lane? Never would cycling in this way be seen as desirable or marketable in our country.

It is here that I find one significant issue that the essay misses, the “fixie phenomenon”. Countless teenagers, university students and some alternative lifestylers here and in many major cities hostile to cyclists, have, in the last ten or so years, cottoned on to the New York bicycle couriers’ preference for track bikes. They carry messenger bags slung over a shoulder and hefty bike chains are worn as bodily adornment. Melbourne now has fleets of NY messenger impersonators heading brakeless into traffic. They run red lights, skid and skip their rear wheels through pedestrian crowds, before heading like bicycle salmon against the flow of one-way streets.

I have even witnessed a student at my university driving his fixie to a nearby hotel carpark, removing it from the boot and cycling the last few hundred meters to university. I can speculate on the reasons for this: (i) It is too far and too hilly for him to ride his fixie’s one gear from home to university; (ii) The fixie is cool, a geared bicycle is not. He would not consider riding geared; (iii) He saves himself the cost of the permit required to park his car at university and has the added bonus of impressing his friends with his lovely bicycle upon his arrival.

I have also seen a different student call out to another as he rolled past on his way to class, “Yeah, sweet bike. Fixie mate!” The bike was not actually fixed, it was a single-speed with a freewheel. It was not "sweet" either. It was a crappy 1980s ten-speed conversion. But these subtleties were lost in the excitement of the pedestrianian's proclaimation of his identification with the rider.

This phenomenon has made commuting by bicycle cool, even here in the motorcar’s second homeland. It contributes to providing a solution for the middle-aged commuter who understands the sense in having brakes, mudguards and panniers. I have seen cyclists aged between 14 and 80 riding fixed gear bikes, with and without mudguards, lights and panniers. The mere fact that a bike is fixed gives its rider the credibility that many crave. Maybe, just maybe, this removes a few cars from our roads. It certainly raises the visibility of cyclists on our roads. For this I am thankful.

As Nelson indicates, as soon as you can afford a car it is barely socially acceptable for you to ride. Our society is set up so that there is no prestige associated with making your appearance at the office bathed in sweat. Physical activity in this context is uncouth. Are you too poor to afford motorised transport? Nelson proposes the electric bicycle to be one machine with the potential to remedy these problems.

Unfortunately, as he notes, electric bicycles have one major drawback — they are seriously uncool. Whilst the fume-spewing 50 cc Vespa has euro-café-style and Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday sophistication, none of this washes off on the humble electric bike, despite its better environmental credentials. I agree with Nelson that these are marvellous pieces of engineering. But as he knows too well, they are not sexy artefacts. I am not sure how this might be rectified, if at all. Maybe a manufacturer could convince a supermodel to pose naked on one?

A valid engineering solution to a recognised problem may stare people in the face, yet it may be overlooked for purely social reasons. The consequences of this type of human stubbornness have often resulted in a needless struggle for survival. This has sometimes been followed by extinction of entire cultures. Colonial societies for instance have carried the ways of their homelands to new horizons. Rather than adapting their behaviour by mimicking the successful lifestyles of the locals, they have stubbornly clung to inappropriate agricultural practices, poor hunting and gathering choices, incongruous architectural styles and scarce but familiar building materials. The results include malnourishment, starvation, decimation of local ecosystems and, as Jared Diamond discusses in his book of the same name, Collapse. As a planet we are headed this way via our momentum-propelled reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable population growth.

Nelson’s book is entertaining, slightly rambling but always insightful. This style suits me perfectly. A diversion exploring the eroticism of the bicycle saddle was amusing but, I felt, unnecessary. This tangent in particular seemed to confuse the book’s main drive to detail our relationship with the bicycle in all its engineering simplicity and marketed complexity, and to explore its socio-environmental credentials. In these latter respects the text is informative and original. It has stimulated me to think more deeply about why I ride so often and why I seldom commute.

the death of j.g. ballard

Crash. Until I'd read Ballard's book, I had no idea twisted metal, burning plastic and shattered bones could be considered by anybody to be erotic. I remember diving into the text on a flight home from Canada 15 years ago. The air hostess thought I was reading about aeroplane crashes... "Ahhh. Ummm. No. Actually the book is about sex in car accidents." I think that stunned her. She didn't pose any more questions apart from those she was paid to ask. "Tea or coffee?"

"J.G. Ballard died of cancer on the 19th August, aged 78", I read over my morning toast. The first thing that sprang to mind was Crash. Then by chance my eyes fell upon the water level indicator on the front page of the paper and a vague memory of The Drought returned... people travelling miles across barren salt plains created by desalination plants to capture sea-water with paddles and sweep it homewards... it has been a long time since I read this book. Concrete Island is fresher in my mind... an architect becomes trapped in a concrete space between freeway lanes. Unable to escape, he spends days, then weeks in the company of a couple of other outcasts who call the tiny island in urban hell their home. Shades here of one of my favourite books, Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes. Ballard was that kind of writer.

I only know a half dozen of Ballard's books, but of those, I'd call Crash and Concrete Island "great" works of disturbing fiction. His comments on human psychology, the bizarre but believable views he takes towards humankind's future and that of our planet, all ensure I am saddened by his passing.

the death of arne næss

A couple of weeks ago Arne Næss, the instigator of Deep Ecology, died at 96... a ripe old age! In reading his obituary I discovered he was a keen mountaineer. I am surprised by the number of philosophical writers who are also mountaineers. Mountaineering is not a very common past-time for Australians (we don't really have any mountains here and need to make a trip across the ditch to NZ to climb). Of course in Japan, New Zealand, Europe and Scandinavia (well, at least Norway) the sport is much more popular and you are likely to find yourself sitting on a train beside a person cuddling a day-pack, rope, crampons and ice tools. Still, I wonder, does the experience of mountaineering, its struggles, the extremes of temperature and slope, the ultimate dependence on your climbing partner, and the risk, breed philosophers? Or do philosophical types turn to the mountains? Whichever way it works, the allure of the world's peaks is hard to resist for any with a spirit of adventure, sturdy knees and a love for nature.

carbon ecologies - richard thomas

On the second floor of the Carlton Hotel in the Melbourne CBD (2nd flr, 193 Bourke St.) are a handful of ex-hotel rooms (with cutely numbered doors) that are housing Richard Thomas' exhibition Carbon Ecologies for the next couple of days. On the floor below, hundreds of men and women in smart office attire sipped their after-work beer as the artist's friends, acquaintances and family members packed themselves into the tiny rooms to enjoy a series of international works, the first of which was created in 1998, well before Carbon was a trendy dinner party conversation topic in Hawthorn, Toorak and Canberra.

There's something much more raw about attending an exhibition in a cramped and tired suite of rooms above a bustling hotel than in visiting (for instance) a glossy, glitzy showcase of Art-Deco at the NGV. In Thomas' case, and especially for the work he was exhibiting, the venue was (almost) perfect. What I've seen of his work is down-to-earth and deliberately rough-hewn. It would have been disconcerting, perhaps even hypocritical, to see these works arrayed across a glistening, echoic and expansive gallery. Or would it? The artist might have been pleased with an NGV blockbuster.

The two works at the exhibition that most attracted my attention were Brown Out (2008), "a simulated coal face, using brown coal from the Mattingley coal mine near Bacchus Marsh. Brown coal is being burnt in real time to generate the electricity which lights the installation." and Carbon Cycle 2 (1999) which was realised as part of the Natural Disasters exhibition at Monash University Museum of Art (Curated by Zara Stanhope). Three metal trays presented the three primary materials providing energy and transforming terrestrial carbon into carbon dioxide, these being coal, oil and wood carbon."

Why did these works attract my attention in particular? Carbon Cycle 2 is a beautiful installation in all ways. I am strongly in favour of beauty in art! Firstly the viewer is struck by the textural qualities of the materials. The matte black irregularity of the coal and the slick mirrored surface of the oil make this a fascinating aesthetic object. At least one woman reached down to touch the oil, attempting to reconcile the shiny hard surface with her understanding that it was in fact liquid. These boxes of unfathomably dense black are also difficult to reconcile with the invisible gaseous CO2 that is emitted when they are oxidised. It seems absurd that their solidity can depart in this way. I suppose Carbon is not unlike the soul of these materials. As they are exhumed and cremated the soul is left to wander about the atmosphere causing strife. The work is sublime in the way that Malevich's Black Square or a Rothko is sublime. I would have appreciated a chair beside the work so that I could sit and gaze into the inky darkness. If people were so inclined perhaps they could also sit and contemplate their own reflection in the slick oil - Narcissus sees himself reflected in the oil he burns.

Brown Out is a fantastic surprise. "Down the corridor and on the left" ...directions you'd be given at any hotel to find your room. But step inside and your feet are nearly buried in a mass of steeply sloping coal dotted with blackened bulbs. Never one to shun hard work, I expect Thomas carted all this coal up two steep flights of CBD stairs, slaved away in a tiny, dusty room (no doubt for many hours) in order to confront the visitor with such a spectacle. Considering the show is on for a mere three days I find this even more marvellous!

Indeed, we were burning the coal fires as we chatted under the installed lighting. Thankfully though even this was taken into account. The emissions of the exhibition are offset through his own company, treecreds.com. I am so glad I caught public transport to the opening!

wall-e

Wall-E gets my thumbs up. I couldn't help myself. The story was so predictable, the moral so overt and the characters so typically Disney, but it was great.

The Earth has been buried under mountains of rubbish and the Human race has departed for life on a giant cruise (space) ship where their every need is catered for by a squadron of handy robots. All inter-human interactions occur on-screens from the comfort of mobile, levitating deck chairs. People have (d)evolved into jelly blobs. Meanwhile, back on Earth, a sole cleaning robot, Wall-E, remains diligently collecting and organising the rubbish. He gets immense pleasure from watching an old video of Hello Dolly he has found in the rubbish... and then along comes a surprise.

The animation is great, the rendering super, the dialogue minimal. The sound effects are distinctly Apple-flavoured. The film is closer to traditional character animation than the usual Hollywood dross. I rate it 4 stars David. Me too Margaret.

the ecologies project - first glance

I just ducked in to The Ecologies Project at Monash Uni's Museum of Art. The exhibition is still being set up so I'll not give a full run down, just comment on a few works that caught my attention.

The first surprise was Sandra Selig's spider webs (image at left). Sorry, I don't know the name of the pieces — they didn't yet have a plaque. These are beautiful works, the kind of craft and aesthetics that makes me sit up and pay attention in a gallery. I was a little disappointed they were hung so high, they would reward detailed inspection. From a distance the webs appear to be interstellar clouds and have a liquidity about them that is resolved at close range into an infinity of fine thread. The luminous colours with which they are sprayed and the black background suggests that the artist too noted the potential vastness of these structures. "To see a world in a grain of sand... and all that Blakesque philosophy". Trite but true. A grey web on black has an elegance about it that the coloured forms lack. The sheen emerges instead from the varied density of the threads and the angle of the reflected light. All the same, these are lovely!

The similarity of patterns at multiple scales is a source of wonder for many scientists and artists. To see a spider's web as a colossal structure and an interstellar cloud as a tiny pattern in a lens is to muddle the usual perspective. A spider's web is an impenetrable, deadly thicket, a home, a nuisance that makes one's heart jump as it grabs at face and hair in the dark. This multi-level, visceral aspect of the thread is well captured in Selig's frames.

I'd never seen a decent print of Peter Dombrovskis' Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania (1979)... until now. This iconic image mobilised Australians as far away as Darwin to give a damn about a dam in Tasmania. It lifted the Australian conservation movement's impact up a notch and received global attention in some quarters. I place this image's cultural significance alongside the shot of blue Earth against the enormity of space. Both images reveal a world that was hidden. In each we see something worthy of protection.

The Franklin is an unseen place. Spectacular wilderness that is anything but mundane. For some, just the thought that places like this exist is necessary. Without them the world is somehow impoverished, albeit in a way that is often poorly articulated by those who have never experienced wilderness directly. (There I go complaining again about how others don't understand things as well as I do. I must break this irritating habit!) In Dombrovskis' image the river is wild, powerful and primal. This water is not just "The Franklin", it is all wild rivers, even all wilderness and this idea must be preserved. "No Dams", as a young high-school student this was (I think) the second time environmental issues appeared on my radar. The first was an effort to, "Save the Whales". I cannot recall any specific iconic image, only a pin badge I somehow acquired for the cause and non-specific footage of whales being slaughtered. Morning Mist is no 20 cent pin badge. It is the kind of accessible spectacle that hangs as well on a gallery wall, a board-room alcove, or as a poster in a politically-aware share house.

The Earth from space is in many ways the counterpoint to the Franklin. It is the everyday Earth. The planet on which we live. But its bounds are rendered explicitly. Its fragility and above all its uniqueness, dominate the image. Not its strength. The Earth is not a symbol for all planets nor is it a concept, it is just Our One Earth. On that globe all of humanity lives. All of history, all art and love and war. All the ecosystems of which we are a part share this tiny bubble in the enormity of the universe. Unlike the Franklin, the Earth is tiny, meek and mild. It is us, and we are alone. How pitiful, how insignificant are our battles. And yet, how vital it is that we fight them — from down here, the spider's web is a galaxy and we are flies trapped in it. We cannot escape to view our Earth from afar.

There's one more image (actually cinema footage) that immediately sprang to mind when I started considering Morning Mist. That's the footage of the last Thylacine pacing its cage in the Hobart Zoo (1930s). I've written about this footage before. A desperate animal, impatient, captive, the only thing certain is its death and the extinction of its kind. This sums up our colonisation of Australia, the way we treated its inhabitants and the way we continue to disrupt the ecosystems that have evolved here. We have a lot to be Sorry about.

Also in The Ecologies Project was a wall-sized video projection of an open-cut mine shot from its floor. Trucks and diggers shunted rock around a whitened, dusty landscape. The pale powder had been spread around the gallery and a rather flimsy looking white sculpture reminiscent of a drill or over-head pump had been erected here also. This work troubled me somewhat. I think the idea has potential but it fell a bit flat on first viewing. The video lacked punch, the machines lacked energy, the footage was bleached and pale, perhaps to convey the dusty greyness of the mine, perhaps the projector was just not up to the task. The sculpture looked cheap and impotent beside the seductive moving imagery. Was this deliberate?

Whilst there were several works in the exhibition I really thought were weak, this wasn't one of them. I just haven't worked out what I saw in it that kept me watching. I suspect that I have become so numbed by Hollywood's spectacular visual feats that video-art needs to pack a super-human punch to reach me or to take a completely different tack. At least the work wasn't a one-line gag!

The bleak minescape was certainly "interesting" but the video did not convey the awesome size of the site, nor the equipment, nor the immensity of the damage the mine symbolises. I think The Eden Project's breath-taking and theatrical approach is far more thought-provoking (The Eden Project was built in an old open-cut mine.) The immensity of the Grand Canyon is far more awe-inspiring. This work needs to do more than depict something that is better experienced first hand. Morning Mist succeeds where this fails because the photograph romanticises the wilderness. It takes the hard work, the biting cold, the mud and fierce rapids out of the river and leaves us with a symbol upon which to hang an imaginary wilderness. The mine footage takes all of the dust and noise out of the open-sore in the Earth, but I feel it leaves us with nothing and for this reason perhaps it failed to arrest me, despite my hope that it would.

I will revisit the gallery and see if I change my mind!

diorama gallery

The American Museum of Natural History has some lovely dioramas... and they are illustrated in the diorama gallery on their website! I adore these miniature worlds. An African plain, Californian valley, an Asian mountain range or an Australian desert all can be compressed into a virtual, tardis-like space along with the appropriate flora and fauna. A long walk for little legs can take a kid from one window to the next and an opportunity to gaze into the world's habitats. Is there anything more comforting than strolling down the halls of a museum at a travel destination and encountering a scene taken from the forest back home?

Of course at home in Melbourne's Museum Victoria we have had some fascinating dioramas also. I suspect that they may no longer exist. Please somebody tell me I am wrong! That would be a serious loss. Of course they reflected 1950s attitudes to Australian Aborigines in particular and present our landscape in simplistic, romantic ways. They are icons of their time, like Women's Weekly advertisements for white-goods aimed at Anglo-Saxon housewives and nuclear families. Australia's landscape is an integral part of the identity of the European settlers who colonised it and those who migrated here much later (but have taken the time to get out of the metropolises along its eastern seaboard).

Viewing the continent's flora and fauna from behind the glass wall of a museum exhibition is quite appropriate. We see the landscape as outsiders, peering in on a strange diorama, limited in the range of perspectives we adopt by the cultural baggage we have carried with us from Europe. Who are we staring at? It used to be that we stared at the Aboriginal people, standing holding spears and boomerangs in a dusty, grass-dotted plane, roasting a lace monitor on the fire. They belonged in the landscape with the kangaroos and koalas. We gawked stupidly from behind the safety of the glass.

But here we are, shaping the diorama as we see fit. Placing its inhabitants in idyllic hunter-gatherer settings that romanticise the history we cruelly interrupted, whilst hiding its difficulties and completely ignoring the damage we continue to inflict. Living here is a wonderful privilege, the cost of which has been born by others. Who'd have thought a museum diorama could hold so much?

The Ecologies Project - Monash Uni. Museum of Art

17 September 2008 - 22 November 2008

Opening function: Saturday 20 September 2008, 2pm
Curators: Geraldine Barlow and Dr Kyla McFarlane

Pre-opening curator's talk
Saturday 20 September at 1.30pm

Opening function
Saturday 20 September at 2.00pm
Monash University Museum of Art, Clayton Campus
With opening remarks at 2:45pm
by Professorial Fellow John Thwaites, Chairman of the Monash Sustainability Institute, and Former Deputy Victorian Premier and Minister for Environment, Water and Climate Change

What is this project that we are now undertaking, as we globally seek a new balance with the ecological systems that sustain us?

Will endgame, apocalyptic visions drive change, or can our wonder in the natural world inspire the creation of a brighter future?

Artists have long drawn inspiration from nature, as well as being advocates for a sustainable relationship between humanity and the environment. Now that a need for change has become broadly accepted, what role for art? Even with this accepted impetus to action, the particular paths we might take are unclear. It is an exciting and unsettling time as we sit between the darkest and most hopeful of futures. We must grapple with a myriad of abstract and interconnected systems, economic, environmental, social and philosophical. At this moment in time, art offers a lens through which we can examine the world as well as a kind of metaphorical thinking that can sharpen our perception of the relation between these complex parts and their impact on a dynamic whole. The Ecologies Project includes work by 40 artists exploring issues of sustainability, climate change and the idea of ecology as both form and metaphor.

LAURENCE ABERHART | LAUREN BERKOWITZ | CHRIS BOND | ANGELA BRENNAN | PAUL BUWANG BUWANG | JANET BURCHILL AND JENNIFER McCAMLEY | JOYCE CAMPBELL | MIKALA DWYER | MICHAEL CORRIDORE | PETER DOMBROVSKIS | BRODIE ELLIS | ANNA EPHRAIM | GALI YALKARRIWUY GURRUWIWI | ANDREW HAZEWINKEL | SUSAN JACOBS | ASH KEATING | NICK MANGAN | DHUWARRWARR MARIKA | MANDY MARTIN | VERA MÖLLER | JAMES MORRISON | ANNE NOBLE | HENRY NUPURRA | RAQUEL ORMELLA | FIONA PARDINGTON | LUKE PITHER | ADAM PYETT | STUART RINGHOLT | EWEN ROSS | SANDRA SELIG | ANDREW SINCLAIR | EILEEN YARITJA STEVENS | LISA STEWART | RICKY SWALLOW | CHRISTIAN THOMPSON | MICHELLE USSHER | ROHAN WEALLEANS | ROY WIGGAN | JOHN WOLSELEY

humans and the food chain

Val Plumwood, an Australian feminist and environmentalist fell Prey to a Crocodile in 1985. Her excellent essay on the incident is well worth a read, not only as a first-hand account of the experience, but for the way in which it provoked her to consider her own role in the food chain.
As Val points out, it is easy for us to see ourselves as apart from nature when we spend our entire lives free of the threat of being eaten. Even after we have died we go to great lengths to prevent our body becoming food for others... we bury ourselves in stout boxes, beneath the level of tree roots, away from the reach of flies and insects. We place a hefty stone slab across the grave to prevent animals from digging up our remains. Contrast this to the practice of leaving criminals suspended in gibbets to become food for crows and maggots.

ecological design

Notes on the 10th Anniversary Edition of Ecological Design, by Sim van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan. This is a terrific book that collects ideas from numerous sources into a coherent statement of how we might best rectify the mess we have gotten ourselves into. In some places it waffles a little but it is always thought-provoking and helpful.

"In many ways, the environmental crisis is a design crisis. It is a consequence of how things are made, buildings are constructed, and landscapes are used. Design manifests culture, and culture rests firmly on the foundation of what we believe to be true about the world. Our present forms of agriculture, architecture, engineering, and industry are derived from design epistemologies incompatible with nature's own. It is clear we have not given design a rich enough context. We have used design cleverly in the service of narrowly defined human interests but have neglected its relationship with our fellow creatures. Such myopic design cannot fail to degrade the living world, and, by extension, our own health." (p. 24-25)

This quote sums up the authors' approach neatly. The text proposes that human designers should not "take from nature" but that our designs should actually become a part of it by playing the same roles as organisms and ecosystems. We must ensure that the processes we employ for construction, and the structures they generate, mesh directly with nature's own processes. Everything we do must sit comfortably inside biology. So far our actions primarily degrade it.

My response to this book is therefore, "Design all things within the parameters laid down by organisms and ecosystems." That's a tough call, especially for someone whose career is based on the use of equipment that is so ecologically destructive. Green Computing? Yikes, that is a far cry from the kind of environmentalism the authors of this book champion.

radioactive and urban decay

A re-wander through the site by Elena "Kidd of Speed" reminds me of the variation in the scales of decay. The radioactive shower that Chernobyl received will last many generations. As far as
the former inhabitants and those that have chosen to die amongst the poison are concerned, too long to contemplate. The city itself is crumbling. Plants and animals are taking over, a little at a time. The website is compelling. For me it conjures up John Wyndham's Chrysalids (1955). I expect Elena is correct. Human life in the region will most likely vanish.

The view of Chernobyl given by Google maps confirms my feelings regarding maps and wilderness. I include a satellite image and a Google street map of the city to illustrate: I find the void disconcerting.

first post - ecotone

I am not an early adopter of new technology... I am too cautious and prefer to let others iron out the bumps. Blogging has settled and now I'm interested enough to give it a go. Besides, right now I have time for it. This will no doubt evaporate again in a couple of months and my blog will go as stale as the crust of bread at the back of the pantry. In the meantime, welcome.

ecotone, n. a region of transition between two biological communities.

Ecotone is a word I noted from a book that, after a shaky start, is growing on me: Ecological Design by Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan (1996). I think the label is appropriate for a blog which is no doubt going to be a region where my interests intermingle.