Rebecca Pinkus sent the following message:

Canadian industrial landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky’s newest project, “Oil” has recently opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, along with several related gallery shows in Amsterdam, New York, and Toronto. The Corcoran exhibit is on through mid-December, after which it will travel through 2011.

I was privileged to work as a Research Associate on this project for the past three years, and attended the exhibit opening in early October: the exhibit is fantastically curated and is a must-see for all envirotechies. It should be required viewing for just about everyone everywhere. The book (tome) that accompanies the exhibit is also worth examining if you can get hold of it. Dr. William Rees (University of British Columbia, and coiner of the term “ecological footprint”) has presented a thought-provoking essay on our relationship with oil, and Michael Mitchell (Canadian author and filmmaker) has supplied some great essays on the historical and social elements of the various “chapters” in Burtynsky’s project.

For those of you unable to make the trek to see the exhibit, you can find many of the images on Burtynsky’s site under “Galleries” or by checking the second Corcoran link listed below.

http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

http://www.corcoran.org/burtynsky/index.php – this link will give you the exhibit images: http://www.corcoran.org/exhibitions/press%5Fburtynsky/

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2009/10/03/burtynsky-oil-corcoran.html

Very briefly (in a tweet or so) the six projects discussed involved the following: the architecture and politics of solar power homes (Daniel Barber); the engineering of a forest to influence climate-scale dynamics (Robert Gardner); designer drugs that are complicating the notion of clinical tests (Shera Moxley); food production and consumption (Nic Mink); sensing and the sense of place (Joy Parr); and opening the black box of the brain to better understand how historical actors experienced major changes in the sensory environment (Ed).

[Read more →]

Envirotech invites submissions for the Envirotech Prize for Best Article on the Inter play between Technology and the Environment.  The Envirotech Prize recognizes the best article published in either a journal or article collection on the relationship between technology and the environment in history.  The prize committee is particularly seeking innovative publications that explore new ways of thinking about the interplay between technological systems and the natural environment.  Articles originally published in any language are welcome, but applicants must provide a translation of non-English articles.  More junior scholars are especially encouraged to submit their publications. To be eligible for the 2010 prize, the article must be published between January 1, 2008, and October 30, 2009.

The Envirotech Prize carries a cash award of $250 and will be conferred at the American Society for Environmental History conference in Portland, Oregon, March 10-14, 2010.

Send one electronic copy of your article and a brief curriculum vitae to prize@envirotechweb.org to be considered. The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2009.

Tim LeCain’s book is out on Rutgers University Press!

MASS DESTRUCTION:

The Men and Giant Mines That Wired America and Scarred the Planet (Rutgers University Press, 2009)

Timothy J. LeCain [Read more →]

The Sunday, 9-10:15 am session slot at SHOT 2009 in Pittsburgh has been dedicated to SIG-specific sessions. Envirotech will be having a session called “Taking Risks: New Directions in the History of Technology and Environment.” The session will begin by having panelists present some ideas about where they see Envirotech potentially going based on their own research or project ideas. We have two senior panelists and four graduate students doing some exciting cutting edge stuff who are slated to talk: Ed Russell (Univ of Virginia); Joy Parr (Univ of Western Ontario); Daniel Barber (Columbia Univ); Robert Gardner (Montana State); Shera Moxley (Carnegie Mellon Univ); and Nic Mink (Univ of Wisconsin-Madison). Using the short presentations as a springboard, we will have a group discussion about where Envirotech might be headed in the future.

We hope to see many of you there.

The University Press of Mississippi will release Craig Colten’s new book, Perilous Place, Powerful Storms:  Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana in July 2009.

The hurricane protection systems that failed New Orleans when Katrina roared on shore in 2005 were the product of four decades of engineering hubris, excruciating delays, and social conflict. In Perilous Place, Powerful Storms, Craig E. Colten traces the protracted process of erecting massive structures designed to fend off tropical storms and examines how human actions and inactions left the system incomplete on the eve of its greatest challenge.

For more information see: http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1177

Invitation to World Congress participants

Envirotech will be having an informal meeting during the World Congress of Environmental History in Copenhagen. The meeting will be Friday, 7 August, 16:00 – 17:00 at Cafe Væksthuset ( a nearby cafe constructed from an old University of Copenhagen greenhouse). The meeting will include ample time to meet and greet fellow envirotechies, share individual project & publication news, and get updated on happenings within the organization.

We will have a reserved space in the cafe for the group but no refreshments will be provided. Attendees are encouraged to buy food and/or drink at the cafe and bring it to our tables, since the cafe is not charging us to meet there. A sample of their offerings can be viewed at http://www.cafe.life.ku.dk/Udvalg.aspx (in Danish).

If you are interested in attending the meeting, please email me at dolly@jorgensenweb.net (this is not a commitment to attend but it will help the cafe know how many people will be there). I will send out a map with walking directions from the conference site to the cafe to those who email me.

ICOHTEC & TICCIH Joint Conference 2010

Reusing the Industrial Past

10–15 August 2010 Tampere, Finland

A Joint Conference between the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) and The International Committee for the
Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH). The International Association of the Labour Museums (WORKLAB) is a minor partner in the conference. [Read more →]

Conference organized by the graduate program Topology of Technology of the Darmstadt University of Technology

To be held at the Fraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, Germany, 7 – 9 October, 2009

Phenomena recognized as spatial arrangements are complex—thus we need tools to cope with them. Models can serve as tools for researchers and practitioners alike. There are two distinct yet interwoven aspects of models, both of which will be addressed by this conference: models as analytical devices and models as a reference for intervention. Models and other forms of abstract representations are generated to organize findings and to simulate options. In decision-making processes models have  an enormous impact in that they provide guidelines for implementations as well as legitimation in situations of conflict, even though they are also increasingly understood as constructions. [Read more →]