We are delighted to announce Linda Williams' wonderful text - New Perspectives in
environmental Art: Us and Them – Umwelten,
will feature in the Exhibition catalogue.
Here is a snippit from the text....
The
concept of umwelten, is a term derived from the work of the early 20th Century
biologist and ethologist Jakob von Uexküll. In the German umwelt means
‘surrounding world’, or ‘self-centred world’ and for von Uexküll, umwelten
conveyed the idea of the vast range of creatures occupying worlds whose meaning
could be understood from their specific point of perspective. Within myriad
umwelten then, diverse creatures experience their umwelt differently, yet von
Uexküll’s findings led him to conclude that communication, or semiosis, was a
process of interaction common to the umwelten of all organisms: whether human
or non-human. The study of these processes of communication formed the basis of
biosemiotics, of which perhaps one of the best-known studies is the
‘information dance’ of bees......
Image- World Species Market, Debbie Symons
Linda Williams is Associate Professor in Art, Environment and Cultural Studies and
Program Coordinator of the Honours Program in the School of Art. She leads the RMIT Global Ecologies Research Group. Along
with her work as a widely published art critic, she has published in
the field of the history of culture and science, philosophy and
critical theory, and is an active member of the Globalization and
Culture project in the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT. She is
also an international reader for the ARC.
