Monday, April 20 marked the first day of 2009’s Earth Week, and gave Columbia College Chicago students, faculty, staff, and administration alike a reason to celebrate. For eight hours straight, artists, students, and professors working in all mediums collaborated to present Listening to Our Planet: The Sounds of Human Nature.
Presented by the Arts Entertainment and Media Management Department and the Critical Encounters Office, and produced by students of the Concert & Festival Production Management class, Listening to Our Planet sought to better understand the world through looking and listening to its natural environment. By posing the questions: What does your environment sound like? How do we know where we are? How does sound affect you? How do noise levels affect people’s health and well-being? And, what will the future sound like? The 10am-6pm event celebrated the natural beauty of our earth and raised awareness about issues relating to it – like pollution, recycling, and global awareness. Then, connecting those themes to the general mission of Columbia, the event presented the myriad of ways that acoustic ecology can be represented through art form.
Hosted at the south end of campus in the Conaway Center, the school’s largest function space, visitors were able to weave in and out, sit and watch the performances, mingle around the coffee table, or wander through the tables with brochures about everything earth-y, from the Columbia College Recycling Program to the World Listening Project. The schedule handed to me upon my arrival was extremely helpful, allowing me to select the presentations that best complimented my personality and what it was that I wanted to get out of the day.
Over the eight-hour event, there were poetry readings, photography viewings, panel discussions, field recordings, short films, and other creative projects. Adding an interactive piece to the day, was the “Essay Smash”, where students submitted essays to be reviewed.
Most notable for me, were the discussions on mountaintop removal; a coal mining technique started in the 1970s, which completely destroys surrounding communities and the Earth itself. Not only was this a completely intriguing and relative topic to the day, but it was described through discussion, audio/visual presentations, and field recordings. And, again, linking the larger world at hand to the students, faculty, staff, and administration of Columbia College, it was presented in collaboration with community organizers, professionals, and members of the Columbia College student organization, Topless America.
In the end, I left enlightened. Not only about Earth Week, and realizing that there are special recycling bins that I can drop my empty film canisters in, but about the fantastic things that can happen when people of all ages, mediums, professions, and ideologies come together to discuss, challenge, and celebrate something bigger than themselves.
This review I think is successful in creating a picture of the 'nature-savvy' identity of Columbia students and faculty.
ReplyDeleteAlso it approaches the subject of independent student orginazations. This gives you a lot to work with.
Glorious. Great profile of a Columbia program and how this specific program is a reflection on some of the qualities that exist in the campus community.
ReplyDeleteI really like this piece too, especially the concise nature of the summary in the early going. I think I would like to hear a little more about the form of the pieces, as well as their content? The real hook here seems to be the emphasis on the audio aspect of the work, but I don't learn a whole lot about the -sound- of this event: do you come out knowing a lot more about what, say, mountaintop removal sounds like? That would give me a little more of a sense of what distinguishes this event from the myriad green celebrations going on this week. How did the presentations answer the exciting and relevant questions you raise here? And in light of the specific assignment, you have license to spend a little more time on what is so Columbia about an event like this--I get it, I think, but certainly when you revise this as part of the review essay you might punch up that aspect of it. But as usual you write a very lively and engaging review. Thanks.
ReplyDelete