Breaking Paradigms: Electronic Arts & Humanitarian Actions

Keywords: Electronic arts, media arts, sound arts, humanitarian actions, climate change, environmental crisis.

The equilibrium between a healthy environment, the energy our society needs to maintain or improve this lifestyle and the interconnected economies could pass more quickly than expected from the current complex balance to a complete new reality where human beings would need to be as creative as never before to survive. Environmental problems, economic uncertainty and political complexity have been around for a long time. What was different before was the speed and depth of transformations compared with today’s sudden changes. The frequent occurrence and severity that certain weather and climate-related events are having around us is increasing, and the ability of human beings on modifying adjacent surroundings as well as distant places have turn into a power capable of altering the planet. Have electronic art a role in all this? Have electronic artists a responsibility in this context? Aiming to use electronic art as a catalyst with the intent of engendering a deeper awareness and creating lasting intellectual working partnerships in solving our global environmental crisis, three initiatives were launched: Balance-Unbalance, ‘art! ⋈ climate’ and EChO.