Lecture: "'I am the Lorax': or 'What Does the Life Web Want?" The Harrisons, Systems, Speculative Design, and Healing the Earth"

Lecture presentation in the gallery with Edward Shanken

January 11, 2025

California Center for the Arts Escondido

Museum Galleries, Gallery 1

3:00-4:00 pm

Free

Meet at the CCAE museum galleries for an enlightening talk by Edward Shanken, Professor of Digital Art and New Media at UC Santa Cruz, the author of many articles and books on the entwinement of art, science, and technology. In his presentation, Professor Shanken will explore how the Ecological Art of Helen and Newton Harrison, now on view, has challenged traditional engineering approaches and conventional economic models in their quest of Survival Art in the context of global environmental crisis. 

Professor Shanken will provide a unique vantage point to explore the Harrisons' La Jolla Promenade, The Fifth Lagoon: From the Salton Sea, and more recent California works such as The Bays of San Francisco. His talk will weave together Dr. Seuss, Fritjof Capra’s theory and systems concept of the Web of Life, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s idea of speculative design, and the notion of Gross National Happiness proposed in 1972 by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the 4th King of Bhutan.

Professor Shanken proposes that the Harrisons’ work anticipates a further concept, Life Web Happiness (LWH), as an evaluative yardstick that is neither nationalistic nor anthropocentric and is thus better suited for healing the Earth. 

Professor Shanken is the author of the introduction "'I am the Lorax': or 'What Does the Life Web Want?" in the Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work exhibition catalog.