How do artists and writers engage with environmental knowledge in the
face of overwhelming information about catastrophe? What kinds of
knowledge do the arts produce when addressing climate change,
extinction, and other environmental emergencies? What happens to
scientific data when it becomes art? In Infowhelm, Heather Houser
explores the ways contemporary art manages environmental knowledge in an
age of climate crisis and information overload.
Houser argues that the infowhelm--a state of abundant yet contested
scientific information--is an unexpectedly resonant resource for
environmental artists seeking to go beyond communicating stories about
crises. Infowhelm analyzes how artists transform the techniques of the
sciences into aesthetic material, repurposing data on everything from
butterfly migration to oil spills and experimenting with data
collection, classification, and remote sensing. Houser traces how
artists ranging from novelist Barbara Kingsolver to digital memorialist
Maya Lin rework knowledge traditions native to the sciences, entangling
data with embodiment, quantification with speculation, precision with
ambiguity, and observation with feeling. Their works provide new ways of
understanding environmental change while also questioning traditional
distinctions between types of knowledge. Bridging the environmental
humanities, digital media studies, and science and technology studies,
this timely book reveals the importance of artistic medium and form to
understanding environmental issues and challenges our assumptions about
how people arrive at and respond to environmental knowledge.
