Carbon Capture: A Participatory Photography Project on the Youth Environment Service

October 6, 2021

11am — Manchester – UK

Here’s what our participants had to say…

Call for Participants – Applications Are Now Closed

With less than a decade left to prevent irreversible climate change, now is the time to recognize that each one of us has a crucial part to play. The climate emergency is a collective one and demands collective solutions — especially solutions that foreground communities with the most at stake. Young people are inheriting the climate crisis from previous generations and will be disproportionately impacted by its effects. Open and direct pathways of engagement between youth and policymakers should be the foundation for building climate-resilient communities.

How can we visualize climate change? How can we represent the environmental crisis from the perspective of those who will be most impacted by its effects? How can those viewpoints be converted into recommendations for meaningful political action?

To pursue these questions, the Berggruen Institute and the National Nature Service are partnering on Carbon Capture, a participatory photography project that brings diverse young voices to the table, engaging young social and environmental activists in a deliberative process around climate action at the local and national level. We are inviting local youth (ages 18-25) to apply for this unique opportunity to influence policymaking by documenting how climate change affects your community.

Participants in the event will be asked to:

1. Share photographs documenting how climate change impacts their community;

2. Join us for a one day in-person (COVID-19 pending) session where they can present the photographs they’ve submitted, and co-design recommendations for a Youth Environment Service, using one another’s photographs as a springboard; and

3. Work together to shape and develop the final recommendations and outputs of the Carbon Capture project after the session has been convened.

These outputs, which may include a digital exhibition as well as a collaboratively authored report with real policy recommendations, will be shared with key decision-makers and the wider environmental movement in the run-up to COP26 at the end of October.

The event will take place on Wednesday, October 6, 2021 in Manchester, United Kingdom, from 11:00 a.m – 5:00 p.m.

Participants will receive a £60 gift card and all travel costs to and from the event will be covered. Meals and refreshments will be provided throughout the day.

For questions, please contact Junior Program Coordinator Erica Riray at eriray@berggruen.org.

Accepted participants are asked to attend one of the following virtual training sessions:

• Tuesday, 7th September, 2021, 4:30pm – 5:00pm BST
• Tuesday, 14th September, 2021, 4:30pm – 5:00pm BST

About the National Nature Service
The National Nature Service is a movement for nature, creating opportunities for young people to get involved in deploying nature-based solutions to address our environmental and ecological crises. It aims to inspire and connect passionate people to fulfilling nature-based work, expanding our skills and collective capabilities in the fight against climate change.

About Youth Environment Service (YES)
This event is a part of the Berggruen Institute’s Future of Democracy’s Youth Environment Service (YES) campaign to build broad-based commitments from governments to invest in jobs, national service, and other opportunities for young people to work together, acquire skills and training, and build common purpose and solidarity in protecting their communities from climate change.

composed by Arswain
machine learning consultation by Anna Tskhovrebov
commissioned by the Berggruen Institute
premiered at the Bradbury Building
downtown Los Angeles
april 22, 2022

Human perception of what sounds “beautiful” is necessarily biased and exclusive. If we are to truly expand our hearing apparatus, and thus our notion of beauty, we must not only shed preconceived sonic associations but also invite creative participation from beings non-human and non-living. We must also begin to cede creative control away from ourselves and toward such beings by encouraging them to exercise their own standards of beauty and collaborate with each other.

Movement I: Alarm Call
‘Alarm Call’ is a long-form composition and sound collage that juxtaposes, combines, and manipulates alarm calls from various human, non-human, and non-living beings. Evolutionary biologists understand the alarm call to be an altruistic behavior between species, who, by warning others of danger, place themselves by instinct in a broader system of belonging. The piece poses the question: how might we hear better to broaden and enhance our sense of belonging in the universe? Might we behave more altruistically if we better heed the calls of – and call out to – non-human beings?

Using granular synthesis, biofeedback, and algorithmic modulation, I fold the human alarm call – the siren – into non-human alarm calls, generating novel “inter-being” sonic collaborations with increasing sophistication and complexity. 

Movement II: A.I.-Truism
A synthesizer piece co-written with an AI in the style of Vangelis’s Blade Runner score, to pay homage to the space of the Bradbury Building.

Movement III: Alarmism
A machine learning model “learns” A.I.Truism and recreates Alarm Call, generating an original fusion of the two.

Movement IV: A.I. Call
A machine learning model “learns” Alarm Call and recreates A.I.Truism, generating an original fusion of the two.

RAVE (IRCAM 2021) https://github.com/acids-ircam/RAVE