Gulf to Gulf

Gulf to Gulf engages artists and scientists in an ongoing mini think tank style research project and conversation on global warming in gulf regions, and how art can affect climate policy. Centrally a collaboration and ongoing series of webcast conversations between Aviva, Dr. Jim White, and Dr. Eugene Turner, the project has grown a collection of raw recordings of webcast conversations, including international guest artists and scientists, and has been accessed across eighty-five countries.

Gulf to Gulf began in 2009 as a project sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts. The focus of Gulf to Gulf is to effect climate-change policy with art, while observing the impacts of global warming on gulf regions internationally. Work includes site observation, interactive desktop sharing sessions, in webcasts with scientists and others led by Aviva Rahmani. The Blued Trees Symphony is part of Gulf to Gulf.

Documentation, analysis, and interpretation of new insights about climate change and global warming are presented in informal conversations between Aviva Rahmani and Dr. Jim White, paleoecologist (professor of geological sciences, fellow and director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, INSTAAR, at the University of Colorado at Boulder); Dr. Eugene Turner, wetlands biologist (distinguished research master and professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge); and invited guests. Gulf to Gulf partners with WebServes (James Bradley)—developers of the Gulf to Gulf Project website—to broadly reconceive the definition of a site as geographic location and virtual interface. It presumes that physical, imaginative, and virtual sites can be interdependent.

The target of these conversations is climate change policy. Gulf to Gulf, a collection of raw recordings of webcast conversations, has been accessed from over eighty-five countries, and has a dedicated website. Guests have included the late Dr. Michele Dionne, former director of research at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, Wells, Maine; Dr. Thomas Dunlap, environmental historian, professor at Texas A & M University; the philosopher Baird Callicott and Dr. Harvey Hix, an American poet, scholar, and professor at the University of Wyoming.

Gulf to Gulf builds on the previous Virtual Concerts format of free-flowing podcast discussions.