The equilibrium between a healthy environment, the energy our society needs to maintain or improve this lifestyle, and the world’s interconnected economies, could pass more quickly than expected from the current complex balance to an entirely new reality where human beings would need to be more creative than ever before to survive. The frequency and severity that certain weather and climate-related events are having around us is increasing, and the ability of human beings to modify our adjacent surroundings has turned into a power capable of altering the planet. Do the media arts have a role in all this?

The art ! ⋈ climate contest used art as a catalyst in helping to build bridges between sound artists and specific humanitarian actions related to climate change, with the intent of engendering a deeper awareness and creating lasting working partnerships in addressing our global environmental crisis. Both the process and the outcomes of this initiative highlight the value of integrating creative approaches into humanitarian work for complex risk management issues.

Balance-Unbalance aims to use art as a catalyst to explore intersections between nature, science, technology and society with the intent of engendering a deeper awareness and creating lasting intellectual working partnerships in solving our global environmental crisis.