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Artist Steve Rowell's use of sound and drones

tschuetz

In the interview with Emily Roehl, artist Steve Rowell describes his style in contrast to the more "didactic" approach of land use and documentary photography. Instead, he has come to combine his visual works with sound installations that are meant to unsettle. These sounds are often generated based on air pollution data that he has collected (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 137). Rowell further describes how changes in the development of aerial video and photography technology have shaped his work. In the past, Rowell would rent expensive camera equipment and attach them to a helicopter to generate fly-over images (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 140). Though commercial drones have become available, Rowell says that he soon got dissatisfied with the "slick" images they produce. When using drones, Rowell relies on an angle that faces down or is close-up, creating feelings of uncanniness. These unusual perspectives are combined with split imagery and mirroring to achieve a specific effect: “There’s a value in giving the viewer/listener a chance to distrust the work in the same way there’s value in giving them room to question the work. The landscapes I feature are all altered. What landscape isn’t now? That’s the point.” (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 140).

Artist Steve Rowell

tschuetz

Steve Rowell is an educator and research artist, currently working on “long-term projects that use image, sound, and archival practice to interrogate the relationship between humans, industry, and the environment” (Roehl and Rowell, 2022, p. 136). Rowell has worked extensively with the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) in Los Angeles, including a comissioned project for which he photographed every petrochemical plant in Texas (ibid, p. 137). In subsequent projects, he has focused on tracing pipelines going from the Alberta Tar Sands to petrochemical communities in Long Beach, California and Port Arthur, Texas. Another recent project focuses on the industrial ecology of Houston's Buffalo Bayou

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Alexi Martin

The main findings of this article include the discrepancy of actual health issues and its surfacing in the government. The article explores post-Soviet Union Ukraine and discovers the backbone of its economy consists of disability healthcare for those affected by radiation. The struggle to survive without an illness on a  bare economy where government funds help those who may be damamged by radiation and ignore the rest of the population.

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Alexi Martin

Three ways the arguemtn is supported is through interviews of current citizens in Ukraine who needed disability funds, the history of CHernobyl and the aftermath on the country as a whole, and field research about radiation and the 'new population' in the country that is made up of those who are radiation affected or are lying about it. (Numbers and figures are also included).

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Sara_Nesheiwat

Adriana Petryna has a PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and teaches courses in this field at UPenn. She specializes in globalization and public health as well as medical anthropology. Her interests lie in Europe and the US, mainly the Chernobyl disaster. She centers her work on public and private forms of scientific knowledge production. She is very interested in the way science and technology play a role in the context of crisis.

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Sara_Nesheiwat

This article discusses the Chernobyl disaster and the management and cooperation that followed this disaster. Technologies at play, as well as government involvement, scientific knowledge and sociopolitical factors effecting this situation post disaster are also mentioned. The author also extensively reviews Chernobyl through field research based off resettled families and radiation exposed workers. The dependence of health and illness based off economics and politics is also heavily discussed. International scientific cooperation is also discussed in terms of studies done on those exposed after the disaster.