A personal experience of nature is easy to obtain: simply notice your immediate senses. Nature after all is everywhere around and within us. When we take a breath of air, taste a ripe fruit, when we feel sick from a virus, or hear the sound of thunder in the night, we are in communication with the natural world.

Ecographs essentially emerge through an iterative process of representing an experience of nature visually (i.e. by drawing), and describing it with words. Like a Chinese ideograph, each one is individually expressive but also easily reproducible.

What do they mean?
To the greater public, ecographs contain a delightful double life as picture-and-symbol that always invites interpretation. Whether communicating something funny, whimsical, unsettling, profound or otherwise, they share the potential to renew our awareness of the communicating world around us, and stimulate minds that are open to news from nature.

Ecographs and Civil Society
Most of the 200+ ecographs (生态意象） completed to date have been created in workshops of 5-20 people coordinated through partnerships between arts organizations and NGOs, educational institutions or cultural institutions. To date 20+ workshops have been conducted in China and the United States, coordinated in partnership with the following organizations:

Shanghai Library
Shanghai YiLi Arts Club
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Shanghai Roots and Shoots
Shanghai Oasis Environmental Center
Charyou Volunteer Network
Shangyin Charity
Girls Innovate California
Shanghai K11 Chi Art Space
Shanghai EcoDesign Fair
Marine Dream China

Every ecograph that is created is added to the growing “dictionary” of symbols. The dictionary includes the creator’s ecograph, his or her definition, the sound associated with it, and the place and time associated with the experience that it represents. In addition to a continuous exhibition online, ‘Ecographs’ is exhibited from time to time in public venues where people can select their favorites and draw them in new renditions using Chinese brush and ink.

Who’s behind this?
Ecographs is a collaborative artwork involving diverse organizations and individuals. It is administered by ARTSpring, a China-based curatorial hub. For more information please write to: info (at) art-spring.org.
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