Aviva Rahmani
About the Research Her research articulates a process of analyzing degraded environments, using aesthetic perceptions of mapping technologies and empirical observations of incremental change. Rahmani’s work is based on 20 years of collated evolutionary data from the test case site of her Ghost Nets project. That ecological art work restored an environmentally critical wetlands, at a former coastal town dump, on a remote fishing island in the Gulf of Maine. Her work investigates the impact of such targeted restoration work. The premise is that an artist's skills can be applied to observe, analyze, interpret and catalyze very small ecological "patches" in an environmentally degraded landscape "mosaic" as environmental triage. Her thesis is that this is an activist process which can trigger large landscape healing where the environment has been fragmented and destroyed, even at the point of baseline change. She is working with interdisciplinary data, including microbiological genetic markers to track evidence of proof of effect from Ghost Nets. Her dissertation includes the problem of designing a model based on that data to project large system effects over time, given the variables of global warming. This cross-media work includes extensive virtual collaboration with a range of scientists. About the Researcher Aviva Rahmani is an Affiliate of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado at Boulder. A recipient of the Arts and Healing Network 2009 award, she is internationally known for her ecological art, including the restoration of a dump site to a flourishing wetlands system (Ghost Nets) and helping to catalyze a USDA expenditure of $500,000 to restore critical wetlands habitat (Blue Rocks). Gulf to Gulf, her New York Foundation for the Arts sponsored new media project, is a collaboration with scientists on global warming. Rahmani’s work has been shown in over 30 solo and 50 group shows internationally and been published in five countries. Rahmani attended the Cooper Union School of Art and New York University as an undergraduate and received her Masters from the California Institute of the Arts with a double major in Multi Media and Electronic Music, working with Allan Kaprow, Mort Sobotnick and Judy Chicago. She lives on Vinalhaven Island, Maine and in New York City, New York. Website www.ghostnets.com
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