What happens when contrails – airplane condensation trails – appear in the works of art?
What happens when artists paint or photograph contrails and how does this act affect the status of contrails as environmental phenomena?
Do contrails count as aesthetic phenomena in the same way as ‘other’ clouds?
Can we enjoy the sight of a contrail and still be environmentalists?
Can something that so eloquently epitomizes the causes of anthropogenic climate change – contrails contribute to the atmospheric radiative forcing even more than aviation’s CO2 emissions – be worthy of an aesthetic experience?
Or should our knowledge of contrail’s ecology be kept at bay when in them we see pristine, monumental streaks of white motion, silently carved on an indigo background on which they thin, spread, and disappear like ski tracks in the melting snow.
Is it a crime to love contrails?
Dr Vladimir Jankovic from the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester will present this topic.
Monday 17th February @ 18:30. FREE admission
The Albert Club, Old Lansdowne Road, West Didsbury, Manchester M20 2PA