His first guideline for creating “evocative interpretation” is to “ask relevant questions”.  Imagine yourself as a visitor to UNE and develop some questions that you think would evoke an interest in you to learn more about the sustainability at UNE.

When I was visiting UNE for the first time, I was interested in neuroscience. But I quickly became interested in the environment once I realized its importance in my and everybody’s lives. Questions relevant to my first visit had to do with the Arts and Science department, specifically neuroscience and anatomy. But with questions answered in such a way where sustainability was relevant to my major really had me interested. My interpretation of these answers had me wondering more about sustainability. Thomashow’s evocative interpretation is challenging for sustainability interpreters to “encourage those responses in informal settings” (177). Good sustainability questions framed relevant to people’s majors or experience such as what sustainability initiatives will make a student’s life easier and less expensive, or how their major fits into our school’s theme, “innovation for a healthier planet”.

Dr. Thomashow’s fifth guideline is to “balance the visceral and the virtual”.  What does he mean by this?  Give some examples of how we might do that with the creative project in this class?

To “balance the visceral and the virtual,” means to incorporate the biosphere and natural world around us with technology to create an interpretive experience.

UNE does this with quite a few things, and there’s no end for what you can do to accomplish this. Some examples of existing interpretive experiences include the signs around sustainable initiatives, the sustainability blog, and the energy TVs in the commons and marine science center.

But other way that sustainability can be portrayed interpretively though technology (in balance with the viceral world) may be to map the campus’ trees as a campus arboretum, inclusive too, possibly of the campus’ edible plants inititive.

My group is proposing electric landscpaing equipment for the grounds department on campus. This inititive would help us achieve the carbon neutrality goal as well as increase our sustainability on campus. This proposal can be “viscerally and virtually” portrayed using graphs and videos, as well as other case studies.