Sitting on Two Volcanoes is a work in progress about the neighboring cities of Napoli and Pozzuoli, in Italy, where residents have developed unique strategies and attitudes to live in harmony with volcanic risk. These communities are located on two of the most highly monitored volcanoes in the world: Vesuvio and Campi Flegrei.

How do you keep dreaming after surviving a massive natural disaster? Watch the Tsunami of New Dreams teaser, a documentary feature film that revisits the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on the people of Banda Aceh, in Aceh Province, Indonesia, where life forever changed on a Sunday morning.

The Sichuan Hard Road (蜀道難) presents survivors’ testimonies from the 2008 Wenchuan devastating earthquake, along with scientific information about the unique seismic and tectonic risk inherent to this area.

Art-Science-Media explores innovative methods for communicating Earth science to a wide audience. We also develop and produce a number of artworks and media projects inspired by natural hazards. We create documentary films, art projects, interactive games, and educational media. Most of our projects are presented in this site and many can be accessed using the side menu. Art-Science-Media features the work of artist and filmmaker Isaac Kerlow. During his tenure as Creative Executive Director and Principal Investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore he initiated and led significant collaborations between Earth scientists and artists, including a fruitful international visiting artist program.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is key to effective science communication especially when impact is a deliverable. We have collaborated with individuals and institutions in the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia including Singapore, China, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, the Philippines, Thailand, and Laos.

People of the Forest: Orang Rimba is an award-winning short film about the Orang Rimba a minorit ethnic group displaced by palm oil industrial farming. Watch the official trailer here:

HAZE, it’s complicated… presents the points of view of oil palm farmers, scientists, activists and officials involved in the haze pollution created by the burning of the peatland in Sumatra, Indonesia, to clear the land for oil palm farming. The documentary feature film was premiered in early 2018.

Some of our documentary films include The Nepal Ratu River Expedition, and Mayon: The Volcano Princess. The Nepal film examines the tectonic fault along the Himalaya in the context of creating a more sustainable Nepal. Mayon is a film about the people who live around the most active and most destructive volcano in The Philippines.

Our interactive games feature Earth Girl, a smart and action-loving character who helps her community survive natural disasters. Earth Girl Volcano is the newest game in the series. Earth Girl 2: Preparing for the Tsunami was recognized by the Singapore National Research Foundation as a top interactive media project in the 2014 Sciences and Technologies Showcase.

Our educational media includes the Merapi Interactive eBook, a project that focuses on the Earth science and the culture of Mount Merapi in Java, Indonesia.

The Knowledge Capsules are a collection of short and very short films, oftentimes used in the classroom as examples of current research. These snippets of Earth science encapsulate in under 5-6 minutes the essence of a researcher’s work or a specific project.

A few of our projects have been inspired by the unpredictability of nature and our occasional negative impact on the environment. See Sudden Nature for the former and CHANGE and SHADOWS for the later.

Funding for our work has been provided by private donors, the AXA Research Fund, the National Research Foundation, Nanyang Technological University, the Ministry of Education, and sometimes money from our own pockets.

A list of recent papers and/or presentations by Isaac Kerlow is here .